I can see why 17th century Dutch merchants worked themselves into a fever over tulip bulbs. The flowers are never static. Even when captured in a vase they change shape and shade throughout the day. I think the colours here complement Cee’s stunning bearded iris, so please visit her at:
Yesterday our Thursday outing took intrepid Farrell Safaris over the Shropshire border and into Hereford. Our destination was Croft Castle in the wonderfully named village of Yarpole. The house is a castellated fifteenth to eighteenth century fantasy with magnificent turrets (only for show) –the whole set in glorious parkland of veteran trees. The present house replaced an 11th century castle, and the Croft family who occupied it then, continued to preside over this corner of England for nearly a thousand years. All is now in the care of the National Trust. And if anyone reading this intends to visit, then take a good tree book. And also your walking shoes as there are several long walks including one to the Iron Age hillfort of Croft Ambrey.
I’ll post more about Croft another time. For now I’m trying to keep on theme with Paula’s Thursday’s Special. This week it is ‘scattered’ so please pop over there for more renditions.
Now for a scattering of tulips in the walled garden:
And oh well, I know you really wanted to see the Castle, so here it is framed by the branches of a very ancient conifer. There’s some good cloud-scatter too.
On a very dull Tuesday afternoon I thought I’d brave the cold wind and walk across the field to the allotment. On went the woolly hat, quilted coat (over three layers) and the wellies.
Unsurprisingly I had the allotment to myself – not another mad gardener in sight. I set about emptying one of the compost bins, and spreading the contents (a hand’s width deep) over a metre wide stretch of ground that had been cleared of over-wintering sprouts and broccoli. It seemed a good day to do it, and I was glad I had prised myself from the house.
This year I’m experimenting with the ‘no dig’ system of cultivation, so apart from tweaking out one or two noxious weeds, I resisted the temptation to get out my favourite spade. The objective is to cover the soil with enough interesting organic matter to excite the worms in the soil below. They then do the digging, and other soil-friendly organisms get going too so that, hopefully, the later seasons’ crops – cabbages and sweet corn – can be planted out on the much improved, and better nourished ground.
I was thus in the middle of this very absorbing activity when someone upstairs switched off the lights and I turned to find a tempest sneaking up on me.
Yikes! By the time I had scooted across the plot to the shelter of my polytunnel, we were having a small, but very concentrated snow and hail blizzard. It was far too stormy to think of making for home. Instead, I pottered about in my tunnel sowing some purple Brussels sprouts seeds in modules, while trying to remain hopeful that this truly was a passing squall and not the heavens falling in as the heavyweight clouds suggested.
I forgot to record the actual blizzard that followed, so here are some Précoce de Louviers pointy spring cabbages that are growing most happily in the tunnel.
When I stuck my nose out of the tunnel some twenty minutes later, this was the view over Much Wenlock:
By which time it was too late, and the ground too wet to go back to compost spreading. As I walked home across the allotment, I watched strange, but less threatening clouds gather over the hills:
And when I stepped through the hedge into the wheat field behind our house, the sky looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth: snowstorm, what snowstorm?
Clearly the figment of a delusional, non-digging gardener then:
copyright Tish Farrell 2016
April and it’s all change. On Saturday I was whinging about the snow that had invaded our early morning landscape. By Sunday we were sitting coatless on Benthall Hall’s tea room terrace, and consuming carrot cake and hot chocolate with the sun on our faces. It was February when were last there, and grey and stormy, with no possibility of sitting outside. Now we were in danger of overheating with a nice grey hen pootling around our feet, and the air filled with bee-hum. Later, when we ambled around the gardens, we came upon these newly opened rhododendron flowers and a very happy bumble bee. To say it was gorging itself is an understatement. Up to its armpits in pollen it was. Food at last. Bzzzzzzz.
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Check in at Cee’s Flower of the Day for more floral displays.
This lovely rose grows up the wall in our back garden. Please meet Gloire de Dijon, also known less picturesquely in English as Old Glory. It’s a cross between an unknown tea rose and Souvenir de la Malmaison, an old Bourbon rose, and was introduced to the world by one Pierre Jacotot in 1853. He lived in Dijon, France, a place also famous for its mustard.
