Month: August 2024

Letters From Lusaka #2: of roving armies, the cholera season and making a new home

In 1992-1993, during the first years of Zambia’s multi-party democracy, we were posted to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. Graham was charged with organising the distribution of European Union food aid to drought-stricken Zambians. (Part 1 is HERE)

While we are still ‘living’ at the Pomodzi Hotel, and Graham is away at the European Union Delegation, getting to grips with his mission while walking a tightrope of diplomatic protocol, I do the unthinkable as far as white locals are concerned. I walk out of the hotel grounds and down a couple of avenues to the Ridgeway Hotel. One of Graham’s Natural Resources Institute colleagues, a regular visitor to Lusaka, has told me the place has a good gift shop, and that there may be a chance of finding some local books.

I set off on the basis that as I am not travelling by car, I will not be car-jacked. I am not. The gift shop is wonderful, brimming with Zambian craftwork. I buy a beautiful Tonga basket and a small olive-wood elephant for luck. I have it still on my Bishop’s Castle mantelpiece.

I’m disappointed to find no books at The Ridgeway, but I do find a map: a Lusaka street map one side, Zambia on the other. At last we can properly see where we have landed. I study the country’s boundaries, trying to make sense of the colonial cobbling that created a nation whose North Province lies to the east of its Central Province. (The British were here in erstwhile Northern Rhodesia for the copper).

The country nestles in the heart of southern Africa between eight countries. In outline it resembles a foetal chick curled on its back within a protecting shell. In reality, though, I soon learn that Zambia has no such protection. It simply has too many borders and not enough military personnel. In 1993 there are only some 300, 000 taxpayers in a population of eight million, which is not enough to pay for more soldiers. The north-west border with Democratic Republic of Congo is lethally porous. Members of then President Mobutu’s own unpaid armed forces regularly drive into Zambia’s Copper Belt and conduct armed pillaging campaigns against innocent drivers and householders. Sometimes they come as far south as Lusaka.

We are told that when driving at night, we must never stop at red traffic lights (locally called robots), since this is the moment that car-jackers will choose to pounce. Over in Eastern Province the threat comes from the conflict in Mozambique as RENAMO guerrillas cross the border to shoot up Zambian buses and steal food. In Western Province UNITA fighters from Angola’s war terrorize Zambian villagers. Famine, then, is only one cause of death; there are many others, and the mineral resources that Cecil Rhodes sought so hard to control through his dark-hearted dealings with local chiefs are high on the list.

Then there is malaria and tuberculosis, and as the rains bucket down through December, the cholera season begins. Overflowing septic tanks and pit latrines are polluting the city’s boreholes. At first, oblivious of such dangers, we eat out at downtown restaurants. We are down in Livingstone, near the Zimbabwe border, Graham checking out the contents of grain stores, when I am stricken with amoebic dysentery. Again it is the Delegation secretary who comes to the rescue and directs us to the mining companies’ private clinic, downtown on Cairo Road. The diagnostic facilities there are impressive, the British-born doctor patronizing. But after a three-day course of very large pills, I recover. I am lucky. Of course I am.

Six or so houses share the gardens, including a very small pool.

After a fortnight’s dispiriting search for a bolt-hole away from the Pomodzi, viewing sprawling premises we can’t afford, the Delegation Secretary suggests a vacant house on a small compound in Kabulonga. It is small, red brick, single storey with a sheet iron roof that, during the rains, resounds as if someone is firing bullets into a host of upturned buckets. The kitchen and bathroom are 1950s basic, but the spacious living room has French doors opening onto a tiny high-walled garden. There is a big avocado tree in the corner where African sparrows come twittering in to roost in late afternoon. Above the perimeter wall, when it is not raining, arcs the blue Zambian sky. To the rear, the kitchen gives onto a walled back yard and a patch of grass. There are two bedrooms, and a tiny study. Outside the front door is a communal garden and terrace – garden seats set by a small swimming pool, a tall palm that rustles endlessly in the high plateau breezes, a sweet scented frangipani tree. No house overlooks any other and there are shady walk ways in between each property.

