The Thunderer

There is a column in the Times called ‘the Thunderer’, in which someone lets off steam about a personal annoyance, or disagrees vehemently with some recent public decision. I fear I have a touch of ‘the Thunderer’ about me today. The gardening catalogues have started to arrive and my blood pressure is rising. Do I want a yellow geranium? No I don’t, in this house geraniums are red. Do I want trailing pansies for my hanging basket? No. Trailing sweet peas? No, they should go up not down. Nor do I want trailing tomatoes, and as for trying to decide between trailing petunias which are all on the same page, which all look identical to me, and all cost exactly the same price- Petunia Classic (trailing), Petunia Million Bells (trailing), Petunia Million Bells Patio (trailing), and Petunia Tumbelina (presumably trailing if the name is anything to go by), well I’m left trailing, feeling that I need a quiet sit down in order to recover. Everything seems to be ‘New’, or a ‘World Exclusive’. It’s either bigger, taller, smaller, variegated, or improved. I just want Ordinary- tried and tested. I don’t want any ‘Miracles’. I wish the catalogues would stop ‘shouting’ at me-‘Customer Favourite’, ‘Great in Pots’ and here’s a good one, ‘Mysterious Dark foliage. Sure to impress your neighbours’. Well it won’t because they won’t be able to see it. It’s well known that dark almost black foliage disappears against the earth, and you can’t see it until you are inches away. Hopeless.
Then we come to the actual ordering. Do I want 100 Spring Plug Plants ‘for only £9.99 + 60 free’ or do I want 50 Spring Garden Ready Plants ‘from £9.99 + 20 free’? Please can I be credited with enough intelligence to realise that this means I could either have 160 plants for £10, (which means they are extremely cheap and will therefore be Extremely Small), or I can have 70 plants for £10 (and these will be a Little Bigger, but not much). But wait, for we’ve not finished. I could now choose between Spring Maxi or Jumbo Ready- 30 plants from £11.99, or 12 plants from £9.99. But I’m exhausted and irritated, so in fact I am probably not going to order anything. And do you know what that means? It means that they will send me another catalogue in about a fortnight, and for as long as I do not order anything from these catalogues they will keep coming. Bah! Humbug!
I’d feel more forgiving towards them if they also included a bit of useful information for gardeners such as ‘needs acid soil’, but that is rarely the case. The novice gardener may order, for example, The Himalayan Blue Poppy (‘Rare Blue Poppy’), meconopsis sheldonii, and wonder why it dies in the alkaline soil of their garden. ‘Very prone to slug and snail damage’ would be helpful to print over the picture of the delphiniums, ditto the lupins, ditto hostas, which instead are shown pristine and emblazoned with ‘Great for Shade’.All in all it appears that I have outgrown these catalogues. They are bad for my health. I’ll let you know if I find one that keeps me calmer.

Deep Thoughts whilst picking the beans

I was picking French beans on a misty morning after a great deal of rain. The ground was wet and soggy. My jeans were soaking against my legs from brushing against even wetter foliage and the water from the wet beans was running up my wrists and further up into my shirt. In short, I wasn’t comfortable and I consoled myself with the thought that gardening must be a good character-forming pastime. I thought that picking the beans would come under the heading of ‘Learning to deal with Discomfort and developing Stamina’.

Then I thought, what about ‘Learning to Share’? Yet another year has passed when I have not tasted a single cherry off our tree, and as I write this the blackbirds are eating the figs and the squirrel is chomping away at the hazel nuts, and I’ve just remembered the row of spinach and late lettuces that disappeared overnight in a slug onslaught. Which brings me to the next lesson- ‘How to Control your Temper’… Better not to let those expletives carry over the garden wall…

No, watching things you have nurtured get eaten, destroyed by the weather, or suffering some other mishap comes under the heading of ‘Dealing with Frustration and Disappointment’. I am reminded of an incident years ago when some small visiting guests came into the kitchen proudly bearing most of my crop of peaches, still very small, green and hard. I’m trying now to develop my ‘Patience’ as that peach tree went the way of many others with leaf curl and last year we planted a new one, plus an apricot and greengage. So far, not a sausage, let alone a fruit on any of them.

