After the Deluge...

The day that the rains came down
Mother earth smiled again
Now the lilacs could bloom
Now the fields could grow greener....
Jane Morgan.

What a difference a few weeks makes. Greeness is back in fashion. The freshly nourished countryside basks in the moisture. There have been recent heavy showers of steady warm rain. The top few centimetres of soil is now wonderfully damp and warm but scratch below the surface and it is dry as dust. It was a mixed year for roses. Usually after first flush of bloom I give the roses a scat of fish blood and bone to help remontant ones re-flower and the once flowers put on good growth for next season. This has to be administered in mid July otherwise if done later it encourages too much sappy growth that can be damaged during winter. I normally feed FB&B in summer then bone meal, lime and a tiny pinch of borax in autumn then in spring more FB&B and my homemade compost mixed with manure as a mulch. My own compost is made in dustbins with holes in their sides to let air in. It is mostly kitchen waste and comfrey, fire ash and sweepings from my paths and steps. Once the bin is a quarter full I start adding almost all the urine I produce each day (I like to encourage my partner and any house guests to do likewise). After a few weeks a black liquid starts oozing out of a hole specially put in so I can tap off this precious elixir. It does not have an unpleasant smell, it smells like a farm yard, but not offensive. I use about 400ML in a 10 litre watering can and there is enough collected so I can feed all my China roses growing in pots, any newly planted roses and anything that needs a little boost. Because of all the nitrogen in the urine the food waste rots down really quickly. I make about five dustbins full each year and they are ready to use on the garden in about three months.
The rain brings a resurgence of dreaded blackspot. The older leaves of 'Variegata di Bologna' turned completely black by the end of June despite hot dry weather but its putting up plenty of new growth with the help of this liquid feed. I grow it like a climber, trained on wires this way I hope the growths are further away from the soil and get better air movement and maybe a touch less blackspot. It is such a leper spreading its disease to nearby 'William Lobb', 'Bleu Magenta', 'Débutante' and 'Gertrude Jekyll' which otherwise would be clean and healthy but only the parts of these roses that are nearest to 'Variegata di Bologna' have the disease. 'Duchess of Portland' is quite bad too and since we had some rain 'Rose de Resht' is suddenly speckled with black spots although it's re-flowering quite well. Otherwise due to the warm dry weather everything else is fine and healthy. I'm off out now to pick black berries.

19th April.