Produce including delphiniums and ginger lilies from the local co-operative on Sable Road

The gardens are tended by a gentle young man called Stephen Nyangu. His name suggests erstwhile connections with the Nyanja royal clan. But Stephen’s situation is a far cry from tribal pre-eminence. He sweeps, mows, weeds, plants, prunes and waters six days a week, from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon. Then he cycles the couple of miles to his compound home in Leopard’s Hill Road where he lives with his wife and four children. The gardens he cares for bloom strangely under sub-tropical skies with tea roses, violets, pansies, Sweet William and Madonna lilies. He also washes all the cars and hefts all the dustbins to the big compound gate to be emptied once a week. For this he earns twelve thousand kwacha a month, about eighteen pounds. He has no leave beyond national holidays, and after work he runs a cigarette stall.

Stephen Nyangu works day and night to keep his family.

On my first day in our new home, it is Stephen who knocks on my door.

“Good morning, madam. My name is Stephen. If there is anything you want me to do, I am just out there.” He gestures in the general vicinity of the pool. “Call me.”

He is the only person on the compound who bothers to introduce himself. In ten months we scarcely see any of the other tenants beyond the Sikh couple who live next door. They nod to us. They have two much pampered, miniature Pomeranians and a maid called Isa. Isa looks a good-hearted soul and she works in several of the other households on the compound once she has done her daily tasks for the Sikhs. These include much furious chopping at seven a.m. Perhaps she is chopping for the Pomeranians. When she is left in charge of them for three months while their owners go on leave, she grows so fed up with their insistent yapping that one day she yells SHUT UP. And so shocked are the indulged little canines, that they do just that. I want to hug Isa.

I further decide that my house is scarcely big enough to justify even a once-a-week cleaner, this despite the constant slick of red dust that blows in every day. I thus do my own housework.

Our compound is in Kabulonga, the heart of the diplomatic quarter. Our next door neighbour is the Egyptian Embassy. At night the guards fire off rifles. We never do know what is going on there, and sometimes it sounds like a siege. Our compound is one of the least fortified on the road. The iron gate has open railings instead of sheet metal armour plating, and our day guard, Sammy, always leaves it unlocked anyway during the day, while he plays draughts with a neighbouring house-guard. He’s a bit nonplussed by my habit of going out on foot, and at first dashes from his game to open the gate as if I were a passing vehicle. We soon come to a silent arrangement whereby we greet each other, I open the gate for myself and he keeps on with his game.

There is a sense of excited liberation as I step out onto Sable Road. I never meet another European walking here on this lovely tree-shaded avenue.

Sable Road in the dry season.

To be continued

And talking of Africa…

Elephants – Savannah Royalty

Since my blog is currently in Africa-mode, I’m reposting Annette’s fabulous Tanzanian elephant essay. Enjoy!

Letters From Lusaka: notes from an aid nomad’s life #1

This is an edited re-run of an old post – and a much longer read than usual…

October 1992 and I’m expecting to start a new life in Medway, Kent, but instead I find we are off to Lusaka. It is hard to take in. I am barely back in England after nine months in Kenya where we lived out of a Land Rover, plying the Mombasa Highway. My heart is still in the Ngong Hills, the knuckle-shaped peaks that were my last view of East Africa before the plane rose through the clouds and headed for London via Bahrain. In that moment I find myself weeping for the loss of the Ngongs, recognising, with a twinge of shame, I would never weep like this for my homeland.

Due to ticket problems I have to travel back to the UK alone. G will follow the day after. When we say goodbye at Nairobi airport there is no inkling of another overseas contract. Yet two days later when we meet up in England, the first thing G says is: how would you like to go to Zambia?

Zambia, I echo blankly. How would I know if I want to go there? But with barely a pause, I say yes; I’m up for it. I’ll find out later if I’m going to like the place. Besides, whatever happens, it’s bound to be interesting.

