Christmas spirit in the village.

Our house with Christmas lights.

This was our third Christmas in the village and as in the previous years we had decided to spend it together without visitors. We had done all the family visits in the preceding weeks to enable ourselves to have some time alone. Waking on Christmas day is a lovely experience as the village is even quieter than normal, the only sounds are birds and the sound of horses bing led to the fields along the lane.

We took Boris out for his walk about mid morning and saw a couple of the other villagers doing the same and after talking to them we returned for Christmas lunch, this year we opted for a vegetarian meal which was excellent, we did go for roast beef on boxing day mind you.
Boxing day was so nice I even got out and did some gardening in the afternoon.

The social highlight of Christmas was on the 27th when our friends at the farmhouse opposite invited us and a lot of other villagers for a post Christmas drinks party. It was a really enjoyable evening in spite of the heavy cold I had developed over the holiday. The only bad news was that we found out the New Years celebrations at the village hall had been cancelled, never mind within 12 hours we had been invited to 3 New Years parties in the village.. never had that when we lived in London!

Post Christmas reflections

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, we did even without a kitchen! Victoria asked me the other day if we would be sitting down for dinner in front of a large log fire, well this was the best we could do.

I was very pleased with myself over the holiday as I managed to supply Lettuce, Parsnip, Leeks, Carrots and Jerusalem Artichoke from the garden and the greenhouse for the Christmas meals.

I also managed to get out in the garden for an hour or so on Boxing day and plant my garlic, normally I would do this in November but I forgot! I also turned over the soil in one of the veg beds, I have been growing field mustard in it as a green manure and I thought it was time to dig it in as it was getting quite large.

My sister in law bought us an interesting present. It is a selection of organically raised vegeatable seedlings. Basically you send off a form and when the seedling are ready they dispatch them to you. I think this is a great idea and although I normally raise my veg from seed they do tend to take over the greenhouse. This will mean I have a lot more space in the greenhouse this spring to raise other plants for the garden. I look forward to being able to report back on the quality of the plant when they arrive.

Wordless Wednesday, A gate in the frost

The gate to the horse field one frosty morning.

Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas.

Christmas is coming, let's demolish the kitchen!

Hi all, sorry i have not been around for a few days, but as you can see from the photo I have been busy on a little project. Since we moved here a couple of years ago we have been renovating the house and last week we moved onto the kitchen. I have spent the last week gutting it, removing the ceiling, work units floor and anything else I could hit with a hammer. It is now ready to begin reconstructing, but that won't be until the new year.

I have however also managed to get into the garden a couple of times, mainly to escape the dust! I finally got my broad beans planted out, i like to get them in early as this gives a crop before the dreaded blackfly appears. My sweet peas are also doing well in the greenhouse, i have now pinched out the growing tip so as to make them bush out a bit.

I was amazed on Sundy while sitting under our willow tree to find a large bumble bee probably Bombus terrestris crawling across the lawn, I picked it up and moved it somewhere out of the dogs reach for it's safety! I wonder if anyone else has seen one on the shortest day of the year, it really shows how mild the weather was over the weekend.

A tree I miss

One of the winter sights I miss here in Cambridgeshire is the flocks of Siskin and Redpoll that used to feed in stands of larch Larix at a reserve near my old home.

Redpoll















Siskin

At this time of year these birds flock together to feed performing acrobatics to get into the cones.

Sadly around here we don't have any larch stands and my garden isn't big enough to plant my own wood! Oh well I feel a birdwatching trip coming on!

Wordless Wednesday

Echinacea with Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta

Winter wildlife Pt 2

First of all I would like to say thank you for all the comments for my first 'Winter wildlife' post last week. As everyone seemed to like the Owl picture so much, everyone loves owls I thought I would share another one with you. This is a Tawny Owl Strix aluco and we have several pairs around the village. On a clear night frosty night like last Thursday you can here them calling with the famous toowit toowoo, this is in facy made by 2 owls one calls and the other answers.
As I said in my last post at this time of year the fields play host to a number of wader species. in the last couple of weeks we have started to see flocks of Lapwing Vanellus vanellus ( see photo) also known as green plover in the fields to the East of the village. It is great to see them as they are quite a threatened species nationally.
We also get flocks of Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria in the fields. It is a beautiful sight in the late afternoon with the sun low in the sky when the flock takes to the air, as the change direction the whole flock shimmers in the light, truly one of the sights of winter.

