RosieBell

Late Spring

Spring is about 4 weeks behind. It looks like the beginning of March out there.  Yesterday I saw snow-drops by the Water of Leith, some in full bloom, others a little past it.  Crocuses are just coming out in my garden.  I compared the rhubarb to a picture of some I took on 27 March 2007, and it's about half the size and only two leaves. The cold, the flurries of snow, the almost bare trees - it looks wintry but the light is spring bright, so I feel slightly disorientated, like a New Zealand friend who tells me he feels can't find his bearings in the northern hemisphere as the sun is in the southern sky. 

Rhubarb 27 March 2007

Rhubarb, 30 March 2013

The hyacinths, which have been raised inside, have come into flower at the usual time.

Happy Pedant

Spring, and I was out in the garden planting seeds and clearing winter debris while listening to Radio 4's Saturday afternoon play An American Rose.  This slot is usually good, the play often based on some event in  history or an actual person.  Today's was about Rosemary Kennedy, the Kennedy daughter who had mental problems and was lobotomised, and her lively sister Kathleen, a war widow, who was killed in a flying accident.   It was well written and well acted, but I was happy to find two anachronisms.

Rose Kennedy scolds her daughters for lying on their beds wearing "designer gowns".  This is the 1930s - was "designer" used as an adjective then?  Wouldn't she have said "haute couture" or just "couture"?

Someone is described as a "commitmentphobe".   They certainly had the thing then, but the word?  That is very recent - appearing in the last 20 or 30 years I would have said.

Kathleen Kennedy

When I say I was "happy" to find two anachronisms, I'm remembering Hazlitt's remark:- "He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man.' 

The bloke next door said I must be pleased to be gardening again since I missed last year, having been absent from my flat because of its half destruction by pipes bursting upstairs on Boxing Day 2010.  He cheered me up by saying last year had been a terrible gardening year.  It rained a good deal and courgettes rotted.

Gardens on canvas

Yesterday I went to Impressionist Gardens, an exhibition at what’s now called the National Gallery Complex.  It was a joyous and sensuous experience.  I haven’t got much feeling for paintings or the visual arts in general but I really loved these because I really loved the subjects.  You could smell these gardens, some fresh and green, others the terracotta kind that made you feel you were on holiday in Italy.  Some Monet reflective lily ponds were really magic.  

Klimt

I went with Carl, who is an artist himself, so he took twice the time I did to get round, as he examined brush strokes, handling of masses and such things, while I would think, That looks very nice.  That Sargent painting is exactly how a garden appears at twilight, when the colours of flowers become stronger and deeper, and small light sources like the moon and a cigarette tip become prominent. 

   

Sargent

Or, that white phlox looks lovely among the green, and why doesn’t mine come out like that?  I also liked the commentary, which identified the flowers - pelargoniums, nasturtiums, roses, cornflowers and poppies were popular, but it also went into detail about the kinds of cabbages that were grown in East Lothian in the 1850s. 

 

Renoir

Anyway, it’s a glorious exhibition and both of us were very happy when we left it, which wouldn’t have been the case if we’d gone to see accomplished paintings of something dark eg by Francis Bacon.

Heading to the far north

I’m off to Orkney for a cycling holiday.  I like taking a holiday in Britain at this time of the year when the days are at their longest, the countryside still fresh and the children in school.  However it’s also the time when my garden is coming into flower, so I’m sorry to miss any of that.

Work Out Cycle

Spring is certainly late. Today I did my work-out cycle, which takes me south west, beside the Water of Leith and through woods up to the Pentland Hills. The crocuses are out in Edinburgh, but higher up, and away from the city there were only snow drops and the gardens I passed had very little coming through. I stopped at Malleny Garden which had yellow aconites and vivid blue scilla flowering but was otherwise bare. The herb beds in this National Trust garden were like mine in only having some sage growing, and the rest needing some serious tidying. There were banks of snowdrops in the woods, and a few light purple crocuses at the entrance. It looked like it should be late February, not March. Except for its great dark yews, the garden had a pale and tawny look.

I then climbed to Threipmuir Reservoir, pretty much empty of water, and up the beech avenue, which is unrelentingly steep – I have never managed to cycle all the way to the top. It’s as if you are cycling up a wall.  I saw a roe deer, rather dark with a white rump.

It was a chilly, windy day and I could feel the occasional drop of rain. It’s about seventeen miles, this cycle, and with a gradual then a steep climb one way, and a fast descent on the return.

