In the Garden: Almost there!

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

Looking from just outside the sitting room French doors

I have been sat gazing at this for the past half hour. We have been working on it like navvies the last two days to try and get it somewhere near complete. There are a few small jobs to finish, such as putting sand between the bricks to point them, and adding a mixture of perennials to flower amongst all the roses.

But I am busting with pride, and so proud of  Kevin for all his graft too. Nothing that you see was here at the beginning of September 2011. The lovely Jonathan Nex built the loggia for us (it’s been renamed the barn) from locally felled and milled cedar wood. He built it to fit the space between the trellis fencing we had erected to divide the garden into 3 spaces. Everything was purpose built and made on site using traditional joinery skills you just don’t see these days; no flat packs here.

Next we removed all the grass, and double dug the whole area, adding stable manure as we went and doing our best to be rid of any perennial weeds.  We dithered for quite a long time what to do about the paths we wanted to lay. We knew we wanted the paths to intersect to create 4 good sized beds for roses and cottage garden flowers, but deciding on what material was difficult. The iGit favoured reclaimed brick, I favoured a mix of reclaimed York stone and  Staffordshire blue stable blocks.

Kismet settled the dispute when digging up a patio in another part of the garden we found hundreds and hundreds of Victorian bricks that would have been the foundations of old out buildings and the Vinery, from the properties earlier incarnation in late Georgian times.  Being underground for over 100 years, there was every chance the bricks would be suitable for laying the paths. So, we decided to recycle them and use them to make the paths in Rose World. If it doesn’t work out and they prove not to be frost resistant, all we lost is our time should we have to re-lay it with a different brick later on.  For first timers I think we did a pretty decent job of the paths.

Looking back towards the cottage from the Loggia 

On Thursday, 160 box plants arrived in to boxes from Langley Boxwood . Rain prevented me planting them as hedges around each bed until yesterday evening. I continued today, and added 28 rose bushes to the mix too! There are clematis planted against the fences, along with climbing and rambling roses, and I intend to inter-plant the bush and shrub roses with Penstemons, Lilies, Campanulas, Digitalis, Sages, and various other cottage garden plants in a palette of pale blues, purples, mauves, pinks, whites and soft yellows.

This area of the garden is directly outside the sitting room. I have had a vision in my head of what I wanted to see from the French doors of the sitting room since we moved here.  I wanted to be able to open them on a warm day and walk into a rose garden, and have the perfume of the roses drift into the house.  It’s almost there. This summer I should achieve my dream.  If I smile much more, my ears will fall in my mouth!

Posted in My Garden, Uncategorised | 11 Comments

Bee-keeping: Swarm Update

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

My joy wasn’t long-lived. I went to see how the swarm had settled into their new abode and top up their feed should they need it. It was grey, but it had stopped raining for a while, so I decided to chance opening the nucleus box.

Disbelief followed. Gone, all gone. Well not quite all, there was a pile of dead bees at the bottom of the box. The rest? I wish I knew. I think maybe they swarmed again? The stragglers were consigned to die where I thought I had placed them safely.

The weather has been abysmal, and I think the bees had made a very bad choice in swarming the first time around, so maybe that was the beginning of the end for them. I don’t know. My bee mentor doesn’t know.

It does make me feel very sad though.

Posted in Uncategorised | 6 Comments

Bee-keeping: Collecting a Swarm

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

Today I lost my collecting a Swarm Cherry. Up until now, I had never seen a swarm of bees up close and personal.  I had gone to the orchard just to do a cursory check on my bees, because we have had some very stiff gusts of wind, and it is always possible that the hives could get blown over.

 I wondered down the row of hives at what I thought was a suitable distance, as I hadnt put my bee suit on, only to walk right through a mass of bees in flight.  I stopped dead in my tracks and try to work out which direction they were flying in, there were too many for it just to be bees returning from foraging.  I turned my head and there almost next to me was a vast swarm of honey bees hanging from the elbow on one of the ancient apples branches.