Other visitors include Snipe, Woodcock, Curlew and Dunlin all making use of the food supply the fields provide.

If you enjoy my wildlife photo's do vist my other blog: Painting with light where I will be posting more of them.

Blooming Friday

Common Poppy Papaver rhoeas

Winter Wildlife pt1

One of the main reasons we moved out of London to live in Cambridgeshire was love of wildlife. Where we live in Cambridgeshire or to be more accurate the old county of Huntingdonshire is famous for being very flat, we live on about the highest point about 250ft above sea level. This means that in the winter we are prone to very cold winds heavy frosts.

The land around here is principally used for arable farming and at this time of year next years wheat and oil seed rape are begining to show in the fields.

So what about the wildlife, well we get lots of wader flocks on the fields which I will talk about another time but also birds of prey. We have a very good owl population locally with Barn, (see photo) Tawny and Little owls. These have a tough time at this time of year, firstly their food supply the small mammal population is very scarce at this time of year retreating underground or into nests to keep warm. Owls will tend not to hunt in wet weather as their plumage lacks the waterproofing of other birds, this allows the feathers to remain very soft allowing silent flight.

Another local bird of prey has worked out his own strategy. we have a Common Buzzard Buteo buteo that spends his day hunting from the top of a large muck heap just outside the village. This gives him several advantages. The muck heap is the highest spot in the field which affords him an excellent view of any rabbits stupid enough to venture out. A local farmer has told me this is an excellent year for rabbits. The other advantage for the buzzard is the heat the heap generates, Not only does this keep him warm, meaning he has to expend less energy but it also attracts rats. Buzzards are lazy hunters happy to take carrion rather than hunt. So it must really suit this one if his lunch is litrally running around his feet.

A Shakespearian Wordless Wednesday

or not

Silene dioica Red Campion

This picture of a Red Campion is just to remind me that summer is only a few months away and it won't be -2c forever!

I didn't get to do a lot in the garden this weekend, not because of the cold but because we had a lot of commitments in the village. I am on the village hall committee and as part of that we organise a village quiz night at this time of year and this year Sharron and I offered to do the catering. This would mean making a Chilli con Carne for about 80 people, which we would have to cook in the village hall. Before this however it being the first Saturday of the month it was the church coffee morning. Once a month a couple of the ladies in the village open the church up to serve coffee, it's a chance to meet up with a few people and have a chat. We normally go along to lend our support. It a great idea as we do not have a shop or pub in the village so there is not a lot of chance to meet other villagers.


Now those of you who study this photo more carefully will notice the decanter on the table. This contained vintage sloe gin, not what you normally get at a coffee morning (except in this village!) but a very welcome addition on a cold morning!

Once we had finished our 'Coffee' we walked round to the village hall to start the cooking. Neither of us had ever cooked for this number of people before and we were under strict instructions not to make it to hot. I got the job of chopping the onions and mushrooms which you can see in the photo. We also had to bake about 80 potatoes this mean't distributing bags of potatoes to various other committee members around the village as we needed several ovens.

Anyway it all seemed to go O.K. and the quiz was a great success although by the end of the evening we were both really tired.

On sunday after retrieving the car which we had left at the hall overnight, we went to buy our Christmas tree. One of the local farms sells them and another friend in the village was going there with a Landrover and trailer and they offered to bring ours back. We got a very nice traditional tree about 8ft tall. I will of course be adding a photo once we have decorated it.

Hopefully I will get out in the garden at some point this week as I have a couple of tasks to do, I get withdrawl symptoms if I can't do something at least once a week.

Blooming Friday

Poppy 'Fluffy Ruffles'

Well this is my first effort for 'Blooming Friday' obviously it was taken earlier in the year.

I took the dog for a walk across the fields and around the village this afternoon. After the rain and other winter weather of the last couple of weeks the fields was a bit like sticky brown porridge. Whilst I slid and tried to move my clay clad boots across this morass, Boris (the dog) was running around like an idiot, he loves it when it is like this, in fact he likes it so much he has to keep jumping up you to show his pleasure. Luckily today I managed to get him back on the lead before we got to the flooded ditches, a small victory for mankind over canine!