Spring stirring

Digging over the vegetable patch.  The soil is friable now.  The rhubarb is a few pink buds, just coming through.  A couple of crocuses are up.   The primroses show tiny leaves.  Otherwise everything looks blasted and a lot of dead stalks need clearing.  But it’s definitely spring.

Frozen March

Freezing still, though the days are sunny. Other people’s gardens have snowdrops and crocuses poking through. Mine, facing north, is tundra, with soil frozen hard. However, some sweet-peas I planted inside are sprouting.

Oh Rose thou art sick

I know sod all about global warming.  I can’t do science and I don’t understand the statements of climatologists.  I read people who I think are clever and know a lot, and as they believe that global warming is man-made (please drop this “Anthopogenic”) I go along with it as well.  With this kind of thing, most of us have to find an authority of some kind.

I have noticed that in general it has got warmer and wetter in Edinburgh, and plants grow out of season.  What’s this rose doing blooming in mid December? 

My friend in New Zealand tells me how the frosts in the Waikato that we experienced when we were children no longer happen. However, spasmodic local observations don’t mean much.

Here are a couple of entries from The English Year, compiled by Geoffrey Grigson:-

December 13 1775

Ice bears: boys slide.

Gilbert White, Hampshire

December 14 1774

Dark and mild, spitting rain, great rain.  Earthworms are alert, and throw up their casts this mild weather.

Gilbert White, Hampshire

I’ve always led a green existence anyway, cycling and recycling, buying clothes second-hand, gardening and composting, so none of the present exhortations to save the planet makes any difference to how I live. 

Frosts

It’s been a mild October.  There have been a couple of very slight frosts.  I’ve still got some sweet peas and petunias in bloom and the snap dragon is having its third flowering this year.  This is in a north facing garden in Edinburgh.  The first October I had here there were heavy frosts.   I was astounded by them.  I had experienced frosts in the Waikato where I grew up, with the grass turning white and we might wear gloves when going to school, but our legs would still be bare and by lunch time the sun would have melted the frost and we would be out playing netball in our shirt sleeves.   Frosts that were thick and heavy and stayed day after day were a new phenomenon, as was the fact that a big chunk of your income was spent on staying warm.

Fade Out

Red Admiral (Vanessa Atalanta) on pea bean

Everything is fading.  I rather like its soft pastel look.  I don’t bother trying to get autumn colour in the garden.  After the clocks go back it will be dark after I get home from work and too cold to spend time there so there isn’t much point.  I don’t even do the tidying I should do, but wait for the spring.  The sun now touches the back of my north facing garden from about 1pm.  It then moves so the vegetable bed gets sunlight for a couple of hours.  After five it has gone.  In a month there will be no sun at all until it returns in March.   

Summing up the year:- sweet peas excellent, as they are every year.  They like a cool climate.  Roses, except for the Blue Rhapsody, made a poor showing.  Will prune them hard.  Other flowers in the border did not do well.  Hollyhocks didn’t make it through at all.   Marjoram and hyssop keep on taking over the garden, but at least the bees love them.  The mint has gone crazy in the bed by the house and will have to be dug out.  It will be kept in containers from now on.

Vegetables:-

The salads, lettuce bowl and Italian mixed, have done brilliantly – copious, good flavour and not touched by the slugs.  The second sowing didn’t come up but the first went on for several months.   Raspberries cropped for about 6 weeks.   The pea bean did not come up in the first March sowing and had to be raised indoors before being planting out.  It grew too tall for the stakes.  I tried to extend the stakes by gaffer taping two together but that didn’t work very well.  However, the pea bean has been cropping well over the last fortnight and really doesn’t taste any different from a runner bean, so may not bother with it again.  The courgettes also did not germinate from the first sowing and I had to grow some indoors.   They really haven’t had enough light and I’ve only had one courgette.

Herbs:-

Coriander does well but grows too quickly, and it never seems to work from late sowings.  Dill got crowded so didn’t amount to much.  I can never get parsley to work – it is always stunted.  Rosemary I grew from seed was not happy at being planted out but I have a few seedlings left and will let them get bigger in pots.  Basil I grew indoors was very poor, possibly from being planted in old compost.

Shed before painting

I painted the shed using Cupriano Garden Shades, which works very well over rough wood.  A joiner stuck on the wooden lace offcuts that I had bought last time I was in New Zealand.  It is used as decoration on houses there, and I wanted it as a reminder of home.  I thought of roofing the shed with corrugated iron, but will make a green roof instead one day.  This garden is so dark, and needs patches of light colours. 

  

Shed after painting

The neighbour on one side has got rid of almost all of the last of the cypresses that used to block out the light.  He would have completed it but his chain saw broke.