The garden takes no notice of the lockdown, and work continues apace. Having had it in mind for years already, I finally planted new box hedges around all of the North Lawn (and in quite a few other places as well - 550 box plants goes quite a long way....and can get fairly boring by day four of wielding the planting spade), while the TD has encased all of the pop-up sprinklers which deal with the edges of the North Garden in rather handsome copper piping, which hides their unattractive plastic casing, and has a distinctly Sissinghurst look to it. He has also nearly finished re-making ( I would say 'restoring' but it wouldn't be true; the old wood was too far gone to be capable of saving, and so it's been a matter of building again from new...) the wooden walkway on the West side of the North Garden, while I've been ( and the job is ongoing) taking apart ten years of compost heap, and using it to mulch every plant, pretty much in the entire garden. It's wonderful stuff - rich and dark, to the extent that it looks almost edible - but the supply is endless, and I need to get it done, so that I can then re-construct the compost heap once more, in small, with what remains from the old heap which is not yet usable.
We've made a major decision to re-work the Wooodland garden, under the pine trees, where until now there's merely been a straight path which goes through from one end to the other, and with only a passing nod to what is planted there (many camellias, with the occasional aspera, and pieris, and some distinctly blowsy hydrangeas arborescens) and the path has now been re-cast into a very long and windy serpentine form, which allows a much closer inspection of the shrubs. I have on order some acers and a rhododendron (which is optimistic, I know, but it's a matter of getting the humidity level right) and a viburnum, and some more Serratas, and a Baggesen's Gold (lonicera)...all of them to help to define and emphasise the new layout, and already I've moved a philadelphus, and a spirea, and two hydrangeas and a rather large camellia, all to the same purpose. It keeps us busy.
The Paoli came for 'distant' coffee, on Saturday - which was the first time we'd actually seen anybody at all in nearly seven weeks - and we had garden chairs at the end of the North Lawn, and dutifully all sat two metres apart from each other. At least that seems set to change, soon!
Tonight's Dinner:
Leeks (cold), with Tomato and Basil coulis.
Pork Chops, with sage and wine sauce; braised celery.
Bergamot souffles.
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3 comments:
Lovely to see the photos of your garden - my is it lush! And to hear all you are doing. I had lots of plans, but the day to day routine of trying to keep down weeds in the borders and keep the grass below knee-high means that the plans are still "on the list". Looks like we might have guests here this summer after all, depending on how the airlines cope.
It is rather bizarre, given that I have no more free time to devote to these tasks now than I had in the past - so, why it is that they are now (finally) receiving attention is anybody's guess! The only job - which I forgot to mention, in fact - where lockdown is relevant is the fact that I've been taking advantage of their absence to nip through into the Scouts' field next door in order to take down from their side a lot of fifty-year old bay trees, which presumably started life long-ago as a small hedge, in order to let through a lot more light into the soft fruit garden, and into the South Garden. When life returns to normal, and the Scouts re-surface, I can be confident that they will notice no difference...
I'm a bit surprised that you anticipate international arrivals - I thought the EU restriction is that international travel can only be 'in case of emergency' , and that that's unlikely to change before at least September. We don't expect to be able to go to London again before then at the very least. We have friends in the UK and in Holland who are champing at the bit to return to their houses here, and the current rules don't seem to allow it. There was some noise on Radio 4 recently, too, about introducing a formal fourteen day quarantine for anybody arriving into the UK - and were they actually to do that, I could imagine that what's sauce for the Goose, etc.
In theory, I may be able to get my haircut again on 1 June, which is accordingly currently the next red-letter day in the calendar! Cautious use of the kitchen scissors as I stand in front of the bathroom mirror is very definitely a sub-optimal compromise...
Belated reply Pomiane - love your latest photos of the garden and the roses. Two lots of our guests have cancelled, but the remaining two - for July and for August - have not been in touch to say they are not coming. We'll see. In the meantime, we continue to garden and try to keep pace with the weeds and the grass. OH managed to get a haircut - well organised with disposable capes and masks for anyone who hasn't got one. Hope you get that haircut!
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