As I came back into the village I saw a friend working on one of his hedges. Alister is trying to cut back and remove some of the Elm and replace it with less vigorous species. I stopped to have a chat as the piece of land I am going to be working on for the Village in Bloom is at the end of his lawn. I want to make sure we don't do anything there without informing him first.

As we carried on around the village the school bus had just emptied its young passengers out. The kids all know Boris and came over to make a fuss of him, the kids in this village are really good, there is never any trouble here. One of them was telling me that he is going flying tomorrow from the local airfield and will be overflying the village(might go out tomorrow a long way away!) have told him to take some pictures and sell them to the locals, knowing Barney he probably will.

A frosty Wednesday

Woke up to a bright frosty morning , grabbed camera and thought I would share these.


Sunrise

Field

Cardoon


Ivy

Grass panicles


Willow and bench


I love the monochrome tones of this time of year.

Brrr it's cold

Bulrush Typha latifolia

It's cold here today and looks like it could get colder! it doesn't help that I am ill. My wife has passed on her cold to me which of course has developed into full blown man flu ! So it was lucky that I had a days leave yesterday. Actually I hate being ill and need to be pretty bad before I take to my bed (like I had to with the Kidney stones earlier this year!) I feel the best thing is to work it off, so yesterday was a good day to do some tool cleaning. I have a good selection of tools in the potting shed but my favourites are the good old wooden handled ones. The best of all are hand forged, such as Sneeboer or the bronze PKS ones, (I have lost my PKS castor Trowel somewhere in the garden, and am heartbroken!) as they are the only things tough enough for our soil. I have bent 2 stainless steel spades and a fork in a year. So yesterday I got out the linseed oil and treated all the handles. This is a lovely job, I know this is a cliche but it does always remind me of preparing my cricket bat at the start of summer when I was a kid ( For readers in USA cricket is a game that can take 5 days and still be a draw, for any readers in Australia, bring it on next year!). The other thing I remember about Linseed oil is my mums story about when she was a teenager and she wanted some suntan oil but could afford any, my grandfather gave her linseed oil telling her it was the same thing, you can guess the rest!

The other big event yesterday was the Autumn editions of Hortus and the RHS Plantsman arrived. If you enjoy reading about gardens, gardeners and all things gardening Hortus is a wonderful publication, full of short essays and no adverts. So once I had finished my cleaning I lit a fire in the living room and curled up on the sofa with the dog (who I suspect knows where my trowel went!) for a good read. The only problem with reading is you start getting ideas, for instance I am now thinking of growing Molopopermum pelopnnesiacum does anyone know how it gets on on heavy soil

Day Trip to London

Willow leaves

Yesterday I had to go down to London for work. I am very lucky in that I work from home but occasionally I have to go to meetings. It's funny I was born in London and lived there until 2006 when we moved out here, I now really hate going there although yesterday wasn't quite as bad as I could travel in later in the day missing the rush.
It was a pretty miserable day weather wise grey and foggy so I settled myself down on the train listening to a podcast on my iPhone staring out of the window at the gloom. As the train moved towards London I remembered an article I had been reading by Nigel Colborn in the RHS magazine 'The Garden' ( Nigel has an excellent blog at http://silvertreedaze.blogspot.com/
which is well worth reading) in which he was talking about plant spotting from a car and possibly writing a field guide. Well as I looked out of the train window it struck me how much there was to see along the embankments, normally I am birdspotting across the fields but I couldn't see them through the fog. They are wonderful examples of what ecologists call successional flora, or land left wild to be re-populated naturally. As I looked out of the window there were stands of silver birches glowing white through the mist with a few golden yellow leaves hanging on after the recent gales. Willows with yellow stems are also present in large numbers. As you get nearer to London the railway cuttings are older so you begin to see the second phase of succession with beeches and small oak trees appearing some of these are quite big suggesting very little disturbance. As the train enters London it crosses the grand union cannal in Haringay, the banks of which at this time of year are alive with colour from the mature Weeping Willows along the banks. So what was potentially a very boring trip to London turned into a botany field trip, you can also study the geology along the route by looking at the plants, more of that another time.

In Bloom 2009

Iris

Well first let me say that the picture above has nothing to do with what I am writing about, I just found it on my hard drive and thought it would brighten up the page.