When we tell friends and family where we are going, they also look blank. Zambia, they say. What did it used to be? It is only months afterwards that I see how loaded is this seemingly simple question, how unfathomable the answer. What indeed did Zambia used to be – before it was Northern Rhodesia – before David Livingstone passed through it in search of lost souls and the Nile’s source, and claimed the falls known as Mosi oa Tunya (The Smoke that Thunders) for Queen Victoria; before the south’s Zulu Wars that pushed many displaced communities across the Zambezi?

We’re expected to leave within the month, but due to various administrative foul-ups, this stretches to two. It gives us time to unpack our Kenya life, catch up on dental work, have the jabs we have not already had, say hello and goodbye to relatives, and to get married. This last event takes place briefly before a handful of guests in a Bridgnorth building society office where the registrar has occasional premises. Our little marriage party finds itself queuing for attention alongside Friday morning withdrawers and depositors. It all seems fittingly bizarre for a life that no longer fits the norm.

Lusaka’s main street, Cairo Road, looking south

At this point I am still no wiser about our destination. In these pre-Google days there is little time for research. To my annoyance, too, I find there are no handy books on Zambia, not in the public library, nor in the bookshops. By the time we come to leave, we have only the sparse Foreign Office briefing notes to go on. They speak of the climate and the kind of clothing we will need, and of the possibility of having to take a driving test if we want to drive in Zambia.

No clear picture of the country emerges. I am becoming increasingly irritated at the lack of information, as well as at my own ignorance. How can I, an English woman, not know a thing about a land that Britain ruled and exploited for over sixty years, a land we only quitted in 1964 while I was in still at school? Why wasn’t it on the curriculum along with Cicero and Chekhov? How can the existence of a former protectorate pass so swiftly from the protecting nation’s consciousness? How can it become so very unimportant?

Then suddenly it’s too late for righteous indignation; it’s all down to family farewells, and wondering if the right things have been packed, when there is no way of knowing what the right things should be. Of necessity, it becomes a matter of travelling hopefully and telling ourselves that the contract is for ten months only. And ten months isn’t long, is it?

So, November 1992 and we fly into Lusaka with the rains. It seems like a good omen – to arrive with rain. There has been severe drought over southern Africa for at least a year. Crops have blown to dust, rivers run to sand, and the granaries lie empty. In remote districts, we later learn, villagers have been surviving on a diet of wild mangoes. To add to their misery, the wildlife is hungry too. In one district villagers have been barricading themselves into their homes. The local lions have developed a taste for canine flesh and are breaking down house doors at night in order to snatch the dogs from the midst of their terrified human families.

And of course, this is why we are going to Zambia; famine is taking us there. G has been seconded from the Natural Resources Institute in Kent to the E. U. Delegation in Lusaka to supervise the distribution of European Union food aid to starving Zambians. The country’s then new President, Frederick Chiluba, tells the Head of Delegation that he does not trust his ministers to do the job. The consignments of maize meal and cooking oil must therefore be distributed through church missions and the Red Cross. Zambia is a big country, the size of France and the Low Countries combined. G will be in charge of logistics: checking the contents of grain stores, getting trucks on the road and ensuring that loads reach their intended destination. His boss at NRI is sure he is fitted for the task, although he has never done anything like it before.

Food aid awaiting distribution in a Zambian warehouse.

In Kenya, as a crop storage specialist, he had been dealing with another kind of food crisis – the spread of a voracious pest that gobbles up maize – the Larger Grain Borer. This beetle is a native of South and Central America, and (ironically) came to Africa in the 1980s in a food aid consignment from the United States. It has no natural predators in its new homeland and, across a continent where maize is many peoples’ staple crop, it also has all the food it can eat. If a grain store is infested you can hear the jaws of these tiny creatures gnawing the cobs to dust.

