The London round up

I have a choice: I can swan out into London, buy a paper, do grocery shopping, visit a library, try not to buy books, walk to a garden… or I can stay indoors and write this blog.   I have so many pictures to add in and news to share.

I’ve actually spent the past two days transferring my files over to my brand new lap top.   A laborious experience, but so exciting to have a fast zippy machine after my old (four years!) wheezing one.

But now it’s all loaded so off I go.   Each trip out I write a long long list of all the things I want to achieve, and sometimes I get most of them done. That’s how it feels this July.   I’ve even done some weeding in areas I can easily march past and ignore.   That’s definitely the case with the walnut trees on the path up to the road.   I planted some home sown eragrostis here a year or so back and then happily forgot all about them.   I mulched, but that was it.

But I’m pleased to see that the plants are fine, a bit more sparse than originally planted, but doing quite well.   They actually serve as a nursery bed for lifting and moving elsewhere. One day I might underplant this tree with something more interesting, but for now.   Grasses it is.

One thing not on the list was harvesting. And what a crop of fruit this year.   Even the figs are bursting off the tree. If I miss the high ones the wasps gorge themselves, but I did pick this first haul. Two dozen (minus the ones I scoffed en route). I put them in egg boxes as I actually brought them up to London for drying.

There are two options for drying: either leave them outside in the hot sun for two days, or in a very low 50C oven.   I ran out of hot days, but the oven in London does go down as far as 50 and is electric, so no risk of the pilot light blowing out.

Right now they are in the freezer, and when I have time I’ll try and make a chutney out of them using hot English mustard powder. I have the recipe, just not the time.

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Looking through my files I can see that on the 7th July I barely moved more than 100 metres from the house.   But all of that involved weeding and mulching and cleaning.   So here we go. First up the bread oven.   Now that I’m a complete nazi about not storing Any Thing in the calabert (I do like clean lines) all the builders sneak things into this bread oven area.   It has become the great repository of junk.   And I’m as guilty as they are.   So with a deft sweep and a lot of hiding of ladders elsewhere it is now presentable.

And how about this for presentable?  The gorgeous day lillies that Teo brought back from Belgium last year.   I didn’t know what colour they were, so it was such a delight to see how well they go in the little pannicum bed in the courtyard.

The whole little bed is such a delight now.   And almost makes me feel as though I’m a gardener.   It started from nothing, just blank ground.   Then Andrew gave me a beautiful pannicum squaw grass, and off I went.   Two years work. Well worth it.

The bulbs might not last the summer, but I keep dead heading the heleniums in the hope they will go the distance.

There isn’t a good link yet between the back of this bed and the stachys and sage which I planted just beside it.   But if I can get some growth out of the plants this year they might just work.   And naturally I will plant endless bulbs here once Andrew does this autumn order.   Bulbs work so well in this garden as they are deep enough to get some of the moisture that lingers in the soil.

As I am away so much I don’t have many plants in pots.   The roses in the courtyard do quite well as the planters are so large.   And I lavish when I can.   But a visit to Lynn and Jeff’s this week (to help Estelle make beds for their summer rentals) gave me an idea.   In their huge basement were lots of pots left over from their wedding.   I had seen a picture in a magazine where a gardener had placed pots on each side of a wide path and planted them up with agapanthus for a summer display.

Did Lynn have enough of one variety of pot to allow me to create a similar effect?  Seven. That will be great.   I have only placed them in situ to see if they work. And of course I have run out of compost so I can’t pot up a thing.

I had to weed the steps first; leaving behind just the thyme which I like to encourage.   And I even tried the design with black pots from the box balls I bought at the nursery earlier.   But terracotta looks better.   The steps are utterly dangerous, and we don’t use them anymore as we can easily walk inside the guest house to get up to the top of the building now.   So I’m pleased we can at least get some aesthetic pleasure out of them rather than just thinking of them as yet another weeding chore.

But what to put in them? Andrew suggests agaves or sedums and I think he is right.   I’ll order some from Filippi at the end of the year (funds willing).   But for a temporary fix I think I will pot them up with the eragrostis grasses and something a bit festive like a geranium or a dwarf gaura.   I can keep an eye on them for the next two critical months and see how they do.

I had first thought of stipa giganteas, as they are quite a theme in this courtyard, and are hardy and perennial.   But we have five here now, doing nicely thank you.   So seven more would be just that bit excessive.

The rest of the day was spent weeding and mulching.   You haven’t had an action shot of my compost bins for a while, so here we go.

I had to use up all the ready mulch from one side of the bin as there were plenty of weeds to be added and turned into this fabulous garden muck.   So I had a good look round and saw that the euphorbias grown from seed right on the edge of the potager could do with some food.   This is a parched little spot.

Narrow and full of stones.   To call it free draining just about describes it.   You can water here and the liquid sinks straight down in seconds. And the beans that I had just planted out as a second crop also needed a feed.

My runner beans are fine, and I think some climbing French beans are happy.   But having missed out on so many broad beans and peas this year, I have decided to add more beans to the now empty quadrant of peas.

I’ve also planted up nicotiana and rudbeckia here in one of the rows as I couldn’t think where else to put them. What? 17 acres and you can’t find a place for flowers? Well, yes.   Especially if I need to water them!

Last shot of the compost bed. I managed to get all the good stuff out and turn the bins so that I have the almost done side ready to go. I’d give it another two months and then I can mulch some more.

And now time to fill the empty side with unwanted weeds.   But first I must swan out and buy a paper and breathe in a bit of almost fresh air.   Numb bum from sitting so long.