When the rose is fully opened it has dense whorls of pale peachy-pink petals that change colour as they age. Their scent is mesmerizing – notes of clove and jasmine that transport me back to Zanzibar where jasmine sprigs were nightly placed beside our plates at the hotel where we ate dinner.
And once the roses have passed their best, even dead-heading them is a delight – crushing fading petals between my hands, inhaling their last fragrance that also soaks into the skin, and can be smelled for hours.
Like Sue Judd at WordsVisual, I’m drawn to the aesthetic of decaying plant life. I think there is great beauty here – these lingering shades of erstwhile glory.
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Thursday’s Special: Three of a kind
Please visit Paula to see her own lovely study for this challenge. And definitely go and see Sue Judd’s stunning daffodil study at the link above
On several warm days last summer I found a slow worm sunbathing on our lawn. When I say ‘lawn’ I use the term loosely. There’s not much grass in it, only many buttercups, dandelions and even some dreaded ragwort. Nor is this so-called worm a worm, or even a snake. And for that matter it is not slow. If it doesn’t like the look of you it can slither off at quite a pace. At other times it may pretend to be a bit of old rope, not very convincingly I might say.
Slow worms (Anguis fragilis) are in fact legless lizards, although this is possibly no comfort for those of you out there with a snake phobia. (Sorry, if you viewed this by accident).
That they are lizards is apparently proved by the fact they can blink their eyes and shed their tails when attacked. They grow up to half a metre in length, and may re-grow a shed tail, although it won’t be quite as long as it started out. Provided they are not caught by the local cats, who do not know they are dealing with a protected UK species, they live up to 20 years. They like old gardens and to burrow in compost heaps. And best of all, they eat slugs.
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Until the first Sunday in April, Jude is looking for examples of garden wildlife at The Earth Laughs In Flowers
And thank you Anna at http://unavistadisanfermo.wordpress.com for nominating me for the 7-day nature photo challenge. As I’d just done this post on slow worms, I thought I’d start with it. Anyone who wants to take up the challenge from me, please do. The actual M.O. is to nominate another blogger to take up the challenge on each of the 7 days you post a photo. But since every likely soul seems to have already been nabbed, I’m following Gilly’s lead and throwing it open. In fact I think I’ll just link back to Anna who got me into this – because she’s lovely and takes some great photos around Milan. Please do visit her.
#7-dayNaturePhotoChallenge
Petasites fragrans winter heliotrope
These are the leaves of winter heliotrope, a November to February flowering evergreen that originated in North Africa, and is now considered a wayside weed here in the UK. It has a great tendency to spread and form carpets. On the other hand it does flower when other plants are busy hibernating. Also the flowers – a fleshy, purple pink – smell of vanilla, and track the sun’s course during the day. And all I can say to that is, this year winter heliotrope must have really had its work cut out. Sun. What sun?
Sometimes the plants make no flowers at all. There were certainly none to be seen on this clump, but then it was growing in deep shadow. The other fascinating thing is that the male and female characteristics appear on entirely separate plants, and it is usually the male flowering variety that we see in the UK.
I must also confess that I’ve learned all this just now. When I took the photograph yesterday in the gardens of Benthall Hall, I thought it was butterbur, a plant that grows in like fashion and has many other similarities of leaf and flower. It was only when I was editing the shot, that I noticed the leaves looked too smoothly rounded and heart-shaped for butterbur. Next came a quick check on Google, which in turn led to realizing that this was an entirely new plant for me. So thank you, Jude, for setting this particular challenge – and the proposition of using both monochrome and looking for patterns in our chosen garden subject. It was the heart-shaped leaves that attracted my attention. I thought they would make a good design for Valentine’s Day.
For more about this challenge, please go over to Jude’s garden photography blog:
And now here is a shot of Benthall Hall, caught before a squall sent us scurrying to the car. 
This sixteenth century home of the Benthall family is just a mile or two up the road from my house in Wenlock. The land on which it stands was once part of Wenlock Priory’s extensive domain, but now the house and grounds belong to the National Trust.
