Seventeen happy years

Today is the anniversary of our civil partnership ceremony, though it’s well over twenty years since we knew we were partners for life.  We had already exchanged rings - in Martyn’s old red Peugeot in the station car park at Brighton - and our partnership ceremony was also a quiet and intimate event.

Over the years we have travelled, socialised, gardened, studied, painted and enjoyed making our home together.  We have also been there for each other in times of bereavement and illness, so our love for each other is strengthened by the odd bit of scar tissue.  Martyn still has post-shingles pain well over a year since onset, but is coping very well.  He is also having to cope with my gradual recovery from recent surgery, but we’re both encouraged by the advice that I need no further treatment.  We were already very lucky to have each other - even more so now.

Autumn is certainly here.  We haven’t yet had frost, but I’d better not delay the geranium cuttings much longer.  We have started clearing and re-planting containers for winter colour, and mentally listing all the other jobs needed before winter.  Some will get done…

Awful neologism: ‘repurposing’

 

I finally gave up on the San Marzano tomatoes.  Our total useable crop amounted to one tomato.  The main benefit of growing the twenty-ish plants was the exercise in watering them and digging them up.  Martyn has hauled out the remains of the runner beans, and the bean poles are out and stored.  The raised beds are now host to some rooted cuttings, so their role is now as nursery beds. 

We’ve kept the best of the sage plants, surrounding it with potentilla, cistus, aquilegia and a solitary lavender.  The other raised bed is gradually filling up with little rosemary plants.  I’ve no doubt we’ll spend the next few months hoeing out seedlings of spinach, rocket, etc, as well as the ever-present oxalis and oak seedlings. The little greenhouse is pretty full again: the space gained by planting out cuttings and seedlings has been taken up with polyanthus and winter pansies, a few of which are already flowering.  We’ll shortly have vacancies in the hanging baskets and tubs, and the space in the greenhouse will be ready for geranium cuttings next spring after the frosts: we’ll start them in the conservatory.

Well, them’s the plans at least…

Autumn

 

The rudbeckia that arrived labelled ‘aubergine’ continues to give us pleasure, year after year.  The dwarf variety, Toto, we bought as plug plants have done very well, but seem to have a shorter flowering season than than the Rustic mix of previous years.  On the other hand they are much more compact, which suits our needs better: they don’t get leggy or require staking.

We have bought pansy and polyanthus plug plants from the same supplier, and they are potted up to grow on a bit before we plant them out.  The mini greenhouse is chock full: the rooted rosemary cuttings now total over forty, so if they make it through the winter, we’ll have the makings of a little hedge.

Cyclamens are flowering now, and we’re enjoying the fleeting lemon-yellow blooms on the autumn crocus Sternbergia.  From my armchair by the French windows I look out to an old butler sink: after a superb show of aquilegias in the spring and early summer, we now have lots of flowers on some fuchsias that over-wintered.  Also from that angle, I see the last of the fruit on the Sweet Olive tomatoes that have been feeding us for weeks now.  San Marzano tomatoes have been a real disappointment.  The ones in pots succumbed to blossom-end rot, no doubt because of under-watering.  The two cuttings I planted in the raised bed have brought some fruit to ripeness, but someone else eats them in the night.  Lesson learned.

Quite a funeral - and another in the offing

Michael, our brother-in-law, had many connexions to Rochester Cathedral, so we weren’t surprised at his wish for his funeral to be conducted there.  He and Martyn’s sister Sandra met through their musical involvement with the cathedral, and they were married there, 53 years ago.  Michael was for some time chairman of the Friends of the cathedral, and he and Sandra both volunteered as meeters and greeters for visitors.  Well, the funeral was comparable to many a state do: two anthems and a psalm sung by the cathedral choir, three hymns, a sermon, a eulogy bravely and flawlessly delivered by Sandra, and several tributes from friends and brother  masons, as well as the usual prayers and liturgical devices.  The congregation pretty much filled the choir: well over 200, we think.  The committal was up the road at the Crem, and by comparison was mercifully brief.

Some days before that, our lovely neighbour Rowena died peacefully, mere hours after going into the nearby hospice.  She had undergone much surgery and treatment after developing breast cancer in her late twenties, but the latest lot of treatment just made her feel awful, and did no good.  When she died she had just had her 39th birthday.  We last saw her when we witnessed her will a couple of weeks ago: she was very weak and jaundiced, so one has to be grateful that she is no longer suffering.

The late heatwave has abated, thank goodness.  We have had some pretty lively downpours, and I gather that there was thunder and lightning last night.  Didn’t wake me.  Out in the garden, most of the tomatoes are finished.  We’ll get a few more to pick - and possibly even a few San Marzanos.  The mini-greenhouse is chock full of cuttings, seedlings and bought plug plants, so I’d better restrain my propagating ambitions.

It’s that expensive time of year when the car needs re-insuring, plus a service and MoT.  The renewal quote came in with an increase of over 60%, so I’ve moved to another company.  Still a good bit more than last year, but even without a voluntary excess, it’s a lot cheaper than the quote from my current insurers.  Given the lousy service we had from the same insurer when the hot water cylinder leaked, we’ll be looking to insure the house and contents somewhere else as well.

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.