Tag: gardens

274: cat among the pigeons

On Friday it was soooo muggy that I gave up on indoors and spent the afternoon working in the garden shelter, watched occasionally by next door but one’s cat Ziggy and some pigeons. Not at the same time though, as Zig has a well-founded reputation as a mighty hunter and has been plotting to poach our roof-pigeons for quite some time. He sits on our conservatory roof and watches them, and they peer down at him from the guttering. One day he’ll make the leap…

He’s a very beautiful ginger tom who – like all animals – is a sucker for my Beloved and also for the nepeta planted near our pond. The pictures above are a before and after set for his plant love-in. The Chinese rhubarb on the other side of the pond is considerably less battered as Ziggy and the occasional other cat visitor doesn’t luxuriate in it. The nepeta was almost completely demolished but is making a comeback. As long as they leave the newt who has recently taken up residence in the pond alone they can keep the plants!

The pigeons, on the other hand, were mostly side-eyeing me as they stripped the blackcurrant bush of pretty much every last currant. I don’t mind this as we never really do anything with them other than make blackcurrant vodka if there’s enough, and also if they’re nicking the currants they’re not eating the strawberries. I am mostly eating the strawberries and the raspberries: there is nothing like a perfectly ripe strawberry picked in the sunshine and eaten still warm.

The promised thunderstorms scheduled for Friday afternoon and evening failed to appear, though it is at least a bit fresher with some breezes. Today we have the family round for a Father’s Day barbecue, which is causing me to wonder why I am supposed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of what was put in the freezer after the last barbecue in April.

Other things making me happy this week

  • Surrendering to the Force and giving last week’s pangolin a lightsabre. FINE, he needed one
  • A surprise visit from young H who’d forgotten her keys and knows there’s safe haven at my house, even though she and Thing 3 are sworn enemies
  • A visit to the National Portrait Gallery to chat all things programming
  • An excellent CPD on on object handing at UAL, where we got to see some excellent archival material including a pair of tights made for Grayson Perry
  • A full moon swim at Redricks Lake on Wednesday night – the water was hovering about 20 degrees, and I was feeling lazy so I mostly dipped and enjoyed the atmosphere. It’s always so pretty with the fairy lights.

And that’s it from me for the week – I’m off for a swim this morning to set me up for the day, then a bit of sewing to finish the prom dress before the hordes descend!

A happy Father’s Day to my excellent dad, too! He may need to re-register his Kindle as apparently we can no longer buy Amazon.com e-gift cards to be sent outside the US.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Anna Again/My Favourite Mistake – Marian Keyes

Shadowlands – Matthew Green

The Gilded Nest – Sarah Painter

Earl Crush/Ne’er Duke Well – Alexandra Vasti

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason – India Holton

A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch – Sarah Hawley

Hex Appeal/Hex and the City/Hex and Hexability – Kate Johnson

270: how does your garden grow?

This week’s adventure was to Myddelton House and Gardens in Enfield, which was the home of – among others – a chap called E A Bowles. It’s now the HQ of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and has been recently restored with the help of those nice people at the National Lottery Heritage Fund. I was shown around by the head gardener and we made some early plans for linking up with other organisations along the route of the New River.

E A Bowles was, apparently, never supposed to have owned the house: in the way of younger brothers at the time, he was destined to have been a vicar but his older brother died early so he ended up inheriting instead. By all accounts he seems to have been one of more useful members of the gentry, setting up night classes for local youngsters and giving them practical skills, hosting village events on the lawns, acting as a lay preacher and forming a local cricket team. Many of the ‘Bowles Boys’ went on to great things.

He was happiest in his garden, however, and it still shows. A crocus expert whose illustrations are held by the Royal Horticultural Society, he filled the garden with plants he loved rather than decorative borders. The ‘Lunatic Asylum’ area contains oddities – he was the first to propagate twisted hazel in the UK – while the walls and trees are draped with glorious swags of purple wisteria.

The New River (that again, sorry) used to flow through the gardens but he wasn’t allowed to plant anything in it, so instead he bordered it with irises which reflected into the waters and dug a large pond where he could plant anything he liked. The river’s course was straightened in the 19th century and a lawn now reflects the old route. The water was so hard Bowles was surprised he couldn’t walk on it: the result of the chalk aquifer and streams that fed it.