In Zambia we find the beetles are already there too, spreading out into villages along the line of the Tazara Railway that links land-locked Zambia to the port of Dar es Salaam. The Chinese built the line in the 1970s to provide Zambia with an external trade route through Tanzania after Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia cut the country off from all points south. Now the Tanzam is a handy vector for crop pests and thus, through such unintended consequences, is the frequent folly of donor good intention compounded. It is the sort of thing that happens in African countries all the time. It makes us question then (as we will do many times over the next few years) the ethics of our presence on the continent.

Cairo Road looking north

That November morning, then, as we make our descent through grey skies into Lusaka International Airport, I note only how flat and tamed the landscape looks: large square fields of European-owned ranches (Lonrho, for one, is a big player here); service roads and farm buildings laid out in orderly grid patterns. It is also very green and looks more like France than the Africa I have come to know. I suppose I feel a little disappointed. It is bush country that I have fallen in love with, the smell of it triggering some ancient genetic memory that tells me that such landscapes mean home.

Once down on the tarmac, and as a matter of courtesy so we will not get wet in this welcome downpour, a bus arrives to ferry us the short distance to the low white terminal building. Our fellow travellers are European businessmen, each shouldering his laptop bag. By contrast, a tall African in a well-cut suit emerges from the First Class cabin wielding only a shiny new golf club. It seems utterly incongruous, as if he has just stepped out of a London taxi after visiting a golfing shop rather than flying half way across the world. It crosses my mind that I like his style.

By now I am both jet-lagged and deeply anxious about the forthcoming immigration process. Still fresh in my mind is the stony-faced inscrutability of Kenyan officialdom when I twice visited the notorious Nyayo House immigration department to extend my three-month travel visa; I recall the hours left in limbo, sitting amongst distressed Somalis and Ethiopians, all trying to secure sanctuary away from troubled homelands. But suddenly I see it’s not going to be like this. The officers, as they take their seats at the immigration desks are all smart young women. They are laughing and chatting and, when we hand them our passports and paperwork, they are still smiling, and at us.

Next we have our first, but fleeting taste of the diplomatic life, as G’s new boss steps up and introduces himself. His name is Bernard. He is French, frenetic and instantly engaging. He whisks away our paperwork and deals with it in minutes. There is then a worrying delay before we can claim our bags. Bernard tells us that British Airways on this route are well known for leaving cases behind in London. Finally, though, we have our luggage and are propelled into Bernard’s Peugeot, Bernard talking non-stop. He apologises for his poor English, saying that this is his first posting to an English-speaking country. Mauretania and Madagascar were his previous postings. Worryingly, he adds that he hopes we will speak some French. Beside me, looking wan, G winces; he does not fly well. He can barely speak. When he does, it is to utter a customary response in KiSwahili. I’m beginning to feel hysterical.

Soon, though, all smooths out as we cruise along the Great East Road into Lusaka. There is little traffic (not like Nairobi), and the place has a small-town provincial air – wide streets lined with jacarandas shedding mauve petals and acacias with russet coloured flowers, red-roofed villas. We pass the turn to the University of Zambia, the entrance to Lusaka’s agricultural show ground. The side walks are filled with people walking – young men in loose shirts and smart front-pleated pants striding out, country women in ankle-length chitenge wraps, city girls in high heels and sleekly cut frocks, and who seem to flow along the street. There are roadside stalls selling garden surplus – mangoes, tomatoes, okra, spinach.

EU Delegation, Lusaka

And I am just thinking that I can cope with this when we swing into the grounds of the five-star Pomodzi Hotel, and Bernard’s car is instantly lassoed in chains whose ends the hotel porter quickly padlocks to an adjacent post. I have never seen nor imagined anything like this. Bernard explains that this is a necessary procedure even though it will only take a few minutes to escort us to reception. I see that other guests’ cars are similarly chained. It is then that my one sure piece of Zambia information surfaces.