Bees were literally dripping onto the grass below as the wind gusted around and knocked them from their giant swarm. There were a lot of bees, and I can only imagine it was the first swarm that year from a hive, although it would appear it wasn’t a swarm from mine or Simon’s hives.   What to do next? I couldn’t leave them there, it had been raining on and off all day long, heavy torrential showers and an icy wind. They wouldn’t survive long where they were and I couldn’t stand the idea of thousands of dead bees if they were left overnight without cover.  It was one of those times I wished I used a mobile and had one with me. I could have phoned for reinforcements from someone more knowledgeable than me.

I leapt back in the car and drove home as fast as the field track and the country lanes would allow, called Simon in the vain hope he might be home from work, and started lobbing old bed sheets, a nucleus box, stand, and frames  and some bee food. Simon was home and would meet me at the field.

So I dashed back to the field, suited up – Simon and his daughter had just arrived too, and he then proceeded to show me how to capture the swarm. We lay the sheet beneath where the swarm was hanging from the tree, and then placed the empty nucleus box directly below the swarm, and began to sweep the bees of the branch with our hands, guiding them to the box below. They ball in a huge ferment of bodies, deep inside the Queen bee remains, so we just hope that the Queen bee has fallen in the box when all the other worker bees fell in.

Once the majority of the bees where in the box, I added some frames, and we replaced the lid. I then went down on my hand and knees and scooped up smaller clusters of bees from the grass and placed them on the sheet.  The bees soon got the idea that the box was a safe cosy place to be and started to signal their sisters to come in too.

You can see a cluster of bees around the entrance hole of the box, and you can see other bees making their way towards it in a trail of bees, encouraged by their sisters to do so. I stood and watched a while and marvelled again at the organisation of a bee colony and the power of the ‘Hive Mind’. Later, at dusk I shall move the box full of bees to a more sheltered spot, and hopefully in a day or so I shall feed them and eventually place them in a new hive of their own,  alongside my existing bees.

I came away feeling very excited and very happy.

Posted in Bee-keeping | 13 Comments

Things I like to do: Learning to Knit

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

I have been learning to knit all my life. Each attempt has ended in abject failure. So much so in fact, that my attempts at knitting have become one of my husband’s favourite anecdotes. ‘My wife is so tight, even her knitting squeaks!’  Thing is, he isn’t being unkind, he is speaking the truth – it really does squeak.  For years I assumed it was the wool protesting in pain at my risible attempts to manipulate it into something recognisable.

Once you have got the idea in your head that you are causing the yarn pain, it’s very easy to go off the whole idea and stuff it back in a bag and consign it to the bottom of the things to try mastering list.

Ten days ago I went on a 2 hour course, run by a lovely lady called Freda at Gallery Fifty Five in the Village.   Me and two other ladies sat at the back of the gallery and were shown how to knit in a beginners class. I knew some of the rudiments, but couldn’t understand how to address the problem I had when knitting. I even knew the cause, but despite several attempts on my own, had failed to fix it. All my dismal attempts simply added to my crimes against wool, and no doubt would be held against me on Judgement Day.

Freda showed me how to cast on, how to knit, how to purl, taught me to make stocking and garter stitch, even showed me  how to rib and cast off again, all without a single squeak!  I checked the yarn to make sure it hadn’t been dunked in some suitable lubricant, and then the needles to make sure they weren’t made of some sound proof material as my husband’s fondness his pun, was widely travelled hereabouts.

But no, there were no catches or trickery in play, I really was knitting without squeaking! It turns out, having confessed my dilemma to Freda that my problem was to do with technique. I was too stressed when knitting and this effects the tension (I am stressed most the time – knitting stress is just part of situation normal). She told me to relax, to let my hand and arms loosen up, to wiggle my shoulders, and let my hands become floppier. Then she suggested I used needles half a size larger than the wool would normally require.

Then the miracle happened. I was transformed from a wool abusing miscreant, to someone; even  if only the most basic elemental form; I could describe myself as ‘someone who knits’, and not feel ashamed. Knitting felt natural, my hands didn’t ache, my shoulders didn’t hunch and make my neck uncomfortable.

Yes, I was really knitting! At the end of the class, Freda urged me to practice, to knit until I felt confident about producing the right number of stitches in a given area. I chose an 8 x 8 inch square and some beautiful merino wool, and thought if I am going to knit lots and practise, rather than waste all those practise squares, I would knit and knit and knit again until I had enough to make a blanket from them.

