April 2020 – Garden Gate Flowers

Spring is Sprung the Grass is Riz…

I wonder where dem boidies iz…

Mrs B’s Cut Flower patch starts to take shape

While the debate continues about how long lockdown needs to be in place and we continue our social distancing, one positive thing that is clear around here is that the seasonal timing of this could not have been more convenient. When one is legally obliged to remain on one’s property for hours – and days – on end, domestic tasks are the unavoidable priority.

The Midlife Garden has never looked so trim and tidy. The grass is trim and the edges are sharp. Borders have been weeded and the seedlings are all in the greenhouse or potted on and hardening off. Green shoots are everywhere which give some feeling of hope in otherwise desperate times.

Also noticeable in the air is the sound of birdsong. Someone said that birds are singing more loudly, but that is not it. Ambient noise from planes, trains and automobiles, has reduced dramatically while birds continue to sing at the same levels. We can all just hear them more clearly now. I am not sure how much of a difference this makes in a small village, but we have been sleeping with a window open and have woken to the sound of birdsong every morning these past few weeks. Sometimes it is the cawing of a crow that has disturbed our slumber, but thankfully it has more often been a blackbird, blue tit or chiffchaff, or, for the last two weeks it has been the lilting song of the blackcap. The blackcap’s is my favourite birdsong at the moment, which makes me sound a bit geeky. But hey, I’ve said it now.

The sound of the blackcap is not only enjoyable, it is also a sure sign that spring is in full swing. I finally saw a couple of swallows, too, near the Old Place on Monday, and in the back garden we have a pair of blackbirds sitting on eggs. It has meant plans to trim the honeysuckle have been put on hold. Likewise, any thoughts of stripping the dead leaves off the Cabbage Palm were cancelled as we watched a pair of wrens building their nest there instead. The decibell levels have risen dramatically in the garden with the wrens, by turns, singing to each other and chitting their alarm at our presence.

It was an alarm call that stopped Mrs B and me the other morning while on the regulation dog walk. We attempted to locate the orgin of the noise and saw a pair of wrens. Suddenly, there was the flapping of larger wings and out of the hedge tumbled a sparrowhawk which sat on the grass, looking a little dazed, with its wings outstretched, peering over its shoulder at us. The bird fixed us with its beady yellow eye before realising social distancing measures were being contravened and flew off. The wrens survived the assault.

It was enjoyable to witness, but we don’t need to leave our home to be able to appreciate the vigour of the spring birds whether they are on their little wings or not.

Greenhouse starting to fill with seedlings

One of our Own

It does not feel like only a few weeks since we were planting three silver birches in the new front border. While a lot has happened in the world, for me the main events have revolved around staying at home and maintaining social isolation, which are coincidentally two of the key requirements to getting your garden looking good.

I started my lockdown exercise regime by giving my back and shoulders a good workout, digging the tangled roots of shrubs and ash saplings from the front border. It was the only way I was going to get the ground ready for planting, after the chances of getting a stump grinder slumped from minimal to zero.

After four days of digging and hacking the job was done. It took four days, but I did not work solidly all that time. There were regular breaks for light comic banter from passers-who kept informing me “that looks like hard work”. No shit Sherlock. Whether they thought it really was hard work or whether they were commenting on my bedraggled, sweat-stained appearance giving the impression of hard-work, is a moot point. But I responded with some amusing quip which rapidly turned to irony and then sarcasm as the tide of village humanity rippled its way past us on its daily release from quarantine, with no one able to resist the urge to state the bleeding obvious.

Staying within the confines of my property, though, I have managed to plant up the border, which I am creating as a memorial to Our Boy. As a reference to Josh’s favoured football team I am designing it in the colours of Spurs – the team Josh was saddled with supporting as a baby when his uncle Richard inundated him with all the kit when he was barely a week old. So the planting will be mostly white and blue, although there might be some lilac in there – as a nod to the away strips of 99 and 03 (and this season’s training top).

“Design” is a word I normally hesitate to use in my gardening. Mostly I bumble around and throw stuff into raised beds and borders on a whim, but this was going to take some planning. Your average TV horticulturalist makes it look so damn easy, and when you take a look at the design sheets from Piet Oudolf for the garden at the Hauser and Wirth Gallery up the road, they are like works of art themselves. But I have to start somewhere, so after browsing books on the subject and surfing the internet for “tall hardy perennials” I came up with the semblance of a ‘Spursy’ plan.

Making up my squad of plants was not easy. Like any good manager, I had cleared out a lot of the dead wood that I discovered when I moved in and started the re-building from the ground up. Continuing the Spurs theme, I knew I would not be able to afford any top performers, already at the peak of their cycle, so I shopped around for a few bargains. Which I duly found. One source of quality plants was over in NI, at Ballyrobert Gardens who supplied a number of decent looking plants. It feels very right that there is a Northern Ireland connection in Josh’s garden. I have no doubt he guided me that way. Here’s to you, Anya – not to mention Josh’s former colleagues at Hope Academy.

