Air quality

Fine clear day yesterday, with a bit of breeze and decent if not balmy temperatures, so we decided to take a ride down to Romney Marsh for a much longed-for glimpse of the sea.

We were just climbing out of Bodiam when the car pinged a tyre pressure warning for the offside front.  The tyre wasn’t obviously flat, so we persevered gingerly, stopping from time to time to check.  We called in at Rye Tyres, where a helpful chap established that the pressure was 40psi, a whisker above normal.  So we reset the apparatus and went on our way, rejoicing.  The last car occasionally gave a false fault reading, once when we were barrelling down across the Beauce on a very wet A20. Once I’d shifted all the luggage to get to the tyre pump (and it was a good job the back seats weren’t in use!) we found the pressures all to be fine, and carried on.  So good air quality after all, both times.  Anyway, I have used up the latest amazon voucher on a new tyre pump.

From the waterfront at Greatstone yesterday we could just about see Cap Gris Nez, but when we got out of the car it soon became clear that this was not to be our picnic venue.  The stench of manure was overpowering, coming no doubt from the fields just inland.  Air quality impeccable in one sense, execrable in another.  We drove fast and breathed shallow along to Dungeness, where we paused for our sandwiches in a much more salubrious atmosphere - at least from the noses’ points of view.  Surprising how busy it was, but I suppose every self-catering property on the south coast is full of holidaymakers unable to get to Spain.

The builders opposite did a lot of clearing up yesterday, so we hoped we’d seen the last of them after fully eight months.  But no: since lunch time, our ears have been assailed by the scream of an angle grinder yet again.  Maybe not for much longer.  Please!

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot

This my birthday present from Martyn: it replaces one of the cold frames.  It is rather overshadowed by a row of Leylandii, but their days are numbered!  The old cold frame had largely rotted away so didn’t put up much resistance when I took it apart and binned it.  The mini greenhouse came part-assembled, and needed quite a lot of remedial work before it could be finished.  The instructions (yes, I actually read them!) prompted one to check the tightness of the screws in the panels.  Most needed tightening, and a few were not gripping and had to be replaced with longer ones.  The hinges fitted to the lid both had to be moved to allow them to work.  This sounds very much like looking a gift horse in the mouth, but now it’s up, I’m really pleased with it: such a thoughtful present.  It now stands on some of the bricks left over from the sitooterie, and will come into its own for overwintering, and more so when it comes to sowing in the spring.

Compassion, planted in memory of Margaret

 Another birthday present was a bunch of garden vouchers from Sandra and Michael.  We’ve been looking to replace the rather weedy A Shropshire Lad supplied and badly planted by the landscapers.  It is now out, trimmed and in a pot pending its move to new lodgings somewhere else in the garden.  I dug out a big bucket of our dreadful clay, and heaved in a load of fresh soil and muck.  Following research of exposure, disease resistance, repeat flowering and so on, we finally found one of my shortlisted plants, Compassion, in the garden shop down the road.  We have one of that variety already, and know it to be robust and free flowering.  The one I found had been raised by Fryers Roses, whose The Justice of the Peace is such a champion.  So a gift from two in-laws is transformed in memory of another.

The garden is doing really well at the moment.  Though most of the roses are between flushes, some long dead-heading has stimulated them to start a fresh lot of buds.  We’re getting quite a good range of different colours on this year’s rudbeckia seedlings, and the antirrhinums are doing far better than those we grew (from the same packet of seed!) last year.  Around this time last year, we were in Avignon waiting for our train home.  As the temperature was in the low 40s, we stayed in our hotel room as long as we could, and then found a hypermarket in which also to benefit from the air conditioning and to pick up some little gifts to take home.  On an impulse, I also picked up some eschscholzia and cosmos seeds.  The cosmos have shot up and are starting to flower (provided we remember to water them) and this morning we have the first flowers on one of the eschscholzia seedlings: a good strong yellow.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the others do.

In the produce department, we’re now getting a few runner beans, and are about half way through the spuds.  The tomatoes are ripening apace, so I think it’s bruschette for lunch!  As reflected in this blog’s title, we are mightily grateful for the garden and the decent weather.  The obverse of the good weather is, of course, that two out of the three water butts are now empty, but that’s at least provided the opportunity to tip out the accumulated sludge and give them a good hosing out.  And tomorrow promises to be WET!

The colours of the garden go some way to compensate for the cancellation of the two cruises we’d planned for this year.  It’s hard to see how the cruise industry can recover.  Many countries are not allowing cruise vessels to dock, and those that do are limiting access to their own nationals, some, like Norway, allowing selected neighbours to join in.  In any case, we have both managed to get colds or gut bugs when we’ve been on cruises.  We have one more booked, plus a bit of credit from the surplus and the deposit on the other cancelled one, so probably ought not to wait too long before Saying ‘Come on! Assez rigolé: lets have our money back’.

Decade N°8 begins

Given today’s agenda, we didn’t make much of yesterday’s birthday: laundry, shopping and token gardening.  Martyn treated me to fish and chips for lunch, so we restrained ourselves in the evening: bruschette with the last of the bought tomatoes and a handful of herbs from the garden.

Today we were on the road fairly early for the drive to Aldershot crematorium.  The event was a shade surreal: the chapel was laid out to accommodate 18 only.  Although hymn singing is banned in churches at the moment, Crematoria are exempt.  But singing in a sparse congregation was pretty dismal.  (And it didn’t help that they both overshot my ever-shrinking range.)  We gathered afterwards at John’s place for excellent sandwiches (and uncomfortable proximity to strangers).

We both feel rather drained this evening: a combination of the emotion of the occasion and the M25, I guess.  More energy tomorrow, I hope: Martyn has bought me a miniature greenhouse to replace one or both of my now very shabby cold frames.  It arrived in flat pack format, so I’ll have to dust off my IKEA skills.  Meanwhile, this year’s plantings are starting to feed us.  We’ll need to turn out some more spuds tomorrow, I think, and there should be enough runner beans for one meal.

Gardening and things

The garden is quite demanding at this time of year, but it is generous too.  The good old rudbeckias are doing well (and in this case, I do mean ‘old’, since the flowers in the picture are from plants that have over-wintered at least once).  I noticed the first flower on the cosmos today, and the penstemons and antirrhinums are doing nicely so far.  Good timing, since the first flush of roses is largely over now.  So, today’s gardening has had mainly to do with dead-heading roses and penstemon, and I have done violence to a rather leggy cistus purpureus (taking cuttings, just in case!).  We are cropping potatoes and salad leaves now, and are eagerly watching the beans and tomatoes.

I was getting rather fed up with chainsaw and shredder noises yesterday, so went out to see where they were coming from.  In the process, I discovered that our goat willow was overhanging the footpath, so thought I’d better deal with it.  Lacking chainsaw and shredder, I had at it with loppers and secateurs (the electric version having run out of juice).  The garden waste bin is consequently more than full, and most of today’s prunings (I had recharged the electric sécateur) are in the compost bin.

I had a call from the iShop on Wednesday to say they had supplies of iPads again, so was back in business before the old one croaked.  I think n°3 was actually cheaper than n°2 when I bought it three years ago.  Short-lived triumph: when I got it home, I found that it wouldn’t fit the old case.  So, the price advantage was eaten up by the cost of a new case, a pint of diesel and another car parking charge by our notoriously rapacious toon cooncil.  Oh well.

Margaret Palmer Smith

Margaret died peacefully at home yesterday afternoon, aged just 73, and some fifteen months since she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.  She is survived by her husband, my brother John, her sons Richard and Neilson, and her grandsons Thomas and Toby, sons of Richard and Anna.