Any way the current virtue to nurture is ‘Organisation and Forethought’. By now you should have ordered (or bought), your bulbs for planting October/November. You should have thought about your sweet peas for next year. There should be a mammoth tidy up everywhere in the garden, and by the time you have taken your umpteenth trip to the potting shed to fetch- the rake, - the pruners, - a fork. - the string, ‘Planning’, as well as ‘Forethought’ would be an advantage. As the weather worsens and we try to develop ’Learning to deal with Discomfort and develop Stamina’ this will be an ideal opportunity for ‘Overcoming Vanity’. The warmest, oldest, scruffiest clothes are the best, with plenty of pockets for bits of string and a battered hat for keeping the hair out of the eyes. No mirrors in the potting shed.

Now just back to the French beans. Because of the atrocious weather I had not picked them for some days. Consequently they were somewhat large. But I have found a superb recipe which suits the larger French bean. It is from Jane Grigson’s book of Vegetables (wonderful), and it is called Greek Beans. It involves beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, oil and parsley. It is simple, and delicious hot or cold. Better the next day even.

Life's Ambiguities

Our cellar is a place full of surprises, partly because it gets things stashed away down there rather in the manner of other peoples attics, and then the said items get forgotten until the 10 year clear out, and then get thrown away. But on this particular wet Sunday (how many have we had of those?), we were amusing new child guests with a tour of the nooks and crannies in this old house. Ooooooh, Scarey....

On the floor in the gloom is a glistening pile of...what?? Well it /they looked extremely unattractive. A fair amount of poking and prodding went on, whilst various theories were put forward. They ranged from dead mouse to cat turd. Thankfully my eldest son came to the rescue. He is in the TA and has not long returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, so being the brave soldier that he is, he picked It up, and we examined it/them in the day light. Hard objects, about the size of a walnut, black when cut open, smelling of mushrooms- of course! Truffles! In the cellar! Our fortunes are made. Rarely have I seen my son so excited. He put two in a jar with some spelt (to flavour it), and went happily back to London licking his lips and ready for a fungal feast.

I do like to be absolutely sure where mushrooms are concerned, so on Monday morning I was hot on the telephone to the RHS. So helpful, but not the right people- they only deal with fungal infections on your plants, but I was advised to contact Kew Gardens, where they have a mycology department. The joy of the internet when you need information. An e-mail to Kew was replied to almost immediately- my request for information had been forwarded to the Mycology Dept to a Dr Spooner, who has written a book on British truffles. That very same morning I had a reply asking that I send a sample to Kew. I should say here that all that morning I had been smelling gas in my kitchen and had checked the cooker about 4 times. When I came to pack the remaining truffles up I realised it was them! Now the smell was far from pleasant and very pungent and I wondered what the post office would make of the package. The lady behind the counter and I had a long conversation about it.

Thank you Dr Spooner for your prompt reply the following day telling me that the specimen had arrived and that it was the so-called 'stinking slime truffle'-Melanogaster ambiguus. Fairly common and (Most interesting) that gas leaks have been mistakenly reported based on the presence of the fungus due to its powerful odour. Fancy that! It is not harmful, but not eaten because it smells so unpleasant. Heigh ho...

Garden of Remembrance

Yes, I will remember this garden, viewed as it was last Wednesday when we attended the cremation of a very dear friend. My thoughts go something like this... I was feeling sad and emotional, reflective and quiet. My husband and I had arrived a little early for the service and it was a beautiful day, so we chose to walk around the grounds with each other and our memories. The green space around the building (why do I find it so difficult to call it by its name?, the Crematorium), was pleasant. Large, mature trees gave shade and that calming rustling noise that leaves make in a little breeze. But when we came to the Garden of Remembrance what did we find? Municipal planting at its most vivid. Imagine large orange marigolds mixed with large yellow marigolds in serried ranks, edged with buzy lizzies in two different shades of pink! Glaring at me whilst I glared at them for disturbing my equilibrium and for not helping me to be peaceful, reflective or quiet. Far from being eased on this most difficult of days, I was distracted. I found myself pondering on who could possibly have thought that this seaside roundabout planting scheme was suitable here. What would have been wrong with muted, pale colours- white, green, pale blue and pink, cream and some soft waving grasses?

Better to try and forget this floral faux pas and remember instead the exquisite arrangement of flowers picked out of the garden which was placed on top of the wicker coffin. Nothing could have been more beautiful or appropriate for him. Lilies, allium, catalpa blossom, eryngiums and grey green foliage and then the bunches of sweet smelling sweetpeas which his friends added as we said our farewells.