So, what plants are in the Tottenham terrain, you ask? Well, we have a number of delphiniums which grow tall and elegant but have a habit of falling over. Those who remember Jurgen Klinsman’s days at White Hart Lane will agree this is apt. While I would hope that all of my bought-in plants will be successful, having done my research on them, looking up their statistics on the RHS website and even taken time to view them at other gardens, I doubt that all will deliver what they promise.

In addition to the plants I bought, I have a number of home-grown candidates that I am growing from seed – my academy players, if you like. I have high hopes that the Echinacea White Swan seedlings might prove to be my Harry Kanes, though only time will tell. But I live in hope: one cannot help feeling proud when it is one of your own that performs so well up front.

At the moment, like the current Tottenham team, the border looks dull and lifeless, lacking spark or imagination. But I am hopeful that, in time, it will be more “Poch” than “Jose” in style. I imagine that some of the combinations of planting will work well together with good cohesion and synchronicity, while at other times and in other parts, it will be shambolic. And while I expect it will do well for much of the summer, it will no doubt fade by the end of the season.

To be truly Spurs-like I guess the border should be easy on the eye and unlikely to win any silverware. But don’t judge me on this season alone. This gardening game is a marathon, not a sprint. We take each plant as it comes. We do not look too far ahead but we will give it one hundred and ten per cent.

But I would not want to be judged on just one season. The pundits should only judge me after two years, by which time, perhaps, Josh’s Border – the “Spursy Bed” – might have clinched the Village Champions League title for best in the parish.

It will have been worth all that “hard work”.

Newly cleared – thanks to Josh’s one-time employer, Richard

I have a cunning plan on my tactics board

Brunnera “Fernandes”: transferred from other bed. Great performer

Rosemary – one of the old guard that survived the cut

Time out of Mind

Day 8 of lockdown and we wake again to a changed world. People are talking of a “New Normal”, which is a fair description, although some of us have been living with a New Normal for a while now. What has clearly changed – coincidentally with the restrictions on movement – has been the weather. This morning was bright and still, with a dusting of frost on the newly dug veg bed. It was the sort of morning we had yearned for all winter as the rain kept falling. Today feels like a crisp winter’s morning as I set out with my ever-keen Labrador for my allocated exercise.

There are many issues surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic which anger me and, like many people, Mrs B and I try to ration the amount of news we take in as the Goverment hide behind “the science” to pretend they have a well-prepared plan which they are implementing with intelligence and honesty. The daily walk is a time for reflection and re-charging of emotional stability.

As I walk down the lane Tim passes me: a doctor on his way to man the front line at YDH. I clap him as he passes and he replies with a suitable gesture. Although it is reassuring that we appreciate “our” NHS, it feels, in some respects, a little patronising to be doing it now. After all, some of us have been grateful for the professionalism of our doctors and nurses for years. This morning Mrs B and I were marvelling at the amount of medication I have acquired and take on a daily basis, addressing my various physical infirmities. I feel perfectly fit, and to all intents and purposes I am (if I keep taking the tablets), but as I head out on my walk, an ironic thought crosses my mind that if I did fall victim to this virus I could quite easily be noted as a “57-year-old man with underlying health problems”. So no big deal.

And with that happy thought in my head I continue on my way to take a look at Josh’s Tree. Our good friends in the village purchased it in his memory and it now stands alongside one of the footpaths that are used by an increasing number of villagers these days. On the advice of Richard, we selected a Tulip Tree: Liriodendron tulipifera. I haven’t mastered the pronuncation as Richard has. Too many r’s and l’s. It will grow tall and slim, like our boy, so we thought it apt. It also has the most stunning flowers (tulip-like, would you believe) when it reaches a certain age, which is perhaps less apt. But we were drawn to the thought that in decades to come it will stand tall and proud and people may wonder at why such a stunning tree was placed there. Some will know. Some will not. Perhaps they will have to dredge up this blog to know the story.

After I have paid my respects, Ella and I continue. Despite the frost, it feels as if spring has sprung. Chiffchaffs call, the woodpeckers continue to drum, and the rooks sit in the tree tops cawing noisily next to their partially constructed nests. In the garden we have blackbirds searching for a ‘des res’ in the honeysuckle and the starlings are attacking the chicken wire, put there last year to prevent them nesting under the tiles. I was surprised to see a Jay in the garden the other day. It’s a handsome bird, if a little blousy, but it has a reputation for stealing nestlings of other birds – such as our house-hunting blackbirds. So it might not be too welcome.

Around the lanes the wild garlic is looking grand and the horse chestnuts are coming out. As a child I remember getting hold of the early buds – ‘sticky buds’ we called them. I’m not sure what we did with them, but the tackiness was probably something you could terrorise your friends with.

We have not seen any deer recently but on the last part of the walk I spot a couple grazing at one of their favourite spots facing the morning sun. Ella sees them too, and is preparing to make a frontal attack – from a distance of over two hundred yards, across open ground. Like the Light Brigade, she does not understand the futility of such an effort, although at least the deer are not armed with cannons. The charge is cancelled.

Only as we are about to move on do I notice that there are four deer. Two others are lying down, blending in with the vegetation. We leave them in peace and return home, enriched with the sense of being at one with the world and the spirits that inhabit it.