All along we have been ignoring it, that in that year of 1992 the country has a big security problem. Some months later the reasons for this become clear, but for now I am struggling to absorb this apparent evidence of an expected car-jacking – in broad daylight, and in such orderly and upmarket surroundings. I gaze, bemused, at the tail-coated porter who is now ushering us into the hotel foyer. After the humid warmth of outside, the hotel is frigid with air conditioning. The reception area is cavernous, all grey-white marble. A trolley appears and our cases are stacked upon it. They look shamefully shabby in these austerely smart surroundings. The porter politely motions me towards a comfortable armchair while G registers. This always takes ages, and by now it is lunchtime and I am hungry and yet too tired to want to eat. Then suddenly there are Englishmen everywhere. They seem to issue as one from the lift.

“Hello. I’m David…Peter…Tim…Paul…Alan. We’ve not been introduced but…”

As welcoming committees go, it is well meant but too much, and I wonder if I’m responding sensibly. They turn out to be G’s fellow consultants from the Natural Resources Institute in Chatham, Kent, out on short-term missions relating to crop storage and food security. They include G’s head of section, the man who seconded him to the E.U. Delegation. He’s just off to Zimbabwe, and hardly have we reached our room than the phone rings, and G is summoned to an impromptu meeting and a trip round a Lusaka grain store that has flooded, none of which has anything to do with his present posting. He goes off looking terrible while I collapse on the bed, trying to come to terms with my new surroundings.

Here we are back in Africa, back in the so-called developing world, here to help deal with a food crisis. Yet now I find myself in a room that has more of comfort and opulence than I’m used to in England. There is a huge colour television that shows American and British world service programmes. There is a telephone by the bed and another beside the lavatory. The ivory tiled bathroom has abundant hot, clean water and piles of soft white towels. The flask of drinking water is chilled. We have our own veranda. The room service menu offers club sandwiches, burgers and steaks. A polite notice on the writing desk requests guests not to tempt the staff by leaving their valuables unattended.

This is a hotel designed not so much for travellers and tourists, but to cater for the expectations of international entrepreneurs. Its luxury is hard to reconcile with the hardship that G has been brought here to relieve. This is only the first of the multiple contradictions that we will encounter over the next ten months. We learn not to dwell on them, and so become part of the contradictions.

Now in Lusaka, we find ourselves dropped into a diplomatic no-man’s-land. Although G works for a British government institution and has been deployed by them on official business, neither the EU nor the British High Commission want to altogether acknowledge our presence in the country. We gather that the BHC has some bee in its bonnet about the cost of air-lifting us back to the UK in the event of some great ill befalling us. This is a puzzling response when all G asks for is some anti-malarial pills. They are not keen to give us any, since this establishes responsibility.

There is also a problem about finding us somewhere to live, this despite the fact that both missions have their own staff accommodation. We have been sent out with a stash of travellers’ cheques to pay for ten months’ rent and to buy a car, but house rents in Lusaka are twice the allowance we have been given. A Delegation secretary, a white Zambian, takes pity on us and directs us to a small company compound of eight houses where local Zambian Europeans and Asians live.

There is one house vacant, and we can just about afford it. The accommodation is very lowly by diplomatic standards, and full of dog-haired furniture, but we still manage to upset BHC consular etiquette because the compound has a swimming pool. Only officials of the higher orders may be allocated houses with pools. BHC staff kindly let us know of our gaff at social functions, although we wonder what it has to do with them since they were so unwilling to acknowledge our existence. Clearly the swimming pool has got under somebody’s skin.

Our house on the Sable Road compound and a glimpse of the undiplomatic pool

Home for ten months.

Then, when we are among EU Delegation officials and their white Zambian staff, we are constantly regaled with tales of car-jackings, house break-ins, muggings and murder. At his house, Bernard has been newly issued with a gun and a short-wave radio to summon security in case of attacks by the locals. We presume that we are not important enough to warrant this scale of protection. When, after some weeks, I return to Zambian Immigration to renew my passport, and once more am treated with only good hearted African courtesy, I consider switching my nationality to Zambian.