I hadn’t visited the house for years, and this weekend was its first opening of the year. For me, one of the property’s most fascinating stories is the fact that in the late nineteenth century, the plant hunter, botanist and co-founder of Maw & Co, the world famous decorative tile works, George Maw was a tenant. He planted the gardens with his botanical treasures, and in particular crocus of both the spring and autumn varieties. Botanical images of course inspired many of the Maw’s tile designs that graced public buildings across the world during the Victorian era. Today part of that heritage, including original design catalogues, is on show not far away at the Jackfield Tile Museum in the Ironbridge Gorge. It is well worth a visit if ever you are in Shropshire. But one thing is certain, we will be back to explore George Maw’s garden as the year progresses. Please expect further reports.
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
It’s the final week of Jude’s Winter Gardens challenge over at The Earth Laughs In Flowers. This, then, is the view of my garden captured on Saturday afternoon. It’s as much as I’m prepared to show you at the moment, so dreary is it after weeks of rain. Also there was a definite lack of gardener-input in the autumn. Things just kept on growing and it was hard to know when to chop them back.
So they didn’t get chopped, and the place now has the look of a garden version of Miss Haversham’s attic. But you may just spot (in the bottom right hand pane) a small clump of tete a tete daffodils. Even they aren’t planted, but are sitting on top of the soil. They were tipped out of a pot bought last spring, at which point I had every intention of re-planting them. Oh well. Neglect hasn’t stopped them thriving. They started flowering at the end of December.
I have to confess that I’m a fair-weather gardener, at least where dampness is concerned. And it really is too cosy indoors. Also unlike the garden, the house is now clean and tidy, which was the real reason I took the first two photos – to document that tidiness is possible. And I’m sharing the proof with the world in an attempt to stem backsliding tendencies.
But housework and fair-weather gardening aside, I am getting twinges of planters’ itch. My first delivery of vegetable seeds arrived earlier last week – all those crisp packets of pent-up potential, and now it is February. Hurray! Time to sow the peas and leeks in the allotment polytunnel, and start off the aubergines and sweet peppers at home.
And talking of sweet things, my first sowing of sweet peas on the kitchen window sill is already sprouting. So apologies to Jude for not quite sticking to the winter garden plot. I’m finishing this post with thoughts of summer, and deliciously scented blooms to come. And I know she won’t mind because she knows very well that it’s forward-dreaming that keeps gardeners going through the long winter season.
copyright 2016 Tish Farrell
Show us your hellebores, said Jo at Restless Jo – this in a chat about Jo’s last week’s hellebore post which she linked to Jude’s new Winter Garden photo challenge. And so thinking to oblige, and in between sleet and rain, sleet and rain, and more rain and rain, I dashed out into the garden with the digital camera only to find the currently flowering hellebores in most reclusive mood. They all had their heads determinedly earthwards as in the next photo:
And so the only way to capture the first two shots was for me to stand on my head, and send the camera underneath on macro setting, and press. The whole enterprise was totally discomposed, and what’s more, it had started raining AGAIN. But then that’s winter in the garden for you. Anyway, despite shooting blind I’m quite pleased with results – sort of candid-camera shots of shrinking violets hellebores.
For more bloggers’ winter gardens please visit Jude over at The Earth Laughs In Flowers blog.
Yesterday, after several days of rain, I trudged, stick in hand, clad in big hat and waterproof – (looking a bit like Gandalf, I thought, but definitely without any concealed fireworks) along a very squelchy field-path to the allotment. To say the plots are not looking their best is an understatement. All seemed dank, dreary, waterlogged, weedy, and downright dismal, and certainly not worthy of a photo – not even a moody, atmospheric one. BUT there was produce, much of it still thriving in the mild, wet weather. So here we have it – on the kitchen table my winter harvest, a humble ‘still life’ tribute to the Flemish masters who created such scenic wonders out of lemons, melons and grapes. And also inspired by Jude who kindly said we could interpret her winter garden challenge any way we liked.
So please pop over to her garden photography blog for more Winter Gardens