So above you can see my progress to date, some 25  8 inch squares later I am a quarter of the way through the task I set myself 10 days ago.  I have chosen the colours to remind me of a stormy sea.  I am rather pleased with my efforts, I have only unpicked a couple and re-knitted them as they didn’t make the grade, and am even thinking about making another in riotous pinks, reds and oranges.  I shall certainly attend Freda’s next classes which are a step on from where I am now, it has to be the best £20 I ever spent learning something.

Posted in Just Life, Things I like to do or make | 16 Comments

In the Garden: Work in progress

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

I promised some months ago to keep you updated about the modifications we are making to the garden – it’s a long process, because with the exception of Robyn’s Tree, virtually nothing of the original garden exists. I couldn’t bear to part with this tree; despite the fact it is a purple-leaved cherry, and I often look at it and think what on earth possessed me to plant it. 22 years on it is still a spectacular sight in Spring covered in pink blossom, and it marks the day my daughter Robyn was born. I actually went into labour planting this tree. My mother thought I had gone mad digging trenches and holes when I was already 2 weeks overdue. My logic was to avoid being induced, and it worked!

As I have explained before, but for the benefit of any new readers *waves encouragingly and points at the comment box*  my garden is an awkward shape – it is small, and it is much wider than it is deep.  Whilst the children were at home we left it as one large area of grass, surrounded by borders that quivered against the shelter of the boundaries, terrified of being trampled by their rough games.  Now they are gone, we have decided to make it our own, and work started in earnest last Autumn with the completion of the decorative partitions, dividing the garden into three sections, Woodland, Rose and Chicken Worlds. Chicken World has been mentioned often, and is now home to my motley bunch of ex battery hens and a small orchard.

 Woodland world is making good progress too, and the borders are now fully planted, all we need to do here now is fill in all the trenches ( about 50 feet of them) where we dug out masses of bricks that had formed the foundations of long defunct outbuildings, in the shape of a Vinery, a lathe shop and others that we haven’t quite worked out, although they could have been more stabling. The cottage is a conversion that we took on in 1986 from a  late Georgian coach house and stable block, which was partially complete.

It seemed to make sense to me that we should recycle these bricks to build the new paths in the garden. As the bricks were subterranean for at least 100 years, it was fair to assume that they would be of ‘engineering’ quality, and that after all this time they would happily work as paving – time will tell. They are attractive bricks, red mainly with patches of dark salt glazed blue, and white stains from the lime mortar we removed. They are handmade and hand cut, and the same Hampshire clay colour as the fireplace in the sitting room that they are now looked out on; Rose World.

This area is what has been taking all the time. Stripping all the grass off by hand, improving the soil with countless barrows of horse manure double dug to give the roses a flying start. Digging a trench and getting the levels sorted so that we can lay the path. We decided on a basket weave pattern, because it was simple and something we could achieve given our limited technical skills as brickies! I also liked the simplicity of it, it wasnt too fussy and would make a good backdrop for the formal box hedges that will be planted as soon as its complete, and the remainder of the roses and other perennials too.

Progress has been slow over the last few weeks, because since they announced there was a drought, and implemented the hose pipe ban, it has done nothing but rain! We have snatched moments when its dry and done a bit more each time, but it really is coming on and I think you can see the intended effect emerging.  I cant wait to get it finished and complete the planting, and introduce you to Rose World in flower!

Posted in Just Life, My Garden, Uncategorised | 11 Comments

In the Garden: A bees eye view

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

Easter’s been and gone; the seasonal reminder of new life and new beginnings whichever faith you practise. Spring seems to be racing ahead – catching me unaware as the early blossom of the cherry plums in the hedgerows fade, and I notice in my garden the promising green buds of the fruit trees I planted in ‘Chicken World’ have started to break into colour and display their wares for passing insects to pollinate them.

Brazen as you like they flash their sexual parts to passing hoverflies and bees, promising a bounty of pollen and nectar if only they will land and then transfer the pollen to another waiting flower. Allowing fertilisation to take place and embryonic fruits to form.