To be continued…

Cooling Off In Kiboko

Every time there was that gasp of relief, as if we’d not been breathing for the last hundred miles. Ahead, through the heat haze, appeared the stand of fig and fever trees, rising tall and green above the dry bush country. After two hours of truck fumes, heat and dust and no shred of shade since leaving home in Nairobi, it seemed like an oasis.

It could be a mirage of course. But no. Next the scene would solidify and we’d see the Akamba wood carvers’ stalls set out under the trees. And then, thanks be, we’d be turning off the Mombasa highway, bumping along the dirt track, that was scarcely more bumpy than the road, and into the cool sanctuary of Hunter’s Lodge.

And this is what we had left behind – the highway looking north towards Nairobi, caught here in a rare truck-free moment. There is currently talk of this route being replaced by a 300-mile multi-lane, super highway-toll road to be built under the auspices of the US government. Some Kenyans are sceptical of its ever happening.

The trip to Kiboko and Hunter’s Lodge was one we made every other week during our first year in Kenya. Graham had been seconded to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute to work on the eradication of the Larger Grain Borer, a voracious pest of stored grain, introduced to the continent on consignments of food aid. The project had its base at Kiboko field station, which, most conveniently, was behind the garden at Hunter’s Lodge.

There’s more back story here: Once in Africa: everyday moments at Hunter’s Lodge…until the crocodile

The Lodge was built in the 1960s as the retirement home of big game hunter, the blunt-speaking, no-nonsense Scotsman, John Hunter. He belongs to the era of grand shooting safaris for maharajas and European nobility. (Out of Africa Bror Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton were colleagues and friends). He also spent much of his shooting career working for the colonial game department, tracking down ivory poachers while ridding the lowland bush country around Kiboko of ‘troublesome’ rhino and elephants. The former were terrorising the Akamba farmers, the latter destroying the sisal and orange farms of British settlers. He chose this spot for his home because he remembered it as an elephants’ waterhole, where he had enjoyed much time simply watching them. He seemingly saw no irony in the fact that he’d helped eradicate the local population.

The waterhole, which was fed by a rare local water source, the Kiboko River, was remodelled into a garden lake, and traversed (in our day at least) by an extraordinary bridge that led to the vegetable shamba.

There was said to a leopard living at the top of the lake, though I never saw or heard it. We did hear bush babies screaming at night, and also watched the nightly firefly show over the water. It was also a fabulous place for birds: over two hundred species including many varieties of kingfishers, weaver birds, herons and storks. Sadly, I had only my small Olympus – trip camera, so there are few bird photos. The very distant marabou storks in the next photo’s tree tops are actually huge in real life.

Kiboko isn’t marked on the map. It’s a centimetre above the border with Tanzania, due north of Kilimanjaro, roughly midway between Sultan Hamud and Kibwezi. The area east of the highway north of Tsavo East Park is Ukambani, traditional territory of Akamba farmers and herders. To the west is Maasai land, though you will of course see Maasai herders along the road, at the trading centres, and spot the red flash of their shukas as they drive their herds across the bush country north-east of Kiboko.

Sometimes along the road you may also catch a glimpse of Kilimanjaro, on those odd occasions when the mountain chooses to show itself. As you can see, lowland Ukambani is a sear land of thorn scrub and savannah. It hardly rained at all in the times we visited. The header photo was one of those rare moments.

Lens-Artists: Cool Colours John at Journeys with Johnbo sets this week’s theme and says he is open to any or all interpretations.

Monochrome Madness: On The Beach

Marloes Sands, Pembrokeshire, South Wales

I love winter beaches. You never know how it will be there – the wildness of wind and waves, the shafts of sudden sunlight, sands strewn with sea debris, or storm-scoured, the off-season pursuits of humankind…

Christmas morning, Newborough Beach, Anglesey, North Wales

Menai Strait, Anglesey

This could just be the French Lieutenant’s Woman displaced from Lyme Regis to Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey. I do know her name is Sarah.

