Late summer gardening

Ben and Duncan were here yesterday, so we got them to dig out the devastated box bushes that used to mark the boundary between us and The Boundary.  I paced out the distance, and reckon we’ll need a good seventy rosemary plants.  I potted up 32 rooted cuttings yesterday, and took another few dozen from the slightly overgrown bush up the garden.  So now I just need to survive to see them flower.  

The baby greenhouse is pretty full now, with rooted and new cuttings of rosemary, as well as cistus pulverulens and three colours of potentilla.  I tried to root some cuttings of the viburnum plicatum, but without success.  The daphne cuttings seem to be alive, but aren’t obviously rooting.

The eschscholzias we sowed in the spring are flowering now, most in the common orange, but a few in a range of other colours: lemon, a deep orange and even a mauve-pink.  The tagetes and bidens in the pots are starting to look a bit straggly, but are flowering well, so we’ll leave them a little longer.  The roses are still flowering, but past their best now.  The penstemons are starting to pick up the baton, but they are less impressive than in past years: I suspect it's time I started some new plants from cuttings.  A couple of fuchsias we planted last year in an old pot sink over-wintered successfully and are coming into vigorous flower.  Less impressive are a couple of hardy fuchsias in a nearby bed: hardly surprising, since I have done little to improve the terrible soil.  I’ll give them a top dressing of muck and see if that gives them a boost.  The miniature roses by the front door need the same treatment, so I’ll get cracking when the weather turns drier and warmer over the coming days.  

Meanwhile, I’ve been harvesting seeds as they ripen: the usual suspects.  Not sure if we’ll be doing a Macmillan coffee morning this year, but if we do, we’ll have plenty of seeds to flog at a pound a pinch as we did at our last one pre-pandemic.  

Fish and chips

Yesterday at the Crown in Old Groombridge, and today at the Bill the Conk at Rye Harbour.  Both pretty good, but the Crown was a nose ahead, thanks to fatter chips that stayed warm longer, and to tartare sauce that came in a little pot rather than a tooth-testing sachet.  (But we’d better not have fish and chips again for a week or so.)

We sat outside at both, and spent a while after supper this evening sitting on the bench at the top of the garden, enjoying the garden and congratulating ourselves on choosing this house 16 years ago.  The fine weather of the past few days has been good for the spirits and the garden.  The fading self-sown verbena at the foot of the drive is chopped down and on its way to becoming municipal compost, together with grass cuttings and some of the tomato plants.  A lot of the rosemary cuttings having rooted well, they are now potted up.  Most of the young potentillas are potted on, and the bit of lavender that broke off a bought plant has rooted and is setting flower buds.

Unfortunately, one of the strongest memories of today’s trip out is the atrocious state of the roads in East Sussex.  A moonscape of potholes, and a lot of cheapo loose chippings where maintenance has actually been done.  We got home with the windscreen intact, I’m glad to report.

Wildlife

There are times when we are less than happy with the local wildlife, eg when the foxes take a dump where we want to walk, and when the badgers scatter the contents of the food waste bin across the back yard.  Our newly planted campanulas have been practically obliterated by slugs and snails.  But of course others are more welcome:

We have planted a buddleia, and many of the other subjects are attracting lots of pollinators.  The sedum is coming into flower, so we’re looking forward to seeing lots more bees.  

Motoring, misc

On the way back from Fortnums this afternoon I saw a car stopped with a flat tyre at the the junction down the road.  I carry an electric pump, so stopped to lend it to the driver.  This is not pure altruism: it’s an earnest hope that someone will do the same for me some day.  But I’m bound to say that nobody has ever stopped to offer help when I’ve had tyre problems.  But I’ll continue - with self-interest aforethought - to build up my capital of indirect returnable favours whenever I can.  

This is the way of life in rural France: on rend service expecting nothing directly in return, but expects others to do the same.  For example, when a truck driver with an oversized load took out Annie’s phone line at Le Roc, a neighbour had phoned in the fault before we knew it.  (Said phone line has a chequered past.  Once when we were staying a fault in the line was traced to a shotgun pellet creating a short.  So rural France, for all its altruism, is not without its hazards.)

Martyn and his sister were talking earlier about the late Michael’s approach to filing.  This reignited the itch in the back of my mind that I can’t find the V5c registration document for my car.  We always used to have it to hand when we were travelling, so I can only guess that it got thrown out when we were clearing out in Lagrasse back in 2017.

 

Gosh: six years ago!  Well, I’ve spent a Premium Bond win on a replacement log book, so should soon be back en situation régulière.

Dividends

I discovered a while ago that a certain Building Society was offering new customers a substantially higher interest rate on identical conditions.  I telephoned and was told to create a new account on line and transfer funds electronically.  Given my clumsiness with on-line transactions, I asked what other approach was available, and the advisor agreed to send me the necessary transfer form, which I duly filled and sent back.  Nothing having happened in the ensuing fortnight, I was not best pleased to receive a quasi-literate letter saying it couldn’t be done.  I found the email address of the CEO and fired off a polite snottygram.  I had a phone call next morning from a complaint handler saying she had received my email and was looking into it, and she called again today to say what was needed.  I’d to grit my teeth and set up a new account on line, not without ach und Krach, new password procedures and all the rest of it.  To transfer the balance I’d to call their head office and go through all the name, date of birth, inside leg measurement and colour of grandmother’s eyes interrogation, but at least the fellow was grown-up and friendly.  So my tuppence-three-farthings are now getting a slightly better rate of interest, they’re sending me £75 to help reduce my blood pressure and will calculate the interest I would have got had they given me correct information and done things right in the first place.  

This sounds rather similar to my earlier skirmish with a bank, and the lesson is clear: if buggered about, email the CEO, and stand by for a £75 ex-gratia payment.

I finally lost patience today with the San Marzano plants, and all bar the last three pots are emptied and on the way to becoming municipal compost.  I’d attempted to grow them in pots as I do successfully with the Sweet Olive variety.  Clearly a mistake: they are much more thirsty, and even after copious watering, natural and artificial, the pots I turned out today were bone dry.  I planted a couple of San Marzano cuttings in a raised bed, and wait to see if they do any better.

Seedlings and cuttings are doing well in parts: the aquilegia seedlings from this summer’s flowers will be ready to prick out in a few days’ time.

I took a zillion rosemary cuttings last week with a view to filling in the gaps left by the box tree moth caterpillars.  They ought to root within a couple of weeks if they’re going to, so watch this space.

Meanwhile, we’re getting the first flowers on eschscholzias that we sowed in the spring from an old packet of commercial seed, and we are harvesting seed from plants that self-sowed last back end.  I’m looking forward to saving seed from the tagetes, which have done exceptionally well this year, for the first time in containers.  

So, one way and another, I try to reap what I sow, though some efforts yield better than others….