A leak from the river fed the Rock Garden, his most loved area. I was told that he used to bury empty bottles upright in the leak (or possibly leat, I don’t know) to capture the water and use it to water the gardens so none was wasted. The route from the main road crosses the New River although the river path is closed for works, but I did get to stand and look into the surprisingly fast flowing waters.

Attached to the main house is a gorgeous conservatory-full of succulents, and there are further glasshouses in the kitchen garden with peaches and more succulents. We’re going back in half term, hopefully, for a longer explore. Scattered about the garden are stone pieces – the old Enfield Market Cross (I also saw the Eleanor Cross in Waltham Cross on the way home), parts of the old London Bridge, and two tall wire ostriches who replaced original stone ones which now live in the little Bowles Museum by the tea room.

With free entry from 10-5 every day (earlier in winter) this is well worth a visit, and you could also take in Forty Hall and farm which is virtually next door. There’s some lovely footpaths and parkland to explore, and a monthly farmers’ market. Gunpowder Mills isn’t too far in between Waltham Cross and Waltham Abbey, but if you’re jonesing for more gardens Capel Manor is also very close.

The New River
Turkey Brook
Old brick structures in the brook at Forty Hall
A cool sign

Other things making me happy this week:

  • Seeing my sea creatures in the British Library’s new Story Explorers family exhibition. Our director and I were invited, so we explored outer space and the jungle. Running into ex-Young V&A colleagues was a bonus, as was a quick catch-up with storyteller Emily Grazebrook who worked with families to co-design the exhibition. If you have small people, go and visit – it’s free but you will need to book
  • Forest ramble to loosen up my legs before today’s half marathon in the Goring Gap. Glad the weather has cooled a bit!
  • New haircut thanks to lovely Jasmine at Salon 35
  • Thing 2 being very calm about the first week of her GCSEs. There’s been a lot of baking in the afternoons though!
  • The first tiny alpine strawberries in the garden

Right, if anyone needs me I’ll be tackling my walking nemesis….

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Good, the Bad and the Furry/21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox (Audible)

The Running Hare – John Lewis-Stempel

The Darkest Evening – Ann Cleeves

Clete – James Lee Burke

Demon’s Bluff – Kim Harrison

Cahokia Jazz – Francis Spufford (Dad – you’ll enjoy this one!)

115: lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit here, but one of the wonders of living out here in sunny Essex is the variety of wildlife we get in the garden. The majority of it is welcome but some – like the odd rat – is less so. Living near farmland and with a watercourse near the house it’s inevitable, of course, but I still don’t want them snacking on the bird seed.

My favourites at this time of year are the blue tits who colonise the nest box and produce a brood of noisy chicks demanding feeding. The first sight of the babies as they peek out of the hole and glare at us is always an ‘aaahhh!’ moment, and one of the very bedraggled and exhausted parents paid us a visit one evening this week too. Rather foolishly, it had stopped for a rest on the fence outside the back door which surrounds the cats’ outdoor space – Lulu thought it was her birthday but Thing 2 came to the rescue. The bird was remarkably tame (or possibly just knackered) as we were able to get very close. It flew from Thing 2’s hand to my head before we were able to put it safely out of reach of the cat.

Bedraggled blue tit

The local shrew population has less luck when it comes to Lulu. The occasional one ventures in to the cat space (probably after the strawberries) and doesn’t live to tell the tale, instead becoming a love gift for my (and her) beloved. She’s always most annoyed when we take them away from her. She did bring a mouse in just before Christmas which we didn’t realise until it peeked out from behind my sewing machines, leading to a frenzied twenty minutes with a wooden spoon, an empty cheese sauce pot and finally a rehoming in the compost bin.

Today I have been joined in the garden by a baby sparrow, and every year we have robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, goldcrests, woodpigeons and collared doves. There’s a raucous family of magpies too, whose antics make me laugh. They are scrappy and behave like human siblings, arguing amongst themselves and rough and tumbling in the garden. The poor mother (I assume!) takes refuge on our neighbour’s roof, and as soon as the juveniles spot her they all go and join her. On one occasion there was a panicked squawking as one landed on the telephone wire and ended up upside down without enough sense to let go….

Other garden birds are woodpeckers, the odd sparrow hawk, starlings (nesting in next door’s roof), red kites soaring overhead, moorhens in wet springs and for the first time this year parakeets have flashed past. For several years we had a very tame pheasant who our builders named Colin after one of their colleagues who also strutted about. This year Richmond the Rook is a regular, stalking about in his fluffy rook trousers and hanging about with a couple of jackdaws.