These next views are of Portwrinkle beach, Cornwall, also taken around Christmas time:

My prehistorian’s eye perceived those rocks as some flooded megalithic structure, the remains of a Bronze Age circle or chambered tomb perhaps. Certainly, in other parts of the Britain, the remains of Neolithic wood henges have been discovered on beaches below the tideline.

Monochrome Madness: on the beach. This week Brian at Bushboy is acting host at Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness

What’s In A Garden ~ Or Tales Of The Not Quite Planned

The thing about making a garden is you never really know what will happen there. Not really really. You do of course ‘set the stage’ for growing to happen – from planting up a few doorstep pots to toiling over ground work and designing and filling borders.

And then when you sow seeds, as I did here for Gigantes butter beans, and Black Knight morning glory – you could well envision how they might be if they were planted out together and set to grow up the front garden obelisk. (Header photo)

But you can’t necessarily predict the actual ‘show’, which of course is what’s wonderful about gardening. In many ways it’s ever an experiment. The pleasure comes when you walk outside and notice something special, the something whose actual disposition you had no control over.

In the back garden I planted out some more Black Knights with purple climbing French beans Violette. But at the moment they seem more keen to keep company with the courgettes. The flowers have an unearthly look about them. I could swear they radiate light from their recesses.

Then there are the wild and feral plants that invite themselves into the garden. Sometimes they are not too welcome. But sometimes they make one’s heart leap with delight. Here, entwined in our otherwise horrid hedge we have this glorious pink convolvulus (bindweed). The flowers are much bigger than the wild white version of themselves and they out-trumpet their morning glory cousins too.

And then there are the garden invaders that invite more curiosity than delight. These delicate crimson-grey poppies are presently flowering above the terrace wall and, as far as I can tell, is a single plant with many branching stems. As the flowers fade, the more ashy they become.I’m not sure what to feel about them.

But I know I love this white marsh mallow, a shrub I bought recently to grow on and fill a gap along the back garden fence. A perfect moment – catching the early morning sun on its face:

And then there are things that add to a garden that aren’t quite in the garden. Just over the hedge, on the roadside verge, is an ornamental cherry tree with deep burgundy foliage. At sunset, as we eat supper, we have a glimmering light show at our new kitchen window; not at all what we were expecting.

P.S. For followers of the house renovations: the kitchen’s not finished yet. Last lap stuff still to do.

Lens-Artists: What’s In A Garden Ann-Christine at Leya shows us some stunning gardens

Six on Saturday ~ More From The Random Garden

As I said in my last Six on Saturday post we have a new garden. I also said that for various reasons – rampant weeds to clear and too much wet weather from winter to spring – I was all behind come growing time; things got sown or planted out wherever there was space at that particular moment.

This has since made protecting cabbages, purple sprouting, kale and cauliflowers, first from pigeons, and more recently from hoards of cabbage white butterflies intent on laying their eggs, somewhat problematical, not to say given rise to a mishmash of netting and other protective devices rather too reminiscent of my former allotment contrivances.

So number 1, since it is preying on both my mind and on my brassicas: CABBAGE WHITE BUTTERFLIES…

Caterpillar damage on Tuscan kale

I actually quite like this photo. The more so as the target of interest is my SoS 2: agastache or Vietnamese Mint. The butterfly is calling in for an energy fix, which I suppose I should mind. (Enough procreation, thank you!)

I love the agastache. It smells of aniseed and its leaves are edible. It’s a perennial (I grew lots of it from seed this spring), though I’m not sure how hardy it will prove in a Bishop’s Castle winter. Anyway, it is a very tidy plant, growing beautifully upwards with lots of purple-mauve spires – not easy to photograph well.

SoS 3 is one of this week’s very pleasing finds: a nice young toad lurking by the outside tap.

We’d already found a much bigger toad hiding under an old tile by Graham’s new garden shed creation. I’m wondering if there may be more, because so far there has been very little slug damage along the vegetable rows – so little in fact, I can’t quite believe it. (Lull before storm?) We were besieged with molluscs in Much Wenlock. We do have the odd big snail however.

