Roses and Gooseberries

Having started a Garden Group for my WI, I've had to up my game in this area. I've learned a bit but of course still have miles to go. I deliberately didn't call it 'Gardening' as I thought some would be put off by this: taking pleasure in someone else's garden or in visiting a garden centre counts in my group!

I knew some time ago that the least harmful way to fight aphids on one's roses was to wipe them off with a rag and soapy water - bathe them in a manner of speaking. Up until now I've left it with Bill who sprayed them with some sort of chemical, with only moderate success. So I did the bath thing a couple of times and it's worked a treat. 

Another thing I read somewhere was to soak banana peels in water and pour this on the roses' roots. Apparently this feeds them potassium, which they crave. I've no idea if this is fact or fiction but I've done it this spring and now have loads of buds.

My roses seem to come out much later than most, but they do hang about for quite a while. I see loads of potential there and just the first few pink blooms.

Also, I kept reading that gooseberries came in June but we saw none on our two youngish gooseberry bushes, in spite of having had a small crop last year. Then one day I lifted a branch - prickly things they are - and saw a neat row of pale green berries underneath! But they were tiny, no bigger than peas. So I did some internet research and found the advice to pick alternate berries and leave the remainder to grow and ripen into July and August. So that's what I've done.

In a very old book, Every Man His Own Gardener, by John Abercrombie (published in 1782), I found the advice to prune gooseberry bushes in the shape of an umbrella. I can see how this would make everything a lot tidier, which is very useful when dealing with something as prickly as this.

I found this book at Berrington Hall a few years ago when we were down sound for Simon's wedding. I have been working at indexing my digital photos of late. This is a wonderful way to re-discover what you've done with your life, also to find new topics never before blogged about. 

A Friend's Garden

I have an American friend I met at my WI. We've managed to keep in touch throughout the pandemic and I've twice been invited to visit her in her garden. Three times if you count when she hosted our Book Group. She kindly gave permission to take this photos for this blog.

I've known where she lived for several years now, but I was stunned to realise that my back gate and hers are just about lined up through the alley that crosses the streets between us. Coming in through her back gate is like entering a magic kingdom. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but have a look for yourself. 

This last time it was rather drizzly and I told her I had water-proofs at the ready. She sensibly sat in her conservatory with the door open. I sat outside covered in Bill's walking gear as none of my coats are more than water resistant. We managed a good two hours before my knees were stiff and feet frozen and I took myself home. 

A south-facing garden is highly desirable here in the UK as is a double-fronted house. These odd things never crossed my mind when I came across. 

In addition to this lovely garden, her husband also keeps an allotment. I've occasionally been gifted a giant marrow or a box of red currents, so I on this visit I brought her a couple of jars of my homemade jam. All this the benefit of being a WI member!

Dandelion on the Dining Table

I know most folks detest dandelions, but I've come to really appreciate them. I transplant the best looking ones to a rectangular planter we have in the back yard. Bill tolerates this so long as I don't let the seed heads scatter. I've been adding dandelion leaves to my spinach salad at lunch. They are slightly bitter, but nowhere near as bitter as mizuna, which I gather is popular with some folks. 

I was also collecting some red lettuce leaves from the garden one day when I spotted this enormous flower. 

I put it in an old bottle I bought at a brocante in Bourdeaux village a few years ago and added some fern that I love. Mom had bunches of something very like it in her back garden and she called it asparagus fern, though I know it wasn't asparagus. I've never been able to work out what she had. This comes from a bronze fennel plant. No idea if it actually grows fennel, don't care, don't like it. But I do love this fern.

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Can't say Bill was very impressed, but it gave me lots of pleasure for a couple of days. When it wilted I replaced it with this lovely white flower. Bill says it's either a geranium or a pelargonium, but I've no idea which it is. It needed a shorter bottle to get water, I'm guessing it is one of several Vivien gave me one of the last times I saw her.

Garden

I've been busy making a map of the gardens here, front and back. The back was easy, being rectangular. The front isn't a rectangle and the brick walks are irregular, there was the problem of how to measure the arc of the bay window and the semi-circular (more or less) south facing garden space.

I've been reading a book on garden design and I know I like a cottage style, nothing formal or regimented. I've made a list of plants I'd like to grow and the colour scheme I have in mind for the front. I'm certain that we haven't enough space to do all I'd like, but one has to dream big, right?

Then I contacted the local (ish) garden centre I knew were delivering. I ask for a great number of bedding plants (having looked up the definition) and for potting compost and a picture of any trellis they had. She rang back a week later, the time frame I expected. She thought I was asking for too many plants and she asked for some photos of my garden.

So that was another project, to send photos and explain what they were. Waiting to hear from her again. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the thing we already have in place.

How to Get 81 Squash Plants

I started my first batch of seedlings back in February, working my way through all my ancient seed packets which said 'sow indoors February' plus some flower seeds that were Christmas gifts, to grow edible flowers. Some herbs came up nicely, as did chrysanthemums (which I don't remember if they're edible or not, so don't risk it without some research). There were rows of oldish seeds that didn't produce and one day when I was clearing out the fridge, I found a box of squash seeds. 