I've just come in from the garden at almost 9 o'clock it is still just dusk or dimpsey as they say here in Devon. It has been a perfect clear blue sky day and the warmest since 1949 with temperatures up to 29.1C recorded in London. Here we still managed a respectable 23C and tomorrow is set to be just as fair. Spring so far had been very tardy trundling along in a minor key and the warmth makes miracles in the garden with every day bringing something new. 'Old Blush' is protected under a sheet of glass against a south facing wall of the house and has had flowers or buds showing colour ever since it started flowering last year. The panes were only just put in place to protect from the worst winter weather. 'Viridiflora' is also just starting and I'm excitedly waiting for whatever rose Beales is selling as 'Parks' Yellow Tea Scented China' to bloom, maybe it will 'Fée Opale'? I will take the glass away tomorrow they have enough protection against the house and over hanging eaves. It is building up to an exciting time with many roses flowering and other ones planted for the first time. Erinnerung an Brod', 'Duchesse d'Angoulême', Variegata di Bologna', 'Mousseux du Japon', 'Dupontii', 'Richardii', 'Wolley-Dod's Rose' and a nice form of Rosa sericea with dainty fern-like leaves collected in the Himalayas are all waited for with eager anticipation as well as a couple of foundlings one of which is already showing tiny buds in the centre of the shoots. New roses planted this year include 'Micrugosa Alba', 'Salet', 'Zigeunerknabe' but my most thought-over has to be Rosa foetida 'Bicolour'. For a long time I have been fascinated by this rose, the contrasting orange and yellow flowers and the fact that almost every yellow and every orange rose owe their colours to this one. But I have been put-off by the fact it gets terrible blackspot and how a rose from Persia would possible grow in cool North Devon where it is possible to have a light frost in July! However I have been persuaded that it will tolerate a climate with low summer temperatures and that the blackspot does not really seem to affect its vigor all that much. Its half-neice 'Agnes' has made a bush 1.5M high and almost the same across. It is healthy and flowers well so I will plant foetida 'Bicolor' near-by.
    "we'll pay for it later", scorching as this is it is no time for complacency; keep your geraniums and runner beans inside, last year at the end of April we were hit by two very hard frosts. The oaks had 10CM or so of new growth and below a certain elevation, or down here in the valley this was all burnt off by the frost. More devastating was the damage to grape vines and other orchard trees, I did not get a single apple or gooseberry. 'Pompom de Paris, Cl.' lost most of its first and main flush of flower and 'Roxburgii normalis failed to flower at all.
    What is rather worrying is the absence of butterflies. They had a dreadful year in 2017, from the middle of July until October we had rain in some form or other almost every single day. Apart from a few Brimstones and couple of Tortoise Shells, and single Red Admirals, Peacocks, a Meadow Brown, an Orange Tip; I'm used to seeing half a dozen at once. There does seem an abundance of bumble bees, big fat queens at this time of year, sometimes they are the loudest noise to be heard. The sunshine has suddenly bought all the primroses and celandines out and all along the lanes are shades of yellow, so at least there is plenty of nectar for them to feed upon.
    Other plants that are coming out are the beautiful Prunus 'Ukon', double flowers hanging like over weight ballet dancers and the same green/pink/white effect as the rose 'Greensleeves'. A very good year for Camellias too with exhibition quality blooms on all the plants. For a few weeks there has been no frost at night so plants in flower have not browned off. Rhododendron 'Lutescens' has never flowered so well, neither has Magnolia stellata 'Rubra'. And in the evening air, a balsam poplar and Osmanthus decorus fill the night with a mixture of sandlewood and cinnamon and the sweetest jasmine. Now we must hope for no more hard frosts, the beautiful scarlet-orange new shoots festooning the Peris are so defenceless. The swallows are here I've heard a cuckoo.

In My Garden, April.

We are five brothers at the same time borne.
Two of us have beards, by two no beards are worn.
While one, lest he should give his brothers pain,
Has one side bearded and the other plain.