I planted a quincunx of fruit trees in with the chickens originally, hoping to add something that benefitted them in terms of shade, and me in terms of produce and helped make the 25 foot square enclosure look less like a farm-yard, and more like a garden. It’s not easy, the chickens are ruthless in their scratching and not a single blade of grass or dandelion leave has survived since I introduced them. The trees thankfully are more robust, and having chosen dwarfing rooting stocks  I planted the five various tree in a cross pattern. There’s a dwarf Cox apple, a couple of dessert cherries, and a couple of plums.  Against the trellis fences on the eastern side of the enclosure I have planted 4 double-U cordon trees that I have spent the past 10 years training in pots; they are so happy to at long last be in the ground and each tree (2 apples and 2 pears) cover a six-foot panel width ways and in height.

The tree planting didn’t stop there! Oh no!  I them decided that on the western boundary I would plant a fruiting hedge. This saw me putting in a quince, a mirabelle, a couple of damsons, a Howgate Wonder cooking apple inspired by the lovely apples I had brought home from Elizabeth’s garden the last time I stayed there,  and a dozen whips of blackthorn to help knit it all together and provide me with sloes for gin making later in the year.

It didn’t stop there though, and I decided to experiment with single stem trees, also known as vertical cordons or minarettes.    These allow you to plant more densely; a foot apart works fine. So I added 4 Morello cherries and several different apples, either free-standing or strained against the side of the large bower that survived from the existing garden before the chickens came to live with me.  I suspect I shall have more fruit than I know what to do with in a year or two. Even the dwarf nectarines have blossomed generously and you can see the swelling fecundity behind each fading bloom as the infant fruit forms and starts to grow. 

Knowing that a near neighbour on the Pick Your Own fruit farm has bees who will help pollinate my trees as well as providing her bees brood with protein from the pollen and carbohydrates from the nectar really makes me feel good. The symbiotic nature of these relationships between animals and plants have evolved over the millennia, and I can only marvel at how they have evolved and adapted to one another’s needs so that both come out well in the partnership.

Wouldn’t it be marvellous if human kind could follow their example and cooperate rather than compete all the time? Can you imagine how much better the World would be if we shared and made the best of the resources available and each and every person could thrive?  I know humans are highly evolved, but often I am struck by the harmonious simplicity of nature and wonder if maybe we would have been better staying closer to our roots, than evolving into the destructive force we seem to have become? 

Posted in Bee-keeping, Hens, Keeping Chickens, My Garden, Photography, Signs of Spring | 6 Comments

In the Garden: Weather

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

Yes, I know it is a cliché; we Brits are obsessed by the weather – but the weather does seem to be very bizarre lately. We have had no rain in months, and despite emerging from Winter into what has been a very welcome fortnight of warm and sunny weather, I am preparing for a hose pipe ban that begins on Thursday.

This is bound to have bad effects on both the allotment and my newly planted garden – the lawns have still to go down; how they will survive without me being able to use a hose pipe is anyone’s guess. How will the water hungry vegetable grow? Why can a man legally wash his company car with a hose pipe, but I am prevented from watering the food I am growing to feed my family? It just doesn’t make sense.

Just as I was thinking these foreboding thoughts, a dark cloud came over and it began to rain, icy rain, almost hailstones. It was sharp and pricked my exposed sun warmed skin! The iGit tells me they have 10 inches of snow today in Scotland – I should be grateful.

Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.

How can it be snowing when the Tulips are out, the Roses are forming nice fat buds, and the Delphiniums have nascent flower spike forming, enough colour showing to know whether the plant will be pale or dark blue.

The birds don’t think it is going to snow, they are busy collecting moss and chicken feathers to line the nests they are making in the bird boxes I provided.

Yet there is a bitter nip in the air, it catches you as soon as you move from a sheltered spot to a more exposed one. Loci waiting to play a wicked trick on us and turn the world upside down? Global Warming they call it – we humans really do seem to have messed the planet up.  And with it, for lack of water, all the greenery and nature’s beauty  and bounty dies.

Posted in Uncategorised | 8 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Nectarine blossom in the garden

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

Posted in My Garden, Photography | 4 Comments

Birdwatching: Common Buzzards (Buteo buteo)

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

When I had my old blog, Garden Hopping; now long dead and buried; I would frequently post photographs of the various birds that visited my garden, from the cutest Wren, to Sparrow Hawks  preying on the smaller birds on the feeders. One of my favourite sights and sounds though is the Buzzards.  I don’t need to look out of a window to know they are here, I can hear them a long time before I can see them.