I'd put the seeds in the fridge after eating the squash thinking I would roast them, but they had gone a bit slimy, so I thought not. On a whim I stuffed the seeds into the vacant rows on the windowsill and put sticky labels over the previous names (stuck on sticks cut from a plastic milk carton or a plastic file folder). I think it was an acorn squash but for some reason I had 'butternut' on the brain and that's what I wrote on the new labels.

I had moved most of the seedlings of flowers or herbs to other pots and nearly ditched the squash plants quietly growing under the soil but being a procrastinator they were saved. All the sudden I had row after row of little plants. When I pulled one out to re-pot it, two more appeared!  I spent an afternoon moving these things to new pots and finding sunny places to put them. 

The next day I asked Bill to move the rickety old book case in the back porch (full of pots, gardening gloves and his muddy shoes from walking and cross-country) to the potting table under the south facing window in the garage. When that was done I continued re-potting and then he found the old plastic stacking bookcase from the 1980s and put parts of it in the west facing bay window and the front porch. 

I kept wondering where to put these in soil in our garden without sacrificing our chance of growing anything but squash; Bill thinks we have room for maybe 10-12. I keep telling myself he lacks imagination. Also asking myself why on earth I rescued every single one of those plants? 

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I've decided it was because initially they have two leaves sticking up from the soil and those two leaves made me think of baby birds begging to be fed. Sometimes the shell of the seed would stick to one of the leaves for a while and that reminded me of the old cartoons of newly hatched birds with an egg-shell 'hat'. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. So we have more plants than we can possibly use. How many actual squashes they produce is of course yet to be seen, but any squashes they do will be eaten with pleasure - and the seeds definitely roasted!

Anyone want a squash plant?

Flowers

I'm quite ambivalent about cut flowers. I love the way they cheer up any room. I enjoy arranging and re-arranging them as they die off, finding the right sized vessel and not necessarily flower vases, in fact most often not vases. 

On the other hand, my frugal side sees them as a waste of money. I'm aware that most flowers are shipped stupid distances which makes them environmentally wasteful and some die off ridiculously quick - I find roses are the worst extravagance for this reason never mind the cost. I dream of having a cut flower garden but my softer side knows I'll shy away from cutting (killing) them even though I know they'll die in the garden eventually anyhow. 

Bill and I are both classed as 'vulnerable' to coronavirus, because he's 72 and I have asthma. We don't plan to visit any supermarkets any time soon. We've found local shops that can meet most of our needs and that we like to support. However, when this lock down first began I started thinking about what small things might make staying home more pleasurable and it made me reconsider my stance on cut flowers. They do lift my spirits and they would be unusual enough around our house that I thought they might also lift Bill's. And I was right. Only I've not found flowers on any supermarket delivery list and florists around us are all closed. 

I mentioned being sad about this at a Zoom conference of our WI Committee. A few days later my front door bell rang and there in front of my door was a bouquet of flowers. My fellow committee member, Angela, was standing at my front gate several feet away. 

L-R: Christmas poinsetta from Aldi still surviving sitting on a silicone poppy, a gift
from Vivien; red pointy glass souvenirs from a visit to Mexico in the 1980s;
 green flowers from Angela in a vase that belonged to Bill's mother, Ella; two
glass pots of lettuce stumps growing leaves behind a ruby glass goblet that belonged
 to my Mom; two of three decorative squashes I picked up to display on the front
porch last autumn (I'm amazed they  haven't rotted); more about the third squash later;
a pot containing a spider plant, confused Christmas cactus and a bit of aloe vera
(picked off a gift from one of Simon's old girlfriends), sitting on a glass brick -
one of four bought at a local salvage shop (Huscroft's in North Shields);
a fused glass ornament depicting Souter Light House in South Shields,
 a memento of a race Bill did there last year.
A lot of stuff for one window sill, I know, but we look at it a lot
while washing dishes.

I chastised her that the police might not see this as a reasonable excuse for her, but since she is a nurse and is out and about in the world anyhow, I could see why she'd feel this was permitted. Another lady on the committee said she'd had the same intent and been beaten to it. I felt very loved. I had hoped someone could tell me about a source of flowers, I certainly didn't expect to be gifted some. I won't forget that unexpected kindness soon.

We've enjoyed these flowers on our dining table for a full month now. The orange rose was the first to go. Then the hot pink ?chrysanthemums? When I moved to a smaller vase the tree foliage had to go. I couldn't get all the green whatever-they-are into the next smaller container and when I left one on the kitchen counter Bill picked it up at put it in a vase to add to the kitchen window, which I thought worked nicely. He surprises me like that sometimes. 