I have to write this down. So many of the people and places no longer exist and no one else remembers or cares enough to pass on the stories to another generation. If I do not record these memories nobody will and a record of their lives will be lost forever. I owe this much to my ancestors as well as to their descendants.
    Back in November on a visit to Edinburgh I stopped-by a small town called Portobello. Here I found the tenement building where my grandmother was born 110 years ago. Across the street had once been the location of Wood's Bottle Works where my great-great Grandfather and his three sons had all worked, glass blowing being the family trade. At the turn of the century they'd answered a call for skilled labour and as immigrants they moved there from the Czech Republic. Nearby the site was Fishwives' Causeway where they, his wife and three daughters had all once lived, at number five. There were rows of single story "but and ben" style terraced cottages and I imagine the family had once lodged in one like these, though their actual dwelling was long since demolished. Some of the area is still light industry and nature was steadily reclaiming back any unused land for herself. There were scrubby willows, brambles, banks of nettles, willow herb and wild roses bearing masses of scarlet hips. A closer look at these roses revealed that they were Rosa rubiginosa, the sweet briar, a darker flowered cousin of the more familiar light pink dog rose. They are very easy to distinguish apart when in fruit because the sweet briar has a very distinctive fringe at the end of each hip that had once been the calyx; a leafy structure that protected the petals when the flower had been a bud. Five in total, each one is slightly different and in fact there are rhymes about them, one of which is quoted above. Indeed, two are feathered on both sides, whilst two are smooth and one is half-and-half. And of course I picked a small handful of hips and bought them home. Maybe Grandma as a young girl had looked on ancestors of these roses and admired them too.
    The sweet briar rose makes an untidy bush 2 metres high and 3 metres wide. The flowers are a richer pink than the dog rose and the hips slightly larger, paler orange and they persist longer into the winter. Its claim to fame however is that when the weather is damp and mild, so quite often here in Dolton, the foliage emits a lovely fresh apple scent. Exquisite at four thirty on a June morning, it is Shakespeare's eglantine. When I returned back home I immediately sowed the seeds. Lots of seeds require a period of winter cold, called stratification, before they will germinate, some, like these roses, need two seasons. This would mean two years in the wild, however I am impatient and able to trick mother nature. I sowed the seeds in a pot as normal but then kept them in the fridge for 30 days (one winter), then 30 days on a window sill in the warm (summer), followed by a further 30 days refrigeration (another winter), then out in the warm again. I finished the process at the beginning of the month and up they've come like mustard and cress.
    Fritillaria meleagris or the Snake's Head Fritillaries that I have steadily planted over ten years are starting to establish themselves. I love the light purple hanging lantern flowers with checker board patterns in darker purple, almost black. There are pretty white varieties too and mixed coloured packs are well worth buying. They are fickle. Loving sunshine, damp loamy soil and hate being dried out as bulbs almost as much as snowdrops, only buy them right at the start of the bulb season, when the bulbs are plump and firm. Every year I plant fifty or so in front of the house and by the kitchen window. They can be fussy about establishing themselves, many of the bulbs I plant will die out despite any amount of care, however where they actually do decide to grow they will thrive and form little clumps each with five or six flowers.
   At least this month we should enjoy the first really warm days. March this year was definitely a winter month despite Easter, changing clocks and the Equinox; we expect too much, often it is such a disappointing month not living-up to expectations. April's unpredictability can also be unpredictable, two out of the last twelve have been totally dry Aprils with cold east winds, misty mornings and sunny days.

© AndrewtheGardener 1/4/18

Scribblings on a wintery day.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before....
                                                                      Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
                                                                

After a week of sub-zero temperatures and biting icy dry easterlies it has now begun to snow. So far our little corner of North Devon had escaped the worst disruption and in line with the current trend for giving weather events silly names it was first called "The beast from the east" and now Storm Emma. Unprecedented red weather warnings in Scotland have now just been up-graded to even more unlikely warnings for the south-west too, up to 50cm of snow predicted. Older villagers mutter about the great blizzard of '78. Every flake is settling unmolested on the frozen ground and a ghostly pallid light reflected from outside invades every room, I have concerns about my roses. The Chinas in pots up against the house are protected behind big sheets of glass. But impatient tender shoots 10cm long must be suffering. Other worries for some miniatures; 'Baby Faurax', chinensis 'Minima', multiflora nana, 'Baby Gold Star' and 'Sweet Fairy' all had little tufts of growths. There is now snow covering most of them but as it was -10 on two consecutive nights and tonight on top of snow could drop further I took the precaution of covering them over with buckets against the desiccating wind, I think they will be robust enough to take the cold. Other flowers so bright and gay now are prostrate and flaccid; Hellebores, crocus, snowdrops and any St David's day narcissus entombed in snow. My cat, Apple, had never seen snow before. Slightly feral and skittish, on venturing outside for her morning constitutional, looks around indignantly as flakes as big as feathers touched all sorts of private places forbidden to anyone else.
    Yesterday I mailed off In My Garden for March, writing about sitting in golden sunshine! I am always a month behind each issue of the Dolton Diary and the deadline is at the beginning of the month. An amount of prediction and poetic license is called for; yes last March I potted roses and sat in the sun, yes I will do the same soon after the thaw.
Hunkered down. The car is now unusable but with more than enough food in cupboards and freezer, stacks of wood and logs blazing away on the fire, the enjoyment of a sense of inverted claustrophobia, the cottage is cosy and warm. All the usual nonsense for a country unprepared; no work, no post, no dustmen, no recycling, no bus service, no milk, papers or bread in the village shop...