This morning was no different, the unmistakable ‘mewing’ of a Buzzard had me out of my desk chair and in the garden in an instant. I always mean to go equipped with my camera in hand, but the excitement of hearing them makes me forget every single time.  Their sound is ancient and has the power to transport me.

I was glad hadn’t wasted time on setting up a camera, because I was rewarded with a ring side seat as the Buzzard began to soar and search out thermals just above the roof of the cottage, it couldn’t have been more than 30 foot above my head, and the chickens had beat a hasty retreat into the hedges too.

I love watching their easy grace as they soar effortlessly between the warm spiralling up draughts of air created by the sun’s heat on the ground.  Often, Crows, and Jackdaws will mob them as they leave their roosts in the tall pines near the cottage, sometimes in large numbers, perhaps 30 birds mobbing one Buzzard.  Occasionally, this prompts the Buzzards into some amazing acrobatics as they swoop and roll to avoid their tormentors.

Most days we get to see more than one, and today was no exception. Before long my solitary Buzzard was joined by 3 others, all calling to each other filling the sky with their piercing mews. The most we have counted at one time is nine. This was later in the year and I suspect it was the adults I saw today and their juveniles from that years broods.

We often see Red Kites too, but usually over the allotment as they seem to prefer the marshland that falls away from the side of Vicarage Hill into the valley below.  Again you can see these in numbers, but I have never had a camera to hand, and they don’t announce themselves like the Buzzards do.

I went back indoors and grabbed my camera, took off my favoured macro lens and put a telephoto on in the vain hope that maybe today I would get a decent shot of them.  I need a much stronger telephoto lens to take great photographs of them, but given the limitations of the equipment I have, these pictures came out all right – at least you can see they are Buzzards – usually I end up with dots in the sky!

Posted in Birdwatching, Just Life, My Garden | 12 Comments

In the Garden: Dog’s Tooth Violets (Erythronium dens-canis ‘Pagoda’)

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Zoe Lynch

I wasn’t sure whether to bother with any words today, should I just let the images speak for themselves? Also the footfall on the blog has been piteous in recent months and it is not read by many people either, so I wondered at the point of sharing my thoughts as no one seemed interested.

This I find hard as it is difficult not to take it as rejection.  As I have said before, I frequently feel like I don’t belong, and often feel excluded. Often I end up thinking what is the point, and walk away.  I am really good at persevering at most things, in fact I can be a dog with a bone when challenged to overcome an illness or disability. I relish a challenge and frequently task myself with acquiring new skills and new knowledge, and I don’t give up until I feel half way competent at least. So why can’t I do this with people, communication and relationships.

I don’t know. Well I do, but should I expose my vulnerable underbelly for all to see online? ‘Take a risk’ says my internal demon, ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’ it taunts.  ’Hmm think I- let’s not completely lose all our dignity – we seem quite adept at that these days!’

Let’s stick to the safety of the pictures I took this morning.  I am fond of these nodding flowers, they are beautiful, I love their delicacy and the softness of the yellow. I am not a great lover of yellow-flowered plants, and this yellow is probably yellow as my tastes allow – with the exception of daffodils and they can be as garish as you like – yes I know – fickle!

I had a large clump of these under the cherry, but they didn’t appreciate me rooting around close to their roots digging out the ground elder in the past few weeks, the lovely mottled glossy leaves disappeared and I think they have gone into major sulk mode until next year now. Or at least I hope that is what has happened.

I felt a bit bereft without them, so imagine my delight when I was at local nursery  and I found a few pots of them in full flower (it’s quite early still for flowers). Needless to say they didn’t stay in the nursery very long, and 5 pots made it home with me.  Later they will share their bed with Shuttlecock ferns and some white-margined, white-flowered Hostas. I am hoping the Solomon’s Seal will make an appearance too; last year it was decimated by sawfly larva.

Tomorrow I am off on an adventure with a fellow blogger – we plan to visit the gardens at Avebury Manor of recent BBC fame and also enjoy some lunch in the Red Lion pub, and walk Avebury Rings. Fingers crossed this weather holds, it promises to be a glorious day.

Posted in Just Life, My Garden, Photography, Signs of Spring | 20 Comments