Last night I attended the first planning meeting of the Village in Bloom organising committee. For those of you who don't know about 'In Bloom', it is a national competition between villages and towns to improve our environment. This does not just mean who has the best hanging baskets or ornamental tubs but the whole environment. It includes conservation activities, anti litter campaigns, community activities and anything else that improves the area in which we live. The villages and towns that take part are judged by an independent team and medals are awarded. Last year the village achieved a Silver medal which ideally we would like to improve on but the important thing is taking part and getting more people involved.

I have agreed to help project manage the planting and redesigning an area of grass and flowerbeds at the entrance to the village. The existing beds are a little tired and also block the view of traffic coming into the village. It is quite a large space and will be quite a lot of work but well worth doing. We also agreed to do several wildlife projects which we hope to get the village kids involved in which should be fun.

I have also been asked to document the work we do as we have to produce a portfolio for the judges, so I will also share some of the photos we you over the next few months.

Sun,wind,hail,sleet,snow,rain and how was your weekend?

I got nice and early on Saturday as I wanted to take the dog for a walk before the advent fayre in the village. It was a lovely morning, bright sunshine but crisp as I walked across the fields. We got home had some breakfast and went round to the church. It was a very good turnout and the coffee and cake stall was doing a roaring trade. I stayed for about an hour but wanted to get back to make the most of the rest of the day in the garden.

The forcast for the rest of the weekend was dismal so I wanted to get quite a few jobs done . one of which was to dig over our herb garden.




As you can see from these before and after shots it needed doing.
When we moved in this area was covered in 4ft high thistles and full of old junk including the gate which was buried under some concrete fence posts.















I also took the chance to tidy up the edges of some of the beds and mow the lawn (hopefully last time this year!). The sky by mid afternoon was looking fantastic (seen here with my Cardoons)





One of the great things about East Anglia are the huge skies.

Overnight the weather broke and when I got up we had a thin dusting of snow

Sadly this turned into sleet and freezing rain. I was mean't to be going to RHS Hyde Hall to see the Chilli festival but my friends who I was meeting and I decided it was not a good day to go walking around a hillside in Essex. So I spent the day lazying reading some gardening magazines.

Leaf sweeping time

Well it is now worth sweeping up the leaves! This was the state of the walnut tree yesterday. It was a really good year for walnuts this year, the tree was laden with them, however I only got to eat 2!! Squirrels got the lot and not just mine one of the local farmers lost all his as well.

Walnut leaves do not compost well they take a couple of years to break down so I just pile them near the compost heap and forget them.

I have also been pruning back the Buddleja that is growing in the hedge at the bottom of the garden. I normally have problems dragging the branches out of the hedge as they get tangled up in the brambles and hops growing through it. This time I had help, 4 paw drive, Boris our dog decided to help, as I cut he pulled! He was really effective although I did have to collect them up from all across the lawn. Sadly I didn't get any pictures, I will next time.

Autumn sunshine

It's so nice to be sitting in my office looking down a garden in full autumn sunshine. The low light picks out the shapes, colours and structures of the plants so well, such as the willow at the end of the garden.





The warm sunshine also helps bring on the plants in the greenhouse, I am not heating the greenhouse this year, although I might build a geothermal heat pump at some point. i am using it as a large cold frame to start things for next year such as these sweet peas.












I have also got some lettuce in there so hopefully we will have
homegrown salad for Christmas, although judging by their size
at the moment it might be Easter!

A busy weekend

I thought I would start the week with a photo, unfortunately there is not much in flower in our garden at the moment so here is one I took earlier, hope you like it.

Carnations

We were pretty busy over the weekend. As I have said before we try to get actively involved in village life and I have been co-opted onto a couple of village committees one of which is to write a Parish plan. On Saturday morning we ran focus groups to get ideas from the villagers, this was great fun and really worthwhile.

Whilst the groups were running I had a couple of free hours and managed to get out into the garden. Last year I decided to leave the area at the bottom of the garden wild, mainly for wildlife but also as a visual trick to blend the garden into the fields beyond. I also made a fake gate out of an old pallet which I sat in the hedge and mowed a path to it. It works really well, loads of visitors have tried to use it! Anyway back to Saturday. I have been sowing this area with wild flower seeds, but the grasses are really dominant. To try and control them I have decided to sow Yellow Rattle Rhinanthus minor which is parasitic on grasses and reduces their vigor. The seeds turned up on Saturday morning so I decided to sow them , I had already cut the grass right down to soil level. I then raked the soil to create small furrows and spread the seed over the area. I will report back on how well it works.

