You feed them. You water them. You give them fresh air, sunlight and space. Some may get off to a slow start but later on they catch up, and in time they overtake the rest. And I'm not just talking about my sunflowers. This is Tom, who has finally grown into his knee-caps.
*I've been using Miracle-Gro for years, mostly in the garden.
It has been a thoroughly dislocated summer, one in which Phoebe has learned the meaning of 'discombobulation' and used it correctly many times. But after all the vicissitudes of the last four months we are able to focus a little more clearly now, and see that we have gained some good perspectives even though a few things remain blurry. If I sound like a photography manual, it's because I've been reading one. I have a new camera to go with my new vision and, for once, I read the instructions before playing with it. It's a Leica D-Lux 4 and I love it.*
I'm not sure which settings I'll use on a regular basis, but so far the camera has done a good job in making the tunnel of runner beans at Helmingham Hall look green and very pleasant (but just what will they do with all those beans?).
It's made the peaches in the same garden look incredibly peachy (they also smelt deliciously peachy).
It has picked up texture on an old terracotta rhubarb forcer as well as the crinkles and shine on ruby chard leaves.
It makes the scene of allotments below Orford Castle look grandly British.
And it sees red (and rot) very clearly.
It does clever things on aperture prioritywith fennel on blue skies,
and brings out the sweetness of sweet peas bought from a table outside a local house where payment is via an honesty box.
So far my little Leica has helped me to see the good things that are going on. I hope it lasts a long time.
*all photos seen here since 14 August have been taken with the new camera.
I don't think there's a single summer picnic in the Famous Five books (and many others) by Enid Blyton that doesn't feature ripe plums. They are stuffed in pockets, knapsacks, bicycle baskets and paper bags, they are enjoyed by rivers, streams, lakes, pools and campfires, at the tops of hills and at the edges of cliffs, on grass, sand and heather. I think of all these warm, juicy plums eaten by Anne and George, Dick and Julian every time I see plums in markets and greengrocers' shops and most especially when they are weighing down the branches of trees, begging to be picked. I didn't have a bag or a basket with me when my friend said I could have as many as I liked, so I picked a pinnyful of plums to eat immediately.
And the leftovers went in the fridge so that I could eat them while thinking of my other favourite plummy writer, William Carlos Williams: in this poem here that I have loved since I first read it as an imperssionable teenager and in this poem here that tells me I might still be finding solace in plums when I am old (and preferably wearing purple and a red hat).
Ever since I was little, and long before it became an ironic-kitsch-cool thing to like them, I have loved all sorts of dahlias. Big ones, little ones, single colour, multi-colour, tastefully pale or flamboyantly bright, they are all fantastically decorative and cheering. It's always a treat to find a garden with carefully cultivated dahlias (one of the best is Sarah Raven's) because, much as I adore them, dahlias require a great deal of care and attention. We don't lavish ours with much of either, and they have to take their chances with us leaving them in the ground long after we should and planting them much later than we should. Nevertheless, we seem to produce a few dahlias every year and they are always greeted with delight.
Simon usually remembers to put a few in; this year we have a clutch lovely, simple scarlet and yellow dahlias in our stone trough which have all the hallmarks of pre-meditated planting. But a few days ago I found a couple of these fabulous, perfectly formed orange pom pom dahlias rising up above the potatoes I'd bunged in a space at the last minute - it seems Simon had found a few tubers and planted them next to my tubers.
The first thing I want to do when I see a pom pom dahlia is to cup it in my hands to feel its tight roundness and firm petal structure. Then I have to scrutinise it closely to work out how nature manages to produce something so beautifully neat and tidy. And then I cut them and bring them indoors to put on the table so I can look at them while I eat my potatoes (when we finally get our kitchen back).
I like the name, too, with its gentle resonance and suggestion of brass bands playing tiddly-om-pom-pom in old-fashioned bandstands in municipal parks with formal bedding full of carefully staked dahlias the size of dinner plates. And not a hint of irony.
I'm fed up with making the wrong decision every time I leave the house. Wrong shoes and my feet are soaking. No umbrella and all of me is soaking. Think the sun is out and I'll be warm enough in a light top? Think again. The weather is wearing out my predictive capablities and I'll soon be resorting to going out with whole changes of shoes and clothing and a few rain-mates tucked away in my handbag like the ladies of the 1960s who didn't want their lilac rinses washing out or perms going corkscrewy.
Or maybe I'll just stay in all summer?
