Shropshire

It Seemed Like A Big Day Out

We’ve not been gadding for ages. He who builds sheds has been much occupied during our rainless days, taking the internal house doors off their hinges and, one by one, stripping them down and repainting them. As may be imagined with a hundred year old house, there are many layers to remove. He’s working outside with wallpaper stripping gun which peels off ancient gloss and varnish like a dream.

It was during one such operation on the cloakroom door that we decided opaque glass panels in the upper door half would make for more light in the neighbouring gloomy utility room. Glass panels were duly ordered and on Friday we set off (from the somewhat isolated fastness of Bishop’s Castle) to collect them.

This involved a twenty mile drive to our county town of Shrewsbury. We’d not been there for over two years, not since our house selling days and foiled attempts to find a rental property there. In some ways the prospect of this outing made me realize how our horizons have shrunk, though not in a bad way. But once our life was repeated long haul flights between UK and Africa. Now, I feel I’ve been on a journey if we go to next door Clun, eight miles away or to Montgomery, just over the Welsh border. But then both those places are so lovely, each in their own particular ways, what else could one want?

One of the reasons the Shrewsbury trip turned into a haul was because the main route out of Bishop’s Castle was closed and we were sent on a diversion, wending back and forth between Wales and Shropshire. But it was a sunny day and the countryside, with its undulating hillscapes, glorious, so why should we complain. We even had a red leg partridge step into the lane in front of us. (It withrew unscathed). And there were buzzards and red kites high in the blue, wafting over newly mown hayfields, the roadside hedgerows full of wildflowers – honeysuckle, willow herb.

After such bucolic byways, Shrewsbury with its multiple bypasses (internal and external), huge traffic islands, and peripheral industrial estates and retail zones is something of a culture shock. But the old town itself, on a hill and cupped in a loop of the River Severn, has been going since at least Saxon times, and so has many ancient and scenic parts. These days, too, it is cafe culture central. Just look at this LINK.

And one of the best locations for eating out is Shrewsbury Market. Which is where we headed (after negotiating the ring roads and industrial quarters) for a spot of lunch at the Moli Tea House. To say their exquisitely served Asian offerings are delicious is an understatement – tiny Chinese dumplings with dipping sauce, delicate meat balls served in a crisp lettuce leaf wrap. Heavenly.

Later, we wandered around the stalls of artisan bread, fresh vegetables, farm eggs and meat, looked at what people were enjoying in the other eateries, bought some fresh fish. Then headed back to our border refuge, to the Castle that has no castle, this time on the truck-roaring A49, the main highway south, which is quicker if further. We were anyway glad to leave it behind, back to the quietness of our home terrain and a restful cup of tea.

#SimplyRed Day 9

Enter The Dragons

Yesterday I posted scenes ‘live’ from the Bishop’s Castle carnival, today we have photos from another of the town’s annual parties, last year’s Michaelmas Fair. It begins with a parade in which Chinese dragons and drummers steal the show. (Sadly no competing Welsh dragons in spite of the town’s closeness to Wales, but then you never know what might turn up this year).

As happened yesterday, the weather was cool and gloomy, but there was no dampening of the spirits; not once the Rajasthan Brass Band took to the streets…

…and the town’s own Shropshire Bedlams Morris men stepped out, all jingling bells and vigorous stick clashing…(More about local Morris heritage here)

The Michaelmas Fair takes place all over the town, in the pubs and park and church halls. A stage below the Town Hall hosts live bands all day. There are street stalls and street food, bubble blowing, fire eating, an afternoon parade of steam engines, tractors and classic vehicles, headed by Clive the elephant, another star attraction. (The town’s elephant connection is explained in a previous squares challenge post here.) And the whole is rounded off with an evening lantern procession through the town, all lanterns made by Castle folk.

I didn’t catch Clive the elephant last year, but here’s a photo of him from a sunnier fair:

This year’s fair is on the 20th September. More details HERE. But before that there’s another big fun event: the Party in the Park on the 19th July. A day of non stop live bands, workshops, and family activities from noon to 10.30 pm. Sometimes life in this small country town can sound a tad exhausting.

