Of Steam Trains and Cowslips and other Dainty Things

"Your web log yesterday was tasteless and unnecessary," Lady Mondegreen rebukes me. "People don't visit my secret garden for helpings of gore and self-pity." But she glances at the dressing on my lip and softens. "What about the plates Marilyn gave you yesterday? Surely they are worthy of mention.?"

Mmm. I knew nothing about Mason's Ironstone until Marilyn piled a stack of it into my arms.

"For your old house," she smiled, and I thought once again of the crack in its Being.  So here is one of the little saucers, adrift on the ephemeral stream. A feature of Mason's Ironstone is that international retailers applied to have their own stamp added to the back, and this one bears the mark: John Bates and Co Ltd, Christchurch.N.Z. John Bates had a well-regarded china shop in Cashel Street and is buried in the Waimate Cemetry.

"And you haven't shown them the cowslips that you mentioned on 27 September," Lady Mondegreen reminds me. So here they are. I had imagined them to be woodland creatures but remember seeing them flowering on a steep and sunny bank, densely massed and mingled with forget-me-nots, somewhere in Northumbria (England).  Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix in Perennials-Volume I point out that they are meadow plants. And maybe I'm wrong...  and they are oxslips not cowslips after all. These are nestled at the foot of the walnut tree, thriving with a mixture of woodland plants in open sunlight till now, when the walnut begins to open its leaves.

So this day draws to a close - a day that began dynamically, with a view from my bed, of snow on Mt Grey, a passing steam train and rainbows threading the stormy sky.

Cowslip Primula veris

Take Care

It has been bitterly cold and very wet today, though Elwin managed to mow thoroughly before the rain came. So this evening as the ephemeral stream rises, its dark flow is clear to see as it runs through its closely mown channel. Right now I'm nursing a split lip - and gum - a result of over-eager pruning! This morning while I was trimming some low branches ahead of the ride-on mower, I used my body to brace the loppers against, while cutting a face-level stem: and my mouth took the full force of the steel arm when the branch gave way. I carried on working with a mouthful of blood and the wound has continued to ooze all day. I've done this sort of thing before, using my body as a brace for a face-level cut. As a council gardener perched in a street tree - a vigourous London plane - with my arm wrapped around an upright branch and drawing my pruning saw through it towards me, it was my cheek that caught the saw teeth as the blade finally sliced through the wood. I bore a string of tooth marks up my bruised cheek for a few days. So I ought to have learned my lesson by now - must make sure I don't do the same thing with a chainsaw...

Spring Flowers

I am so tired: too tired to write much after a day of weeding a shady border, so here are some pictures to speak a thousand words while I savour my aching limbs and retire very satisfied with progress in the garden.







The red tulips and the white came from a fundraising catalogue in the autumn. Because they weren't what I'd ordered, I carelessly mislaid the varietal names, but I am pleased to see them in flower, and I especially like the delicacy and shape of the white ones.

Another Garden

This morning I visited Breedenbroek Gardens, nestled low on the Ashley Downs and owned by Kay MacLachan and Rudi Steyn. The Ben McMaster design provides the English inspired structure, with it's avenues and axes, its hornbeam hedges and perennial borders, but Kay and Rudi actively develop and cultivate this lovely space. It pleases me as a gardeners' garden, but within its discipline there is room for friends, and children, and their animals. I was surprised that the details that pleased me most were not the little clump of wood anemones flowering amongst a mound of bugle weed, nor the eager drifts of creamy-flowered comfrey, nor even the large clump of Astelia 'Silver Queen' under the swamp cypresses in the middle of the pond (which pleased me very much) but the thoughtfulness and evidence of habitation threading through the grand design. I liked to find, at a point where a garden path nudged the farm fence, that a little gate stood open - as if by chance - inviting the visitor to walk beyond the garden across a bridge and back in from the farm by another gate. I liked to find a lamb's feeding bottle on a seat in the transept of Rudi's magnificent hand built pavilion. I liked to find a hen run that was not worn to dust, but planted with fowl-proof tussocks, star jasmine and a crepuscule rose scrambling over the chicken wire.

I liked to come across my children and theirs laughing together in the formal spaces.

Visit: at least the website http://www.breedenbroek.com/ for more details and good photographs.
Wood anemone Anemone nemerosa

Bugleweed Ajuga reptans

Ground cover comfrey Symphytum tuberosum

Swamp cypress Taxodium distichum

Fowl-proof tussock Festuca glauca

Star jasmine Trachelospermum jasminoides

I'm writing about yesterday this morning, because yesterday - well yesterday was a day for lazing in the sun, and eating ice-creams and admittedly making a few observations. One of them a view from inside - looking out of that little window that I showed you on 2nd September. I have recently cleared the space at the bottom of the Skudder House's stairwell (it was crammed with carpet offcuts, ancient NZ Listeners and cardboard boxes) and now that it is clear, I am enjoying looking through to this space and beyond: it is both a step towards the unknown and a portal to the Secret Garden.

Home and Away

Lady Mondegreen had the Secret Garden to herself today: the roaming dandelions and the drifting daisies, the winging kingfisher and the nesting starlings - all these delights were hers to enjoy undisturbed.

And me? I escaped with school holiday Spirits, to Hanmer Springs, to bask taskless in the sun around the hot pools or wander with Elwin in the cool forest on Conical Hill. I was intrigued to hear the bellbirds chortling in the Douglas firs high overhead, these nectar feeders thriving, it seems in exotic gymnosperms.

I don't usually enjoy watching children chase birds, but today I couldn't help admiring the tolerance of a chaffinch being chased by a little girl: round and round an oak tree at a toddle she chased it, while the bird kept his distance without lifting a wing. Later while picnicking I noticed the chaffinches scavenging tourist leavings, so no wonder they can deal with a little human interaction.

In these higher altitudes the wild plums are flowering in pastoral groves and the ornamental cherries - spent in Christchurch now - are still lovely in the alpine village.

So I return refreshed - and delighted that one of my attendant holiday Spirits has helped me find my way back to posting photos!

Douglas fir Pseudotsuga menziesii

Wild plums and ornamental cherries Prunus spp

Perfect

Another glorious day, which I must convey in words only. The strong Equinoctal winds have abated and the last few days have hung perfectly in blue skies or a moist haze. I have been weeding, planting (delphiniums today) listening to a blackbird opening a walnut on the veranda; I am entranced by the cascade of apple blossom showing through the green veil of the weeping willow. and I am dazzled by the late flowering of the kowhai.  At least one bellbird has been attracted to its nectar bearing blooms. Their bright yellow is bold against the blue sky, and harmonious beside the coppery leaves of the big plum tree.

Kowhai Sophora tetraptera
also S. microphylla