Wednesday 31 October 2012

Christmas Trees

We spent most of yesterday getting some plants into the new bed in front of the copse. To start with, we've put the two dogwoods we already had (Cornus alba 'Elegantissima' and 'Spaethii') near the bottom apex of the bed (near the fruit cages); three new witch-hazels (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'  and 'Magic Fire, and H. mollis) went further up, on the copse side, and we moved the weigela (W. florida 'Variegata') and the caryopteris (C. x clandonensis 'Worcester Gold') in as well. A group of heathers (white darleyensis: 'Silberschmelze', I think), and two groups of hellebores also found homes.

Then we went to town with bulbs. 180 daffodills (a mix, including jonquillas and narcissi, 'Golden Ducat', 'Pacific Coast', 'White Lion' and 'Minnow'), 100 chionodoxa, and 100 crocus ('Ard Schenk', 'Sieberi Firefly', 'Barr's Purple' and 'Romance').

Having done that, we weeded the bed in front of the dining room window, and planted a further fifty mixed daffodils, fifty Dutch irises, three allium 'Hair' and three A. caeruleum, and 32 of each of A. sphaerocephalon and ostrowskanium.

Today, we'd happily weeded the vegetable beds, and had a pleasing hour planting pots of tulips (loads of them, as you'd expect: 30 mixed Rembrandt; 25 mixed Kaufmanniana; 60 mixed Triumph) and lifting the gladioli (not done well this year, and small bulbs), when a delivery man dropped off twenty five Christmas trees.

Not cut, or very large: twenty-five 2 year old, bare-rooted, Scot's pines (Pinus sylvestris). We're planning on finding a spot for these, and cutting one or two down each year as our Christmas tree (this is, evidently, a longish-term plan)—but we hadn't expected them to arrive until, say, December. Or preferably January. And we didn't have anywhere to put them.

Undeterred, we immediately set to clearing the bed around the Victoria plum, to the side of the future pond. This bed we planned to create in the spring, running round three sides of the pond, and encompassing the fruit trees, and the bed alongside the septic tank. A quick debate about shape and size, and I started lifting turves. I got past the plum, as far as the spot we're planning for a bench, figured that was enough space, and started de-stoning the ground. This part of the operation probably took as long as lifting the turf, and we excavated probably two barrows of stone. Beyond the plum, I met my match, in the shape of a huge stone probably two feet long and one wide, with an unknown depth. I gave up there, and we planted the pines on the other side of the plum. They'll over-winter there, and we'll aim to find permanent sites for them while they're still dormant, and get them there by March.

Monday 29 October 2012

Ducks

For her birthday, Jenny asked for two pairs of call ducks, which we, Katie, and the fosterlings dutifully obtained. One pair is (I think) 'dark blue silver', and the others are white. They arrived last week, and had been settling in nicely.

This morning, we were getting on with clearing one of the beds in front of the copse, when shouting and hollering from Jenny and Philip's direction suggested a problem. Fearing that one of the cats (both were out, and only one was supervising us) had 'discovered' the ducks, we went round. Instead, the dog had got out, and caught the white drake, Ninada. Unfortunately, he seems to have suffered serious internal injury, and died en route to the vet. I buried him in the copse this afternoon.

In brighter news, the big bed (which already had three fruit trees in it) is now complete, in a sense. The turf has all be cut and lifted (and stacked to rot down), and the heap of chippings that's been there since June has been spread out. It looks suspiciously like a flower bed. We'll start to put more plants in over the next couple of days.

Saturday 27 October 2012

RHS Harlow Carr at Hallowe'en

Partly for Jenny's birthday, partly to take advantage of the hallowe'en events, we all went to Harlow Carr for the day. They had a monster trail and boggart workshop for the fosterlings, while we enjoyed a woodland crafts (coppicing and woodwork) display, and the plants. Obviously.

The Main Borders, RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2012)

Compare and contrast with the same border in September:

Op. cit. (© Ian 2012)

The children spent a while playing in the tree house playground, which I rather liked, too (though I wasn't allowed on...)

Craggle-Top Treehouse, RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2012)


Copse of white poplars, RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2012)

From the bird hide, RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2012)

 We were very restrained, and didn't buy any plants (just a small Christmas decoration: more on that in a month, perhaps).

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Chimney

As we're starting to need the stove (we had it running on Saturday, and it worked a treat keeping the house toasty during the day), I decided it was time to sweep the chimney. It turned out to be more straightforward than it could have been, and the chimney doesn't seem to have been too dirty. Fair bit of soot came down, but no huge lumps, or anything alarming.

The stove (© Ian 2012)

Roll on a winter of toasty stove use.

Sunday 21 October 2012

Seeds, Settlers, and St Honoré

Alan and Ann were with us for the weekend, as I alluded to last week. The Gateau St Honoré was a great success. We modified the recipe somewhat, filling the choux buns with crème pâtissière, and I've now bought a piping bag, so the filling of the gateau was neatly piped. I didn't quench the spun sugar, so that was still molten and spinnable, too. All in all, very good.