But then I'd miss the nasturtiums that are appearing like bright spots against the rain-sodden ground. I mixed up all my packets of nasturtium seeds when I sowed them and now I don't know what is what. I think these lovely soft peachy apricot flowers are 'Peach Melba' but I might be wrong. I've put them in a jam jar and left them outside - at least the jam jar will be refilled with rain water on a regular basis. Unless I've got my predictions wrong again. (Odds on I have.)
Although they thrive in hot, dry conditions I have to say that geraniums look pretty wonderful in the rain. My row of pots on the garden table stood out like beacons against the lead-grey sky earlier this week. The cerise-pinks and scarlet-reds were like little splashes of colour on a very wet canvas.
But now I want sun, sun, sun because I am going to the seaside to knit, knit, knit.
I just did a double-take when this picture uploaded and appeared in my 'compose new post' box. I could smell the roses and it took a moment to realise that I wasn't smelling those on the screen but the beautiful, floppy, pale gold roses in a jug just near my computer. Ah, but wouldn't it be wonderful if you could smell these roses via the screen and could keep coming back to them when you needed to inhale a lovely perfume?
I picked them in between downpours this afternoon and emailed Simon to tell him about them. He's becoming quite the rose-fancier these days and likes to know of their progress when he's away (having an existentialist work crisis in Paris this week). These come from a bush that has been treated appallingly over the years and yet keeps giving us gorgeous flowers with an intoxicating, room-filling and screen-filling scent.
It's a David Austin rose, but I have no idea of its name - we lost the label long ago. (It's Graham Thomas - thanks, Barbara.)
But I know this rose below is Gertrude Jekyll because she is one of Simon's more recent plantings (or 'plontings' as they say on Gardeners' World these days which always makes us laugh because it sounds so unnatural and strangulated, and anyway what's wrong with a flat 'a' in 'plant'?) and he tells me a lot about her. I left the bloom outside in the rain where I can see it from my study (and smell it when my window is open). I liked the little jewelled rain drops on the petals too much to disturb it.
I'm smelling the metaphorical roses, too. I have finished the quilt book - text and quilts - and am wafting around on a cloud of relief. I celebrated yesterday by going to Liberty and reading almost all of Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple (in a 1946 'Florin Book' edition). And then, because I could, I finished it at 8 o' clock this morning after Phoebe had gone to school and found myself sitting amidst the debris of toast and Special K with tears running down my face.
And then I went to smell the real roses.
The wonderful sunshine and warmth of the weekend prompted me to photograph my 'Provencal Summer' quilt, the one I made last summer but which didn't look quite the same in the rain and grey weather of what was very much not a Provencal summer. It was inspired by the columns quilt in Kaffe Fassett's V&A Quilts and is filled wtih the reds and yellows you find in typical Provencal fabrics, but on a very different scale.
There is a column of bathing beauties by Alexander Henry and one of Philip Jacob's 'Tall Hollyhocks', plus lots and lots of flowers that would thrive in the sun. The back is a more authentic Provencal-style design with small motifs on the ochre-yellow I associate with places like Arles and Nimes.
And I am very glad that I have at last seen the quilt in appropriate weather conditions.
Do 'good fences make good neighbors', as Robert Frost wrote in his poem 'Mending Wall'?
Or do good neighbours make good fences?
Our neighbour recently planted various climbing plants along the fence between us (the photos show the views of the clematis from our side of the fence) and somehow I think that we are getting the best of the flowers. Definitely a generous neighbour.
Alpine Houses are not usually on my list of places to visit. I have too many memories of the strange suburban rockeries that were once a feature of all self-respecting 60s and 70s gardens. I could never quite see the attraction of having a pile of rubble in a corner of the garden with a few low-growing plants stuck in the crevices. Of course, I hadn't read then of alpine specialists such as Valerie Finnis (who was also a wonderful photographer - as the book in the link shows) and knew nothing of real natural rockeries such as the Alps.
But I have liked auriculas for a long, long time, and so has Simon. In fact, we once tried to create an auricula theatre but as we don't have a greenhouse and auriculas are difficult to grow anyway, we didn't get much further than a few pots with our favourite colour flowers which then died all too quickly.
So if we hear of auriculas on show, we happily make a detour to see these lovely little flowers in the most incredible colours, looking like something a child might draw. I also like the powdery dusting you find on many - as though they have been putting on their make-up to go on stage and perform.
These theatrical beauties were seen at Wisley in a state-of-the-art greenhouse with a beautiful quality of light that made the auriculas stand out from all the other alpines. All very different to Stockport's finest vintage rockeries.
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