Talking of the new garden shed, this is number 4. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that it’s being built from scratch, incorporating recycled parts from our April roof makeover and other assorted materials, the whole inspired by a Great Western Railway goods wagon. I’ve had to sacrifice what might otherwise have been a large and useful garden border, but never mind. I’m liking the shed. It’s presently having its rubber roof applied.

SoS 5 is the front garden sweet corn. It’s growing tall and starting to tassel. Possibly planted rather tightly, but so far the plants don’t seem to mind.

As seen a couple of weeks ago:

I also have a neighbouring raised bed with cabbages and spring onions. On the farther side of the front garden there is now a row of purple sprouting growing where the potatoes were, netted of course.

The two raised beds seen here were made from building work off-cuts, and I’m hoping for more to be made when the shed is done, and eventually I’ll move these to the back garden.

Or maybe not. The front garden does seem a good growing spot.

There’s also some good growing going on at the bottom of garden. I’m pleased that back in the winter I managed to make a good compost filled trench for the runner beans. It brings me to no. 6 – last night’s first meal of the season. Always a gardening landmark in Farrell household.

The trench of garden waste and hot bin compost certainly seems to be working well for runner beans Emergo and Painted Lady

Up, up and away…

Six on Saturday

Please visit Jim’s lovely garden at Garden Ruminations

Shadows And Silhouettes

Herewith a reprise of some favourite monochrome shots from the Much Wenlock archive. The header is the entrance to the Linden Walk, which several of you (Jude especially) will well remember.

The next photo was taken on the shadowy cutting of the old railway line that runs alongside the Linden walk: top-lit horse chestnut leaves…

Next, a former back garden view of foxgloves: sun setting over the fence…

A couple of wintery scenes now. First the ivy clad ash trees in Townsend Meadow:

…and twilight over Rookery Wood: one rook (centre) and several jackdaws:

Shadows & Silhouettes Dawn at The Day After is this week’s host at Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

The Changing Seasons ~ This Was July ‘24

Here in Bishop’s Castle, as in many parts of Great Britain, much of July was cool and overcast – more autumn than summer. The garden, however, carried on oblivious, although there was an obvious shortage of bees, hover flies, butterflies and other insects.

But then just on the last lap, summer happened. And not heat waves either; simply days of pleasing warmth which certainly brought out the bees. And then whole flocks of cabbage white butterflies flew in, wafting round the garden, dozens at a time, homing in on cabbages and nasturtiums to lay their eggs. I’ve given up chasing them away.

They also like to feed on the agastache (Vietnamese Mint), a perennial I’ve grown from seed this spring. The bees love it too. So I’m glad I planted out all the many seedlings that germinated, as well as giving some away. It’s a stately plant with purple-mauve plumes and leaves that smell of aniseed.

The switch to warm days has made all the lettuce bolt, but we’re still eating some of them. As ever, I have failed to organise a seasonal flow, so there will be a gap in salad content for a time. Instead, I’m picking the young leaves of Swiss Chard, a second crop which I’ve managed this time to protect from nibbling pigeons. There are also herbs – dill, basil, and lots of coriander and chives, and wild rocket (about to bolt) and masses of developing leeks which are good in salads.

But best of all, the runner beans are beginning to set, so I must keep an eye on them. They often fool me by producing the first crop near the ground inside the canes, where they can’t be seen.

And then this lovely mallow has started to flower…

And there’s been a second flush of foxgloves…

And then I noticed a happy partnership (growing out of the concrete on the front path) campanula and lavender perfectly arranged…

And finally, in amongst the ongoing building work and general domestic confusion…

…we take note that it is was a year last July when we exchanged contracts on The Gables and began planning our move to Bishop’s Castle…

And in case you’re wondering about the big beer barrel, the town is famous for its historic pub and brewery The Three Tuns Inn, serving folk since 1642. Just one of many good reasons to settle here. The beer is delicious. Cheers!

The Changing Seasons: July 2024 Hosted by Ju Lyn and by Brian at Bushboys World

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge