A Sampler for May

There is so much happening in the garden at this time of the year that it tends to become the focus of any spare moment.  When the reservation service of the county library let me know that a book I had requested  was being held for me at our local branch, and when, in the first few pages I read

" A little sampler for the month of May 

work'd when skies are warm and flowers are gay..." 

it just had to be an invitation to take time to pick up needle and thread, right? 

The book was Wessex Stitchery by Gay Eaton.

I  had seen a chapter about Wessex Stitchery  in an embroidery book I found in the library a couple of years ago. Being the inveterate dabbler that I am, I had tried some of the patterns and put a tiny sampler together. It became an inset for a birthday card. I had loved the intricacy of the patterns and found that with patience and intense concentration I had good results. That book went back to the libary, the card  was posted and I moved on to other things. A couple of months ago, I found myself browsing Mary Corbet's site and found a review of  Gay Eaton's book. There were enough shots of the pages to fire up my interest. Once again I just had to have a go. This time  though, I focused on making samples of the illustrated stitches to keep as a guide once the book inevitably goes back to the library. (It seems to be out of print and is not so easy to get hold of.)

 

Excavating our cupboards in the quest of de-cluttering has unearthed the remnants of years of hobbies and pastimes so finding a piece of evenweave linen and a mass of different types of embroidery threads was no problem. I have been trying out the stitches using different thicknesses of threads and  made the decision not to get too hooked on perfection. My eyesight is at the stage where I needed my glasses to read the pattern but found it easier to sew without them. There is a lot of counting of tiny threads at the beginning of each new pattern but as it grows and the counts can be memorised or worked out from the stitches already done, it begins to flow. There was a lot of ripping out and unpicking for some but I never gave up entirely - even though I may have abandoned the pattern for a day or two, I couldn't resist the urge to try  one more time. Some of them where just so pretty they demanded to be learned. 

 These little blue 'forget-me-not' shapes either with or without their centres were very simple and effective.

 And I liked the little diamond pattern worked in just a single strand.

There is nothing very complicated about the stitches themselves but it is the way in which these can be built up, overworking and infilling with multiple colours that would make much more ambitious projects fascinating to do. I wasn't going to try adding text even though that seems to be a necessary component of a sampler and of any Wessex Stitchery project. Lovely writing is is not my forte and calligraphy is an art I prefer to admire than to attempt. I was so pleased with this though, it has given me ideas for incorporating it into other projects.

So until the book has to be returned I will carry on sampling the patterns - maybe even some of the more complex ones. Yet another of the things that the longer day light hours were made for.

Clipping the Box

When we bought this house topiary came with the territory. We inherited five clipped box bushes years before their popularity underwent a revival. I came to the whole task of keeping these bushes trimmed as a complete novice apart from some practice in keeping a privet hedge tidy. I had the shears but not the know-how.

My mother was staying with us when we moved here and while we busied ourselves with carpets and curtains she began to take the garden in hand. She coaxed  5 distinctive shapes from what had been rather scruffy blobs and I began to see the quirky charm that these soft, green sculptures would bring to the garden. They were smaller then; I could probably have put my arms around each one and still touched finger tips. Twelve months (and another baby) later, I realized that it was now up to me, it was time to learn how to do topiary. No instructions, no demonstrations or workshops, I walked out across the lawn with shears in hand, asked the spirit of the garden to be forgiving and set about learning. Over thirty years later, this is what I probably should have known then.

Tea Rose

Just putting those two words together is enough to evoke rather nostalgic images, isn't it? You might expect to find them printed  on the base of a patterned bone china tea cup or along the selvedge of a roll of chintz furnishing fabric.  Something rather English, very 'roses round the cottage door' about the idea of tea roses.

It's not merely  designers' whimsy as the term refers to a category of roses which has a history which starts in Asia and is founded on the fact that English people simultaneously developed a taste for tea and a passion for new and previously unknown plants and cultivars for their gardens.
"It seems that the early Tea roses as well as the Chinas arrived in ships of the East India Company, which were of course primarily concerned with the transporting of tea, but since a small part of their cargo yielded another new race of roses, it is possible that this, coupled with their unusual scent, led to the term 'Tea-scented rose'..." 
From Beales, Peter  'Classic Roses'.

 This rose is Cecile Brunner.  As any rose aficionado would probably point out, this is not strictly speaking classed as a tea rose, it is however a China rose so its ancestry still shares something of the same romantic history.  To me, it is the first rose I can remember and I loved it. By the time I was old enough to toddle around a garden, we were living on a farm hundreds of miles from where I was born.  It had  a house where no garden had been before. Initial priority was given to planting vegetables and establishing fruit trees, with a few annual flowers and hedges to protect everything from marauding rabbits and poultry. It was several years  before my mother planted roses. In the meantime, like her, I got to enjoy them in her sister's and  her mother's gardens during summer holidays.  That Cecile Brunner shade of pale pink was my second most favourite colour then; it  is such a  charmingly dainty flower and although it there are a few thorns on the branches, the flower stems are smooth - all very child friendly. It is fragrant with a very distinctive, sweet, spicy note which if anything, has reminded me how powerfully memories can be evoked by our sense of smell.

 The year after I planted this rose here in my English  garden, I bent down to sniff the first flowers and I was stunned by how suddenly and vividly I was transported back miles (and decades). For a moment I was a four year old child standing in my aunt's garden holding a basket while she picked flowers. She chatted to me about the flowers and the posy she would make with them as a gift for a friend. She loved to make hand tied posies to give along with wishes for a happy birthday or a swift recovery. For me, she made dresses for my dolls and could snip out a string of paper dollies in an amazing instant. I remember though standing there in the garden agonized by the thought that it was very impolite to ask for presents but desperately wishing with all my heart that she would realise that one person who would just absolutely love to be the recipient of a posy of little pink roses was standing right beside her.

Gardening with serendipity

In two weeks time I will be glued to the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show. Who can fail to be amazed at the achievements of those who design the gardens and and even more so of all those who make those designs into gardens that look as if they have been in place for years? Forget all the hard landscaping, sculptural features and witty furnishings for outdoor living spaces; they are all just the trimmings for the really exciting stuff. The thing I really want to see is the way they combine colours and textures of the plants.
 
I guess this fascination is fuelled by the fact that their approach couldn't be more different  from what happens in my garden when it comes to planting schemes. It goes something like this. Having decided that a plant I like would stand a reasonable chance of doing well in the soil and conditions our space can offer, I bring it home and find a spot for it that hopefully matches what the grower advised or nursery label suggests. Then I wait to see if it will be overlooked by the various browsers and grazers who live in or who visit our garden when hunger strikes. Basic survival is just the start of the process; often a move (or two) is needed to find that happy place where it can thrive. All of which means that the chances of it being next to anything I thought it might look rather wonderful with get slimmer and slimmer. What it does though is give a lot of scope for happy accidents and these do happen from time to time. Here are some  I have been enjoying.

This  rose, Mrs Anthony Waterer, has more cerise or magenta tones than this picture shows and I love it against the white and mauve of the wisteria.  This year the rose has been very early and prolific - I believe 'flowering its hat off' is the appropriate Titchmarsh terminology. Could that be due to all the chopped up banana skins that have been reverentially laid at its feet over the last three years? Now according to Peter Beales catalogue, this is listed as a shrub which would only grow to 150cm. Great way to cover the bare legs at the base of the pergola and create a wall of blooms I was thinking as I planted it. This one, probably egged on by the climbers on either side of it, is more than twice that height. This is great as it means the flowers are up amongst the racemes of the wisteria, just where I think it looks especially lovely but I could never have planned that if I had followed all the expert advice.

 

 The brick red of the wallflower against the vibrant green euphorbia simply sings. The wallflowers have really gone over but I am hanging on to them for their last few days. This is the first year I have grown them. I picked up a bundle of the plants in a street market on a whim really. Lots of yellows, gold, peach and this lovely russety red. I will grow them again and with this colour combination logged here I will look for other ways to bring them together. 

 The  centaurea or perennial cornflower was well established in this part of the garden when we came here and although I really hoped that the cotinus Royal Purple would grow up to make part of a shrub 'wall' for one of the rooms in the garden I am happy that for the time being it is staying low so that each year its new foliage sets off the verdi-gris leaves and royal blue flowers of its neighbour. Especially wonderful when the morning light shines through. 

Mm, I can also see in the background that the clipped box may need its annual trim earlier too this year and of course I should be making sure that secateurs and shears are oiled and sharpened ready for the Chelsea Chop. Looking at gardens whether in the backyard or on television always seems to lead to jobs to be done, doesn't it?  But as I work, I will watching and waiting for more instances of serendipity as the season moves along.

Lemon Squeezy

Holiday souvenirs can be a mixed blessing, can't they? Why is it that in spite of all the photos you took, the postcards you bought but never got around to sending, you end up wondering if you shouldn't also buy that 'something' that will sum up the time you had. From a de-cluttering point of view, this is dangerous, especially on the last day, because with that thought uppermost it is all to easy to succumb to the shops and stalls  that you pass on the way to Departure. Then when you get home and settle back into 'Normal Life' these formerly appealing items just have no place or purpose in your lifestyle and the next time you handle them is several years down the track when you hold them hovering over boxes marked  Donate or Dump.
But you can be lucky and end up with something that passes one or other, even both, of William Morris's critieria. It might be beautiful and/or useful and above all bring back memories of the good time you had.
My little bird lemon squeezer is one of my favourite holiday souvenirs.

The holiday was a couple of summers ago when Daughter and I were invited to spend a long weekend in Nyon near Geneva. This invitation came from a very special friend. She just so happens to be my husband's cousin but this is only relevant to our special friendship in that she has known him about 20 years longer than I have and  that  occasionally we get to use family gatherings as opportunities to catch up. She, her husband and her grown up children are simply the most wonderful company. Over those few days we did so many things, ate gorgeous food - much of it at her table- and spent time being together and talking in those ways that phone calls and emails don't allow. We had our last lunch at a restaurant in the countryside and on her advice, chose the fillets of perch. Do you know, I can't recall what the fish was like, I was just so taken with the way the lemon juice was served. We each had a little bird-like jug with half a slice of lemon. So clever; all the juice could be poured onto the fish instead of ending up on the front of my shirt or in the eye of the unfortunate person sitting opposite. Now wherever you are reading this, perhaps these little devices are common-place but where I come from they are impossible to find. Clearly the staff of the restaurant are used to people asking where they got them because they will sell them and so I brought one home.
Every time we have fish or pancakes this little squeezer is on the table and along with lemon juice the occasion is seasoned with thoughts of those days,

•  The magnificent views of the lake and the mountains
• Staggering out of a cafe drunk on nothing more innocuous than shared laughter
• The ferry ride over the lake to the beautiful town of Yvoire and the serenity of The Garden of Five Senses 
• Sitting in St Pierre's Cathedral  'discovering' the music of Cesar Franck in an organ recital. 
• The most amazing fireworks at the Fete de Geneve - (and the longest ever wait to get out of a public car park afterwards)
• Going shopping, meeting her friends for coffee and cakes
• Sitting on the balcony listening to the sound of sheep bells

And so many more - can it really have been only 3 days?
Granted, as souvenirs go, it was inexpensive and even plastic but it is practical and now much used. I'd love you to comment if you know somewhere else that sells them.
If only all my travel souvenirs were as delightful. What are the best and worst among yours?

Easy Peasy - Pea shoots

 I wonder just what will be the food of the moment this year. It's not about food fads, it's about vogue, I think. Remember when Delia Smith put cranberries on every one's shopping lists here in the UK several Christmases ago? Then along came rocket, blue berries and  the renaissance of water cress. Last year it was pea shoots. Supermarkets were stocking little packs of these, all the TV chefs were talking about ways of using these and food magazines had recipes for salads using them. If your only experience of green peas entails taking a pack out of the freezer then you will not know the pleasure of munching fresh peas as you pod them and will have missed the flavour that pea shoots deliver. It is just so easy and cheap to grow them there really is no need to miss out on this.

 It was Alys Fowler on her series The Edible Garden who showed me how easy this would be to do and got me started on this.  As the series is no longer on the BBC's i-Player, and I am not sure if it is in the book, this is how easy it is.