August Depression

I’m depressed. In the Spring I have the optimism and excitement of the coming gardening year to keep my spirits up. My time is spent in planning and preparation and in my mind’s eye the garden will become a wonderful idyll- the culmination of my winters armchair gardening. Sadly I now survey the reality. The roses are going over and all need dead heading, a lot of the holly hocks are the wrong colour (a particularly vicious shade of shocking pink), the herbaceous border looks as though a bomb has hit it with everything too tall and collapsed because of the wind and the rain. In the vegetable garden my prize squash, which was doing extremely well and was going to drape itself picturesquely over an arch, was munched off in the night along with the cucumber designed to do the same thing on the other side. N.B. The new product which I sent off for at a cost of £15 called ‘Slug Buggers’ made out of wool, all very eco friendly and environmental, DOES NOT WORK.

However, luckily there are a few bright compensations. The water butts are full and that always makes me feel comfortable. The sweet peas have not been so good for years. The manure filled trench and all the rain have certainly suited them. I pick them every day and the smell is sublime. The broad beans have been delicious, the new French parsley and the English mint are romping and we have planted a packet of asparagus seed, every one of which seems to have germinated. So I won’t give up yet. When gardening spirits need a little restoration I always find it helpful to read about someone else’s garden and I recommend a book that I am reading at the moment by Katherine Swift called the Morville Hours. I used to read her column in the Saturday Times and missed it sadly when she stopped. She writes beautifully, intertwining her gardening writing with history, folklore and much else besides. This book is described as ‘a book about time and the garden: all gardens, but also a particular one-that of the Dower House at Morville, where the author arrived in 1988 to make a new garden of her own.’ Highly recommended.

How many little garden notebooks do you possess? You know, the little ones that you keep in your handbag (sorry gentlemen) and jot down names during garden visits and notes during lectures. I have quite a few, mainly filled with indecipherable scrawlings and unconnected, seemingly random flower names without dates or reference to where I was when I took the note. But here is a little gem from a visit to Christ Church picture gallery to see an exhibition of engravings. From a Durer engraving –Fortune 1495 (which must have contained an eryngium somewhere in it) I took this note from beside the picture. ‘Eryngium. In German sometimes known by its common name of ‘mannertreu’, translated as ‘men faithful’. Given as a herbal tea it was supposed to guarantee lasting faithfulness’. As my eryngiums turn the most wonderful shade of violet and the bees gather over them this interesting but entirely useless fact will increase my pleasure, and yours, I hope. Let’s begin to plan for next year.

A little reflection on Jerusalem Artichokes

You know that sometimes one becomes so used to something being there that one no longer thinks about it. One just takes it for granted and gives it no further thought.

So it is with my patch of Jerusalem artichokes. There it was when we first took over the garden and at that stage of my life I don’t think that I even knew what one was. Then as my culinary skills increased I did learn how to cook them and we’ve eaten them occasionally every winter since then. Just a few for 37 years. To be frank they are rather a bother. They are best when freshly dug, preferably after the first frost to improve their flavour. But they are very fiddly to clean and peel, being very earthy and full of knobbles and bulges and nooks and crannies where the earth really sticks in. No, definitely not for the faint hearted. And then, of course, there is their effect on the digestive system that leads to their nickname that I am far too polite to write here.

So why, I ask myself on an autumn stroll round the veg garden, do we have a Jerusalem artichoke patch the size of 3 parking spaces, growing enough to feed the whole town? It was a moment of illumination. I looked at the patch with new eyes and knew that it needed to be drastically reduced in size, otherwise we are in danger of these tubers with Triffid like stalks (they are related to the sunflower), taking over the garden. I already fear that they have their eyes on the green house and will erupt inside at any minute. They are certainly not difficult to dig up, but any little tuber left in the ground will begin to reproduce. Any body who would like to grow their very own J As, please come to me and I’ll give you a starter pack. They are not very attractive to look at. They don’t flower. They do spread, as I’ve said. They have absolutely nothing to do with the Globe Artichoke or with Jerusalem, and you won’t eat them very often. But, hey, somebody thought that they were a good enough idea to plant in my garden to start with, and they do make a good soup.