On Sunday I carried on digging our flower bed, trying to get rid on the Meadow buttercup Rannuculus acris which takes over if you let it. When I got bored with this I carried on sorting out the potting shed making tool hangers for the wall. My shed is coming on quite well, I have all the essentials, chair, radio, and a camping stove to make coffee, at some point I want to run power in so I can have a light in there. I also want to put a green roof on it planted with wild flowers and short grasses, has anyone done this as I would love some tips.

A very tired friday

You must excuse me today if I drift off to sleep whilst writing this, I drove down to London last night to see Leonard Cohen at the O2. We didn't get back until about 1.30 which was ok, until the alarm went off at 6.30 this morning. The main thing was the concert was great. Trouble is I have got to go down again tonight to meet some friends for a drink, I hope the bar has a nice quiet corner I can have a doze in!

Anyway I digress, I got some nice responses to the old family picture I put up, so here is another one.



This one shows my great grandfather (2nd from left) at theBeccles Flower show prize giving , we are not sure about the year. I love the clothes, I think we gardners have turned into a scruffy mob these days, standards are slipping! I was told the other day about one of the ladies in the village who used to garden wearing a mink waistcoat (no I don't approve of the fur trade, and this was a long time ago) these days it's all old jeans and tatty tee shirts.

Some Asters and a Chrysanthemum I ordered a while back have turned up, too late to give a display this year but something too look forward to next year. I suppose I had better go and plant them, now where did I put my shirt and tie?

Inspiration and what to do on a wet day.

Everyone needs some inspiration especially on yet another cold wet November day. One of the things that inspires me with my garden is this photo that hangs on the wall of my office. it is a picture of my great grandfather George with his wife Nellie, my great aunt Eva and my Grandmother Margery. They are standing in his greenhouse in Beccles, Suffolk, where he grew prize winning Chrysanthemums. I would love to grow blooms like the ones behind him.

So what can you do on a day like this?

One of the things I like to save up for the short dark autumn days is ordering my seeds for next year. Over the last couple of months there has been the regular thump of a seed catalogue coming through the letter box, followed by the sound of the dog launching himself at the door trying to exact revenge on the postman for daring to wake him up.

These catalogues are stored in my office to be thumbed through during the boring moments of the day. The lists are compared against books and articles that I have read and notes made of who stocks what. Then once decisions have been made the order forms can be filled in. I love the little specialist nurseries that still only work by snail mail. There is something pleasing about filling in the list and dropping it in the post, you feel that you are dealing with someone who cares more about the plants than all that high tech stuff!

The most important list does not come do me by post but by via the net. This is the RHS Seed list, about October each year the Royal Horticultural Society produces it’s seed list, members can select 20 packs from this selection of seeds collected from the Society’s gardens. This is not a simple job, firstly only Latin names are used, no pictures are shown only height, colour and some indication of preferred conditions are given. This is why it is a job for a rainy day. You find a comfy chair, a large cup of coffee, pencil and paper and a lot of reference books. The first thing you do is scan the list for any of the things you made a note of from the seed catalogues or genera that are a particular favourite, in my case Dianthus. Once this is done the real fun starts looking up things you have never heard of, will it grow in my heavy, cold clay soil. What about some greenhouse plants (Do we really need to grow as many tomatoes next year)?

After you have spent an hour or two picking your list your problems are not over, they might not have enough stock! Back to the list to pick five reserves, This is pot luck, there is no way of knowing what stock is available so how do you pick a reserve the Geranium oxonianum may be replaced with Daphne mezereum both lovely plants but hardly interchangeable. This is the real fun as it will not be until the box arrives in the New Year that you know what you have got. Then it is back to the books to plan the propagation.

Autumn clearing and an attack on my Brussels

Chrysanthemum Elizabeth Lawson

I thought I would brighten an otherwise dull day with a picture of this Chrysanthemum from my greenhouse.

