Mayday

 Yesterday was sunny after a week of dull days and cold wind.  Plants are growing steadily, but need watering as there's been no rain for about 3 weeks.  I'm also topping up the pond as it's drying up quickly.

The cuckoo pint along the hedge have started flowering.  There are lots of forget me nots and speedwell across the garden.  Campions are on the way but the deer are nipping off the buds of some.  My seeds outdoors have at last started to appear.  I planted out mangetout & sweet peas with the drainage rods as a tripod.

Euphorbia Ascot Rainbow

 Euphorbia Ascot Rainbow has settled in nicely alongside 2 other euphorbias.  The Berberis Darwinii has flowered this year, don't think that happened last year.

The verbena bonariensis I planted last year is sprouting some shoots.  I pruned the clover from a pot with birdsfoot trefoil which is for bees.  Not sure whether it'll survive.  I transplanted some next to the pond.

 The weather has been beautiful over the last week, and I've been doing lots in the garden.  So I'm going to try keeping a weekly record of what I've done, and what changes I notice.

There are approx 4 areas to the garden, which slopes upwards.  At the bottom is a patio with a rockery, which catches the early morning sun.  There is a slope with a pond, a beautiful cotoneaster, a camellia, and a rhododendron, which leads to a flat area of grass below a scots pine and beech tree, where wild flowers grow in summer.  The last part of the garden is a grassy slope again.  There are a few beds around this, which are a work in progress, and a side vegetable patch that's a bit shady.  Right at the end is the compost heap, a silver birch, and a shady area with a raised bed that looks like a sarcophagus!

Muntjac deer, squirrels and pigeons mean that plant buds are vulnerable to nibbles.  I've planted a number of perennials during the autumn/winter, and I'm using hanging baskets to protect them.  I'm not sure what will happen when they outgrow the baskets.  I might have to make some chicken wire protectors.  

Last autumn I planted a number of bulbs.  The snakeshead fritillary have been nibbled in some spots, but are good in a couple of places.  Erythroniums came through this week after being nibbled.  There are lots of euphorbias around the garden, and I've added another, Euphorbia Ascot Rainbow.  I'll take a photo and add that to another post.

Vegan continued

Been making a salad for lunch from grated carrot & beetroot, with basil, sesame oil & brown rice vinegar, a couple of rice dolmas, pumpkin & hemp seeds, sultanas, tomatoes, cucumber

Vegan meal

Tried this tonight, inspired by meal at Terre a Terre:
 -  Nasu dengaku
With coriander potato cakes from Celia Brown's World Vegetarian, steamed rice mixed with Cauldron marinated tofu, mushrooms. mangetout, onion, pepper, ginger. 

And a variation of this celeriac salad: Had some red cabbage & grated carrot instead of cavolo nero, and added toasted walnut, pumpkin, hemp seeds.

Wonderful writing from Jeanette Winterson

"The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I wasn't floating on my little raft in the present; there were bridges that led over to solid ground. Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture - exploit the new thing then move on.

There's a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.

Reading is where the wild things are."


After Jeanette Winterson has voted for Margaret Thatcher:

"I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

I did not know that Thatcherism would fund its economic miracle by selling off all our nationalised assets and industries.

I did not realise the consequences of privatising society."

Morning walk

Woke up at 4.30 so decided to get up to see what moths were in trap.  Disappointingly low count - no more than 10 individuals, though a couple of hawk moths.

So having woken up I thought I should take advantage & go for a walk without the dogs.

Overcast, but mild, and the air was full of birdsong.  Highlights were:  cuckoo, grasshopper warbler reeling, cranes in distance,sedge warbler, wren, marsh harrier overhead.

Also saw a number of deer which then barked very loudly, and a couple of foxes.