And on that note, back to dragons, this one from the 2023 lantern parade:

#SimplyRed Day 6

Today’s The Day ~ Bishop’s Castle Carnival

There are times when Bishop’s Castle might strike one as a sleepy place, but looks can deceive. This is a town that knows how to party, and there are several festivals through the year. Today is carnival day. The parade kicked off at 1.pm. headed by the town crier caught here on his cell phone – a pleasing conjunction of time past and present on the communications front.

Fat Cat Brass followed on his heels, setting the tone – full-on jollification despite the cool and gloomy day.

And then came the floats, with much emphasis on growing and farming and country living: lots of vintage tractors, classic vehicles, steam engines and the timber merchants’ smart fleet of trucks hauling the big floats.

After wending around the town and down our street, the parade headed for the park for an afternoon and evening of fun and games: bouncy castle, live music, falconry demo, sheep show and mini digger competition not the least of it.

And now in late afternoon, the sun has come out. A grand day out all round then.

#SimplyRed Day 5

Six-Word Saturday

Blown Away

The first opium poppies have bloomed their best, the bees done their work. Seed capsules are primed, the fancy skirts discarded, blown off on the breeze.

If I leave them, the pods will ripen until crisp and brown as walnut shells. The merest tap will have them shedding seed like shaking a salt cellar. And come next summer, they’ll be back again. Or maybe not. Poppies, I find, are a capricious lot. Love me while you can, they say.

#SimplyRed Day 4

Ladybirds ~ The Gardener’s Pest Controllers

Much like poppies, ladybirds come with instant eye-appeal. Who knows why: the shiny red wing cases that look like polished enamel; those striking black dots. From infancy I was anyway brought up with the notion of them: those lovely Ladybird children’s books so exciting to receive; cosy Ladybird cotton jumpers (items now known as sweatshirts) in bright primary colours. I had a red one, the colour of the ladybird. And a yellow one, the colour of this Golden Marguerite (Anthemis tinctora).

These days, as a more than grown up gardener, I mostly appreciate their appetite for aphids. They are at their most voracious during the larval stage, when they are distinctly creepy beasties: the minute Darth Vaders of insectdom:

https://www.field-studies-council.org/shop/publications/ladybird-larvae-guide/

So do not squash!

Some of their kind also eat scale insects and feed on mildew, a fact I’ve only just discovered as I’m writing this.

And another surprising find (to me anyway) that according to the Woodland Trust site there are 26 kinds of ladybird in the British Isles, with our gardens likely to be host to several species at any one time. I’ve only ever registered the existence of three or four types, including the Seven-Spot in the header photo. One of the commonest is an incomer from Asia – the Harlequin, which may be black with red spots or vice versa. It also eats aphids, but may at times predate on native ladybirds. Advice seems to be to let it alone. Trying to eradicate it might involve too much mis-identification of native species which have similar livery.

Looking now through my allotment photo archive, I’ve found I’ve snapped a Twenty-Two Spot ladybird. At least I think that’s what it is. It’s on a dahlia leaf and is one of the mildew eating varieties.

Seven-Spotters in action on an aphid colony

#SimplyRed Day 3 Becky has us all in clover today.

My Garden Supervisor: Robin Not So Red

Perhaps it’s the time of year, the courtship fine feathers and family raising done, but this robin’s breast looks to me more orange than red. I think it may be moulting time too. Some days when it pops into the garden, it looks as if it’s got out of its nest on the wrong side – feathers every which way. But then sloppy personal grooming doesn’t stop it from giving me hard looks, scrutinizing every gardening move in case worms and grubs are in the offing.

These days it is not so insistent and no longer perches on the nearest pot and cheeps until I make some attempt to provide. Not so many mouths to feed. So now, when it sees I’m only dead-heading or watering, it soon vanishes. Clearly it has other calls to make about the town.

#SimplyRed Day 2 Today on July Squares, Becky pays tribute to Cee whose inspiring photo challenges brought so many of us together. She is very much missed.

The Changing Seasons: June 2025

My last post perhaps gave the impression that there’s little room for flowers in our small garden; that all my attention has been on growing stuff to eat. But not so. June has been wonderfully floriferous, especially in the border atop the terrace wall. And beneath it, while the geraniums, centaurea, foxgloves, valerian and St. Cecilia rose came to full bloom, Graham sat on a chair, suitably hatted, and methodically chipped off the failed and peeling plaster. Our builder, Alan, says he’ll come and re-do it in autumn. And while he’s here sort out the old back garden steps. The house improvements continue.