Well today is a typical dull, damp autumn day. It is the sort of day that makes you feel you should be out there tidying and clearing, but what to do? Well sweeping the leaves up is one possible job, but is it worth it when the tree still has as many left on it waiting to fall, probably not! So i decided to have a go at the flower bed. As I said in a previous post I like to leave some dead material in the beds to give some colour and winter structure. It is important however to remove decaying matter from around the base of perennials to prevent crown rot. I have found a nice easy way to do this. When I went to the Hampton Court Flower show a couple of years ago I bought an antique muck rake, this is brilliant for dragging through the beds to pull out the rubbish.

I had a suprise when I went into the veg patch this morning, my Brussels had been attacked!

Large White butterfly Pieris brassicae I was quite suprised to find them still going strong after last weeks frosts although according to my books they can still be around in December. I thought I had cleared the plants about a month ago and they had been recovering well. Now I know that Sprouts aren't everyones favourites, Sharron loves them, I don't mind them, however to me the best bit to eat are the Brussel tops or leaves sadly the caterpillars agree with me!








Finally I have found a way of recycling all those old plastic flowerpots!

A not so wet Friday.

When I got up this morning I was greeted with another wet damp morning, this week has been really depressing weather wise. By the time I got back from dropping Sharron at the station the rain had actually stopped and as I settled down in my office with some coffee and toasted crumpets the sun was breaking through.

At this time of year with the sun low in the sky it reflects off the damp leaves bringing out the colours to the best effect. A couple of my favourites are this Dogwood (seen with associated Dog!) which colours up with wonderful reds.



















Also this Crocosmia lucifer which I have left in the flower bed, I leave this over the winter not only for the colours but also it looks fantastic with frost on it.


In the late afternoon the low sun picks out the medieval ridge and furrows in the fields at the bottom of the garden. Normally by this time of year there would have been cows grazing these fields but this year they have been left for hay. This has meant that for most of the year barn owls have been hunting in the evenings and if it stays dry I would expect to see them today. They don't hunt in the wet as their plumage becomes waterlogged so after 3 days of rain they will be keen to restock the larder.

Notes from the Potting Shed

Well a week into November so what is going on in the garden?

The sharp frosts last week have knocked down a lot of the remaining annuals in the garden allowing me to clear the remaining Cosmos from the flower bed. I now have no excuse not to do a bit of digging.

The Veg patch is also showing the signs of autumn. the raspberry canes have all been cut back, The rhubarb has all gone over in the frost and is looking very sorry for itself. We are down to our last outdoor lettuce although I have some more coming on in the greenhouse along with some radish.

The Leeks, Parsnips, and Jerusalem artichokes are all doing well. The Broccoli and Brussels are recovering after a summer of constant attacks by cabbage white butterfly.

I have been planting some broad beans this week. I try to get them started early in the greenhouse and planted out before Christmas, this gives a nice early crop before they get attacked by blackfly. On the downside we live in pigeon central so any young plants need a lot of winter protection.

The Walnut tree by the house is about half way through dropping it's leaves. These are a useful resource for the garden, however they do not breakdown as quickly as other leaves. This year I am going to bag some up in old onion sacks and store them. The rest are going to be piled under the willow at the bottom of the garden where they will not only slowly rot but also make a winter home for hedgehogs.

Welcome to my blog

Hi,

Well, welcome to my blog. When we moved to the village just over 2 years ago I promised myself I would set up a blog and finally here it is. The idea is to produce a garden journal and to record other events and observations from around the village. The Garden is about 150 ft long, slightly sloping and is South facing. The soil is a very heavy clay and when we moved apart from the vegetable patch was all lawn.
A short history

The first thing I did in the garden after we moved in was to attack the veg patch. No one had touched it for about 3 years so it was covered in weeds. So a fair bit of digging was needed, but by early Nov 2006 I managed to get some winter veg and garlic planted.











I garden organically although the temptation to nuke the brambles, field buttercup and their associated mates with weedkillers is a difficult one to resist.

Over the first winter I erected an 8 x12 greenhouse and dug a large semicircular flowerbed. At this time I was on a bit of a mission, we were planning to get married in April 07 and I wanted to get some colour into the garden for the wedding and for a party in the garden in July 07. this meant raising lots of annuals and didn't allow a lot of long term planning.

A year or so on I am now beginning to plan and structure the garden with a view to the future.