And then the cat happened. We (stupidly) left the gateau unattended for all of a few minutes, and the custard monster spotted it, hopped onto the sideboard, and helped himself to the (obviously delicious) crème pâtissière. As a result, it was no longer photogenic (sorry), although he'd taken a relatively small amount, so we repaired it and served it (Liz got the catted bit*).

*He's her cat, in these circumstances, in the same way that Domino's mine at three in the morning when he needs the loo, but wants company finding the litter tray in the dark. His superior night vision notwithstanding.

We played two games of Settlers (an entirely epic Greater Catan plus Cities and Knights, which lasted about seven hours), and a more normal Cities and Knights of a couple of hours. Greater Catan was, as normal, an excellent treat, and worth the set-up time!

After they left this afternoon, we've also sown some centranthus and achillea seeds, and will be putting a pack of Leymus arenarius seeds (blue-grey clump-forming grass) in the fridge to pre-chill. They'll be sown in about six weeks.

Sunday 14 October 2012

Test Run Bakery

We've got visitors next weekend, and want to try something new for dessert; having been inspired by The Great British Bake-Off, we thought we'd try a Gateau St Honoré. No, neither of us has made crème pâtissière before. No, we've never made choux pastry. Nope, not made spun sugar before. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, the caramel. Which, on quenching in the saucepan, solidified. Tasted good; much too solid to do anything with. I shall have to attempt it again.

Anyway: we found a recipe that uses an almond pastry for the base; a crème pâtissière recipe that isn't too extravagant on the eggs, and uses (whole) milk instead of cream; and I picked my mum's brains about making the choux buns (she's made profiteroles before, I haven't...).

It wasn't the most artistically perfect, but by goodness did it taste excellent.

Gateaux St Honoré (© Ian 2012)

In other news, I've almost finished the boiler room work, and we pottered in the garden for a bit. We pulled up another parsnip (similarly large, but tasted much better and sweeter, I think due to the colder weather since the last one), and also replanted the hanging baskets ready for winter. Out came the petunias and lobelias, and in went supplementary cineraria, and new primroses. They're looking good, and will improve as they grow on.

Because the likelihood of proper frosts is increasing, we also lifted all the geraniums and potted fuchsias from the front, and took them into the workshop, where they'll overwinter. In doing so, we discovered that several pots had chafer grubs in them, which had eaten a lot of the roots of the affected heucheras and primroses (fortunately, only two of each, I think). The affected plants have been re-potted (having checked through the roots!), and the soil from those planters is in the compost bin, having squashed as many grubs as I could see.

Sunday 7 October 2012

Birthday and Cordial

This weekend was Liz's grandma's birthday, which meant a big family gathering at Liz's uncle's house. It was a nice day, and it was good to see everyone. Katie made rather an attractive cake:

The cake that Katie made (© Ian 2012)

Yesterday, though, was spent outside, sorting out wood. However, we managed to pop out to collect blackberries, the fourth lot this autumn. Having done so, we amassed the remains of last year's frozen blackberries, bilberries, and damsons, with a view to making a spiced berry cordial for the winter. Last year we had a (roughly) 50:50 split between blackberries and elderberries—but there are almost no elderberries this year. We managed to collect a miserly 100g.

Nonetheless, we pulled together 4.5kg of fruit, made it up to 6l with hot water, and then boiled it down to 4.5l. Tonight, I've added pectolase, which will break down the fruit, and release more juice, and then tomorrow I can squeeze and strain all the juices out. Next, you add 2.25kg of sugar (500g for every original kilo of fruit), and boil it for five minutes with spices (allspice, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves).

Bottled, it should store into the new year.

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Bracken

The blueberries in the fruit garden aren't doing too well; the smaller ones haven't grown much this year, and the leaves haven't looked especially healthy. My opinion is that they need mulching, but the problem is that they're ericaceous, and need an acidic, sequestered-iron-rich soil to cope. The topsoil we filled the beds with is, probably, not quite what they want, and although it will gradually become more suitable, I don't think they're happy.

So: what to mulch with? I don't want to buy ericaceous compost, and would rather find an alternative. Pleasingly, there seems to be one: composted bracken. Composted pine needles, bark, heather, and bracken all appear to create an ericaceous compost—Monty Don has a Guardian article some years ago extolling it. Bracken is something we have lots of. There's probably half an acre on the hillside opposite the house that's covered with it, so this evening we've been up and filled a cubic-metre dumpy bag with bracken.

I'm going to set up a Dalek-style plastic composter somewhere inobtrusive, and fill it up with the bracken (and some 'active' compost, to get it going), with the aim of mulching the blueberries with something they'll like in the spring. If it works, there's more than enough bracken out there to compost significant amounts, which will be invaluable as a mulch for all the calcifruge plants in the garden: the heathers, raspberries, rhododendrons will all prefer it, as well as the Vaccinum fruits (cranberry, blueberry, bilberry and so on).