St. Cecilia rose, Ann Thomson geranium, Sherbet Fizz pot marigold

Looking from the top of the garden towards the kitchen door, the border runs between the far end of shed and the right hand path. It also includes two miniature apple trees planted back in the autumn. The rose, St. Cecilia, was languishing there when we moved in nearly two years ago, but she’s had a good feed and a hard prune, and this June has been flowering wonderfully. She may be a tad wishy-washy colour-wise, but she has an exquisitely delicate scent.

Self-sown foxgloves among the geraniums at the path end of the border

The garden peripheries have also bloomed over the last couple of weeks, surprising given our near total lack of rain for many weeks. In the northerly corner the medicinal herb, St. John’s Wort is now soaring into the apple tree. I grew it from seed donated by a supporter of the Bishop’s Castle Seed Bank. The seed packets sit in a tray at the Town Hall and are free, although donations are welcomed.

Also blooming for the first time is this dreamy perennial foxglove. It has a tendency to flop somewhat in warmer temperatures, and has been struggling in the dry soil under the big apple tree. Mulching with hot-bin compost helped. And some hand watering of course.

And another cool looking plant that’s just started to flower. A white mallow. She’s been in several spots around the garden, but is now in the rear westerly corner, behind the Rooster potatoes and in front of a very nice miniature crab apple tree. The moves seem to have left her unscathed:

At the front of the house we have two biggish square beds, created after removing ugly paving (recycled into shed base and new back garden steps), but they are very much a work in progress. In the southerly one, I have some currently very small shrubs growing on, a couple of escallonias and a cistus, and in the meantime there’s a mix of herbaceous perennials and annuals, cosmos and zinnias, filling the spaces.

I was missing my Evereste crab apple tree, and managed to find a miniature one. It’s planted in a small circular raised bed of corten steel which I’m expecting to rust. Around it are some assorted small plants, including a white rock rose and Santolini rosmarinifolia, which are evergreen, Salvia Salavatore, and a trailing plant, Oregano Kent Beauty (centre front). This last was a wonderful plant discovery courtesy of Jude at Cornwall in Colours. I’d never seen it before I saw it on her blog. It really seems to like our garden, so thank you, Jude.

In the background right, not yet flowering, are three alcalthaea – a cross between mallow and hollyhocks. They are apparently short-lived perennials, but we’ll see. Last year they grew very tall and had to be curtailed, but their peachy pale flowers were very pretty.

Plants apart, the main activity in June was having our drive dug up by Justin, Bishop’s Castle’s professional excavator sans pareil. He mostly had to use a pick, this because the exact location of our water main pipe was uncertain. And this was happening because we wanted our rusted hundred year old, cast iron water pipe replaced with a plastic one. To say this was one heavy duty task is an understatement. Order is restored, but the drive now needs to be resurfaced.

Out beyond the garden gate:

A week last Sunday in Bishop’s Castle we had midsummer celebrations in the form of a gathering of Morris dancing troupes, local and further flung. They started on Sunday morning with rousing performances and much drumming at the next door care home, after which they streamed up the road past the house to continue performing at the top of the town. Later when we tried to drive out of the town by our usual route, we found the road ahead full of dancers and musicians, and were advised that they might be there for some time and so would we mind making a detour. We didn’t. It was all good fun and surely makes a change from having multiple local roads closed for cable laying.

And yesterday (Sunday) we treated ourselves to another local institution – climbing to the top of the town to visit the House on Crutches Museum. (I forgot to take a photo of the outside so click on the link to see it). We hadn’t been for two years, but it’s a wonderfully quirky collection, revealing many aspects of Bishop’s Castle history, in particular how it featured on the ancient drovers’ route out of Wales, a way of life and of making a living that survived some 800 years. At the top of the rickety stairs that we both managed to fall up, I stopped to take this view down the High Street: a sleepy Sunday in Bishop’s Castle.

Today as I write this, on the last day of June, we are having our hottest day so far this year, apparently 29 degrees C (84 degrees F) at 3 pm this afternoon at Shropshire’s weather station in Shawbury. Now at 6 pm it’s 26 degrees in the house, but there’s a pleasant breeze in the garden, as there has been all day. Tomorrow, temperatures begin to fall, and in fact by next Sunday it will be 12 – 15 degrees C, this according to YR the Norwegian Met Office, which is pretty good on UK weather. And this may also mark the beginning of rain. At last! Yesterday, we had a few sprinkles and the plants all stood up tall, as if expecting a good drench. They were duly teased.