The less feathered friends turn up too: we’re privileged to have badgers visiting from the Common as well as foxes, rabbits and the occasional muntjac. We can usually track their progress by the nibbled plants, much to my Beloved’s disgust. A slow worm can often be found in the greenhouse enjoying the warmth, while toads lurk under stones and tarpaulins and newts haunt the flowerpots. Most years we have a bumble bee nest somewhere, as well as squirrels and tiny mice.

One of my friends described coming through the back gate once as like walking into Narnia – sometimes I think she’s not far wrong!

Other things this week have included cheering on the RideLondon cyclists as they zoomed through the village, binging Stranger Things seasons 1-3 in preparation for season 4, seeing this year’s museum fox cubs playing in the sunshine, Thing 3 going off on his first solo sleepover at London Aunty’s house (it’s fancy, apparently), much crocheting of a shawl which is taking forever, a glorious swim, a mooch about the market, an early walk, and making some tiny things.

This week it’s half term and there’s only three days in work thanks to some Queen or other having a jubilee. The village has broken out in bunting already. I have promised my beloved that I’ll sort out my shed next weekend….

See you next week!

Kirsty x

The Betrayal of Trust/The Various Haunts of Men – Susan Hill

Villager – Tom Cox

79: meerkats and wildcats and parrots, oh my!

Yesterday we managed a family day out to Capel Manor Gardens – not far away geographically but work has got in the way all summer. It took a while to get out of the house while different children threw almighty strops about being asked to go out/get dressed/brush hair/etc but eventually we made it. £20 for a family ticket, with two adults and up to three children (under 16) was quite reasonable, and Things 2 and 3 took a stamp trail each.

We started with the animal collection, which is quite small: meerkats, an invisible porcupine, rabbits, pygmy goats, fluffy rabbits, parrots and a few other crowd-pleasers. Careful peeking through small gaps by my beloved located the Scottish wildcat. A wander through the Which? garden area where they are testing different plants and flowers was interesting, and then the kids wanted to head for the very well signposted ‘Secret Faerie Garden’.

  • Fluffy bunnies
  • Rabbit
  • Wallaby
  • Prevost’s Squirrel
  • Colourful!
  • Pygmy Goat

The Horde discovered an absolutely enormous fallen tree to climb, despite Thing 1 having her arm in a sling, as well as a fairy door, statuary and a ‘ruin’ which came from one of the Chelsea Flower Shows. The kids tackled the Holly Maze and the sensory garden, we wandered through the cactus garden and the succulent greenhouse, and then headed to the cafe for lunch.

Lunch had a limited menu – chicken curry and rice, chickpea falafel and rice, chicken nuggets and chips, jackets, sausage rolls, pizza – but it was quite reasonably priced for a good sized portion. We decided to make the assumption that it was the counter person’s first day, as service was a little strange and very slow. It was tasty if not very hot, and at £34 for five main meals and five drinks, it was good value. There are also lots of picnic areas around the site, so you could take your own lunch if you wanted, or the cafe also sells sandwiches and snacks.

After lunch we wandered round the demonstration gardens, mainly ex-Chelsea Flower Show designs – I loved the one filled with pumpkins and nasturtiums (so did the honey bees), and the slate garden. The kids found all the stamps, and got a medal in return, and we escaped via the gift shop. General verdict was that it was a nice day out – I’d like to have seen inside the manor, and some of the gardens need some maintenance to bring them back up to show standard, but if you’re looking for some good ideas for your garden then it’s a great place to visit.

  • Holly Maze
  • Cactus Garden
  • Temple Lake
  • Car exhausts
  • Orange and yellow!
  • Slate garden
  • Urban garden
  • Chair

I’ve only been on the tube one day this week, but managed to finish the dragon’s egg dice bag after several attempts to get it the right way up! The pattern is the free Dragon’s Egg lined dice bag by 12SquaredCreations, and is easy to make up as long as you pay attention to the pictures!

I also finished the succulent terrarium cross stitch, which will be a gift.

And right now my stomach is telling me it’s lunch time, so I’ll be off! See you next week,

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading

Equal Rites/Witches Abroad/Maskerade – Terry Pratchett

Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett (Audible)