We are down to the last of this bouquet, some yellow and some green flowers and they are just beginning to turn brown underneath. I shall have to consult Fiona at Perennial Favourites in Blyth about what these are. She and her husband Adam talked at our WI some time in the past and I've kept in touch since, attending workshops and shopping at their Royal Quays outlet, which has since shut. We've never made it up to their nursery in Blyth but hopefully that will be on the cards one day when we are out of lock down. 

What remains now are yellow and green flowers;
sparse but still attractive. I know the orange and yellow
don't exactly go with the red and pink table cloth,
but do I care?

I see the peonies in my garden are in bud. I'm hoping I'll have the nerve to clip one or two gorgeous blooms to take inside. They'll make a real mess they make when they shed petals but I won't mind. It will remind me of the opening to Downtown Abbey, where a white petal is falling off the roses in the etched glass vase. 

[No further flower gifts required.]

Mom's Birthday

I spent a full day indexing the photos on my computer, well, two years' worth. It was something to do when camping in the rain without internet access. It allowed me to go pretty directly to this photo of a white rose, taken in my garden in May 2017. Aren't you impressed?

Actually this post is to remember my Mom's birthday (she would have been 101). She is never far from my thoughts.

Hardwood Cuttings

Another gardening workshop that both Bill and I attended at Greenwolds Plant Centre was about hardwood cuttings. I'd always heard about being able to take cuttings of some plants but wasn't sure how that worked.

Adam had taken a large number of cuttings from various bushes in their nursery in Blyth. With these he shows us the portion to take, pretty much the growth that took place in the last year. He showed us how to look at the different colours of the branch from the darker, dryer part near the root to the lighter colour towards the bendy part at the end, the softwood. He told us to cut straight across on the bottom of the cutting and on the diagonal at the top, so we'd always know which was the top end when planting. Another tip he gave us was to look for the nodes, sort of like joints, and to always include three.

He gave us tall pots (he had a name for them, but I've forgotten it) with compost in and had us push in our cuttings to where the middle node was just above soil level. That way, if the bottom node didn't take root, the middle one might. He said generally about 60% of cuttings will grow. His description of propagating his stock at the nursery made me think perhaps money does grow on trees. 

For a fiver each, Bill and I came away with about 10 sticks each, including at least two potential willows, buddleias, rose hips and climbing roses plus several other I didn't catch the names of. I've no idea where we'll put them all, but it seemed a great adventure on the day and it was fun to have Bill along for a change.

As advised, we've just left them in the back garden for the winter and then we shall see what happens in the spring!

Update on Narcissus

The bulbs I planted a few weeks ago have come along nicely, though the grey, rainy background doesn't do them justice.  One of the tricks Fiona passed along is to use twigs from tree branches to support the long spindly stems. She suggested white birch, but since I only had copper beech, that is what I used. No ribbon or string required, just let the branches embrace the flower stem and it all seems quite natural. I'm loving what I learn at Greenwolds Plant Centre.

The Art and Science of Gardening

What a grandiose title! Especially since I know next to nil. I'm a longtime wannabe gardener, this being one of Mom's passions but also because, well, a beautiful garden is a joy. I complain the weather here isn't conducive, but I've always been able to find an excuse. In Oklahoma it was the creepy crawlies in the soil, in Salt Lake watering was a hassle. That said, I still dream of the home grown tomatoes I produced in SLC.

Anyhow, our WI had a talk by folks from a local gardening centre. I took copious notes with little understanding. It's not just the Latin names, it's the simple terms that trip me up. For example 'herbaceous border' is a phrase you hear a lot here. Initially I thought this was something to do with growing herbs, though I wondered what it bordered.

American-British 'English' strikes again. In childhood, the large green (brown-ish) areas in front and back of our house were the 'yard'. In Britain, the 'yard' is an area of hard-standing (bricks, concrete), usually at the back where the sun rarely shines in the narrow strip between house and wall. If they hate green stuff, the whole of the front area is covered, with perhaps a potted plant. 



Mom's garden was the area with flowers and bushes in it, bordering the yard, or lawn. Suddenly it dawned: the herbaceous border was what we called 'the garden'. It borders the grass (or hard-standing).



As to what 'herbaceous' means, apparently even Brits struggle to define it. I'll go out on a limb (as it were) and say it's plants that aren't trees.

Bill and I were running errands and went to find the Greenwold garden centre down at Royal Quays: an outdoor mall, normally the coldest, windiest place on the planet. I don't often go. That's about to change. They're about plants, not kitsch. A leaflet listed some coming workshops, most for free (you pay for what you use). I signed up for several.

Fiona found this sweet little nest on the ground during a woodland walk.

Last Friday I got a lecture from Fiona on bulbs vs corms, the dormant periods, and of course, how to 'plant' bulbs in a pot (they pretty much sit on the surface). We started with breaking some crockery for drainage, which is always great fun. I brought home two shallow clay pots and saucers, one with blue hyacinths, the other for white narcissus (everyone knows the mythological story, right?).






I'm calling this 'winter gardening indoors' and counting it along with the dill and basil I grew in the back porch as baby steps towards practising... [see title].