And so I’ll round this up with a shot of the snapdragons that have flowered heroically all through June, and with not a drop of water from me. They are pretty much over now and making lots of seed. I think I’ll give them their heads. Next June I could have a whole bed of snapdragons. How wonderful would that be.

The Changing Seasons is hosted monthly by Brian at bushboys world and Ju-Lyn at Touring My Backyard. Please pay them a visit.

Six On Saturday ~ Produce!

As you can see, the ‘upstairs’ garden behind our house is really rather modest. And here, currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, chaos reigns; this courtesy of a gardener who still thinks her growing spaces comprise two seventy by 15 foot allotment plots plus the home garden with its adjacent stretch of ‘guerrilla gardened’ field over the back fence. Heigh ho! Those were the days when we lived beside Wenlock Edge.

Now, mostly settled in our new home, I do know I must cut my cultivating cloth according to the physical means of production. (The lawns, though, do seem to keep shrinking). Also this year there’s been the matter of watering through the mostly rainless months of spring and early summer. This has been quite hard work. (I know mulching is much of the answer, but my hot compost bin can only yield so much stuff, and so far it’s spread rather too thinly). And then there are birds and cats and insects to contend with which means everything edible has to be netted, which is not very attractive. So, as I say, chaos presently reigns, but with a few organised segments in between.

1.) The first of these to produce excitement in the Farrell household are the two short rows of potatoes. They were planted at the end of March, ten in each row. Even with little rain, and not much watering, the Belle de Fontenay have produced some lovely salad potatoes. (They’re also a main crop variety if left longer, but that’s unlikely to happen).

Behind them is a row of Rooster red spuds, also main crop. The plants have grown astonishingly tall, given the weather, while the Belle de Fontenay have flopped flat in front of them. I think the Rooster must have commandeered the downward flow of any available groundwater from the hill above.

2.) The next excitement this week was a bunch of carrots, and not a single sign of carrot root fly in any of them. I have attempted to protect the rows by growing them in a raised bed, between onions and covered with some fine mesh. Last year all my carrots were root-flied.

3.) We eat a lot of greens, and this year I’ve grown some different varieties of kale, including, pink frilly, Tuscan, and a crossed Tuscan and Daubenton’s perennial kale, the seed produced by a forest gardener on eBay. (There’s also some Swiss chard in the bunch below.) I know kale isn’t to everyone’s taste, and I’ve yet to try this, but I recently learned you can roast it till crispy. This involves ripping up the washed and dried leaves (without the stalks), tossing the pieces in oil, spreading them on a baking sheet and cooking for 15-20 minutes in a fairly hot oven. Sesame seeds and favourite spices along with sea salt and black may be added.

4.) Yesterday we ate our first homegrown courgette (zucchini), and very nice it was too, sliced and lightly browned in the fat from cooked lardons and then added to a salad.

I put the plant in beside the compost bin, a position that clearly is suiting it. I have some yellow courgettes coming on nearby.

5.) Also in last night’s salad were the first of the field beans. These are a variety of broad (fava) bean, grown mostly in the UK as animal feed or as a green manure, ploughed back in the soil before producing beans. This, I feel, is a lost opportunity. The plants grow four or five feet and taller, while the beans themselves are little bigger than peas. But then the plants are prolific, and so ideal if you haven’t a large enough space to grow their bigger cousins. My field bean plot is around a square metre/yard.

They have anyway, become something of a summer staple in the Farrell household. Picked at the right moment they are deliciously tender and can work as a rather good imitation of guacamole. If they get over-ripe and a bit floury, they make excellent soup and refried beans. The downside is they are fiddly to pod. But then the mass of little pods is good fodder for the hot compost bin, as is all the vegetation (chopped up) when the plants are done.

6.) Last but not least on the garden foraging front are the marigolds (Calendula officionalis). I use them in herbal tea. They contain all sorts of therapeutic properties, known and made use of for a couple of thousand years. But mostly I add the petals to salads, taking care not to include any passing hoverfly. This particular variety is called Sherbet Fizz. We also have lots of self-seeded bright orange and yellow ones from last year’s crop. I love them all. They have to be one of the most heartening of flowers. Simply to gaze on them lifts the spirits.

