In search of wasted time

It's not unusual, in one's hobby, to find oneself scheduled for a two-day event that collapses on the morning of day one.  Knowing this happens so often, the administration normally has a reserve event lined up, so that we aren't left idle.  But when that too drops out, leaving us with nothing to do from 10:45 to 14:00, and the weather is fine, what better than a bit of National Trust visiting?  So a colleague and I went up to Knole, and had a pleasant walk round the perimeter - the house itself didn't open until noon.  There is a huge amount of work going on at the moment: what isn't crumbling is either rotting or being nibbled away.  So sections of the house are inside a huge plastic tent, and I notice that the house was closed to visitors yesterday while a vast steel beam was slotted into place over some of the rooms open to the public. 

Emmetts Garden, April 2002

Well, our walk took us to just after11:30, and the Knole tea room is not one of my favourite places, so we took a ride up to Emmetts, a rather fine garden at Ide Hill, from which there are fine views over the Weald to the south.  We arrived just as the head gardener was about to take a guided tour (all two of us) round the garden.  Since spring is so late this year, there was rather less to see than one might have hoped, but the tour was very informative.  There were lots of pulsatillas, primroses and species tulips in flower, and the magnolias were resplendent.  (Why is ours the last magnolia in the county to come into flower?)  I do question the decision to plant the whole of the rose garden with pink-flowering varieties, but we were told that it has some measure of historical authenticity.  I'll have to go back in the summer to appreciate the full awfulness of it.  Another recent history-based decision was to plant an area of meadow with tulips and cherry trees, to re-create a planting scheme that appears in a photograph taken there about 110 years ago.  Looking through my own photograph files, I find one that I took 11 years ago today. When we were there on Thursday, there wasn't a solitary bluebell in flower, and the trees were nearly all bare.  Both Knole and Emmetts still show signs of the devastation by the 1987 hurricane, though it's less apparent once they are in leaf.

Back in a more mundane garden elsewhere in the county, the white spiraeas are coming into flower, as, finally, are the primulas and pansies I bought last back end supposedly for winter colour.  We have a couple of trays of annuals growing on vigorously in the conservatory, and I need to get busy pricking out the rudbeckias etc.  The fine, warm weather earlier in the week has really got things moving in the garden and the conservatory, but it has now given way to cooler, more changeable days, with some heavy showers.  Unfortunately, the grass is growing no less vigorously, but I think the rain of the past 24 hours will probably have ruled out cutting it for a while yet.  The front is slightly drier, so I coaxed the mower into life one day in the week and gave it a first cut.  It's a bit of a mess, I have to admit: there was a large bald patch where we have had a conifer cut down, and my seed sowing last autumn was patchy, so I've had to have another go at it. 

So much for the flora.  As to the fauna, we have magpies nesting in the neighbour's conifers, so perhaps that's why the smaller birds are a bit shy.  I've seen a few blue tits around, but no signs of traffic to either of the nest boxes.  Blackbirds are - or were - nesting in the side hedge, and we have regular visits from our local pair of dunnocks.  Our infuriating chaffinch is back, and we are occasionally serenaded by a wren.  If I were so minded and less squeamish, I could set up a market stall stocked with wood pigeons.  As for the ducks, Arthur visits daily, but we haven't seen Doris for a while.  I hope she is incubating eggs rather than nourishing a fox.