Six on Saturday: Please call on Jim. There’s always lots to look at and discover in his Cornish garden.

Ructions At The Roost

I don’t know what’s going on with the jackdaws who roost in the big ash tree on the hill above our house. Lately they’ve been bursting over the garden with much clamour and commotion. The eruptions can happen at any time, which is very disturbing when one is hanging out the washing.

Usually big aerial displays of corvids take place at dusk. This seems different though. A bit of a fracas perhaps: the newly fledged offspring coming to terms with their established community, and vice versa. Anyway it strikes this human onlooker as one big family row. Well, just imagine having to live in one tree with this crowd.

Garden Treasures: The Salvaged And The Self-Seeded

Well, this was a big surprise last week, and a very lovely one too. It is the unexpected outcome of a little rescue job performed over a year ago, not long after we’d moved into The Gables. Back then, in the August of 2023, I was making a start on de-jungling various flower beds and found some rhizome fragments swamped by phygelius and euonymus and assorted weedy thugs. They had small spikes of green and white leaves and I thought they might be Japanese iris so I replanted them in a cleared corner and pretty much forgot about them. They certainly didn’t do anything last summer, and when I looked at them early this spring I decided that they weren’t likely to either.

So it just goes to show what can happen when you’re not paying attention.

The spot where they’re growing is fairly sheltered, between Graham’s shed, a blackcurrant bush, the path and the hot composting bin. They are also being encroached on by some super-charged perennial helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ (more of which in a moment). And here’s the puzzle.

When I first spotted the opening iris I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. It looked exactly like the wild yellow flag that grows in and near ponds and marshes. The only difference appeared to be the green stripy leaves. Some internet sleuthing was thus required, and this soon revealed that the iris was indeed a variegated cultivar of the wild form. But how come? There is no standing water in its vicinity. Until last week we’ve been many weeks without rain, and on sunny days, out of the wind, it’s been quite hot, leaving other herbaceous plants in parched beds.

Then I considered the size of the neighbouring helianthus clump. The first shoots are waist high already and the leaves huge. I then began to wonder if the hot compost bin has been having a hand in things. It does make a quantity of liquid gloop which, if I haven’t drained it, dribbles onto the path and onto the flower bed (?). Also the soil there is largely unimproved and thus dark and heavy; slow to dry out where the shed shades it.

Hm. Who knows? I’m just hoping that the iris will decide to stay. There are signs that the plant with the flowering stem is beginning to clump up. The smaller cuttings, in amongst a spreading geranium and rudbeckia, are also beginning to look promising. And now we’ve installed a nearby water butt, I’ve no excuse not monitor watering requirements.

All the same, all the gardening sites do call the variegated yellow flag a wetland plant, and also warn that it, too, can develop thuggish tendencies. A watching brief then.

I rescued this geranium phaeum album early last summer. I discovered it behind the compost bin, lurking mostly under the fence with next door’s garden. It’s now growing under the apple tree at the bottom of the garden, though it’s a spot prone to drying out. It’s doing better in an open sunny border along with geranium Anne Thomson. Damp shadiness is supposed to suit it best.

The recent downpours have bruised many of the geranium faces, but the rescued clumps of Johnson’s Blue (I think that’s what they are) have been putting on a good show and pleasing the bees.

Here they are with this year’s number one self-seeders: white foxgloves. They are everywhere about the garden, although there was no sign of white ones over the last two summers. I love their cool and stately demeanour.

And at the hotter end of the colour palette, in the front garden we have a row of snapdragons, self-seeded along the wall in a remarkably orderly fashion. Anyone would think I’d put them there.

They glow in late afternoon sunshine.

Throughout May we had profusions of columbines, mostly pink and dark mauve. They are actually too much of good thing on the self-seeding front, and I spend much time rooting seedlings out of the vegetable beds. But then amongst them were two plants of delicate lavender, each with a different ‘frock’, one by the green house, and another in the far corner behind an apple tree. They are over now. But I know where they are.

Six On Saturday Please visit host Jim’s lovely garden – so many treats to be found there.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge