Nisparo

 

It was fifteen years ago that our family went for a holiday to Majorca. We were staying in the small town of Puerta Pollensa, in the north of the island.  

 

 

 During the trip we visited a friend of Celias, a lovely woman called Antonia. She lived in a typical Spanish home of the region. A single story house, painted white, and with green shutters on every window. The garden was enclosed by a white wall, and typically had lemons, olives and nisparo.

 

We didn't speak Spanish, and she didn't speak English, but thankfully Celia spoke both, and so conversations were possible, and a lovely afternoon was had catching up with each others lives.

She cooked us one of the best paellas I have ever had, and it was shared around a large table with some of her family.

 

 

Of course, I took an interest in her garden, and in particular the Nisparo (or Loquat as it's also known), which I had never seen before. She had brought a bowl of it's fruit in for pudding, and the sweet and unusual flavour had made me curious about the plant. With Antonias permission, I picked a few fruit to take home, some to eat, and some to grow if I could.

 

Nisparo - Eriobotrya japonica

 

The seeds are quite beautiful in themselves, a shiny bronze colour. I planted one single seed, and have waited....and waited.

 



 



 Nisparo are difficult to get to fruit in this country, and would normally take around twelve years to reach a mature enough age to do so. I looked out of our kitchen window a couple of days ago, and there at the end of the garden I spied fruit forming....fifteen years later.

The seeds on our tree

 

Yay!...now they just need to ripen.



Sir Neville

What can I say? The scene was set, the orchestra were setting up for an evening of music, and oh, what music.

 

Mozart - Marriage of Figaro Overture
Mozart - Symphony No.25 in G minor
Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

 

and not listed on the internet, and such a lovely surprise for me:

 

 Samuel Barbers 'Adagio for Strings'

 

The atmosphere throughout the entire evening was electric, the orchestras playing perfect, and the conversations on stage between David Mellor and Sir Neville fascinating, and at times very funny indeed.

 

 

Sir Neville was charming and engaging, as we talked with him for a short while.

 

 

Afterwards we headed into Chinatown for dinner. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. I would like to blame light levels etc, but it's the camera on my rubbish Iphone.

 

 

It was a wonderful couple of days, but of course all good things come to an end, and with the rest of the week of gardening forecast to be wet, not much to look foreward to.

First job the following day was a dumping trip to the tip, in the rain.

 

 



As is usually the case, we did loads more with our couple of days in London, and as it's now Saturday, and yet another day rained off workwise, I will tell you about it in the next post, as nothing on the gardening front is really getting done.

 

Have a good weekend.

Wonderful Wisteria

 

 

As promised, that wonderful Wisteria at Exbury Gardens.

 

 

We are off to London for a couple of days. Sir Neville Marriner is celebrating his 90th birthday. He is conducting the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields, at St. Martin in the Fields tonight, and we have two tickets to this rather special moment.

 

 

I hope you like the Wisteria.



Seagulls

 The weather is really nice and sunny at the moment, and we've started our early morning beach walks. It's really nice to get up at 6am, and head down there before work. There are always seagulls and terns flying over the water. Some dive into it to catch fish, whilst others just fly about. It reminded me of one of my favourite books, 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' by Richard Bach. A short, but really lovely and easy read. Sometimes seagulls, in fact all birds for that matter, just fly for fun, because they can.

 

 

There also appears to be a growing number of 'dog joggers'. These are people who decide that it's a good idea to take their usual five or ten mile run in the morning, and feel that their dog wants to do the same. Don't get me wrong, I know that a good long run is very beneficial to mutts, but these are people who have their own aganda, regardless of whether or not their 'pet' wants to stop and just sniff, roll in the sand, splash in the water, or even just socialise with other dogs, all essential to the canine breed. What if the dog is just feeling a bit rough that day? They have to run in fur coats, while in every case, the owner is down to shorts and a vest. Virtually every runner carries water for him/herself, but never for the dog, as they have to wait until later, and it's more convenient for 'A' type jogger. So come on dog joggers, jog on your own time, and spend time with your dog separately. Walk AND run with it, socialise with it yourself, and not just bark 'come on' every time it stops. Let it enjoy the world it lives in a little more......rant over.

 

Anyway, last thing on Friday, and last job of the week done. All of the hedges trimmed, and the grass cut.

 

I liked the way that the sunlight reflected off the windows, and on to the grass. It went with the modern design of this part of the garden.

 

 A long and hot working week, and I needed to shut down completely, and so over to Studland beach for a spot of snoozing in the sun. I took 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' with me, but every time I tried to read, my eyes just closed, and so I let sleep take over, with just the sound of the waves, and the wind in the coastal grass behind.

 

 

By midday it was actually getting a little too hot, and s we decided to grab some things to eat from Swanage, and head over to the Square and Compass, as you know by now, a favourite of ours. The pub car park has wonderful views over the surrounding countryside, and towards the coast about a mile away. Others had arrived in their vans, and with the same idea of just spending time crashed out in the sun. After lunch, we headed across the road to the pub, and mixed with the others in the beer garden. I'm not usually one for beers with fancy things thrown in, but with such a good beer selection, and the young lady serving saying that it is really good, I went for a pint of Chili Plum Porter. A classic rich porter beer flavour, with a tiny afterburn of chili, strangely rather nice.

 

 The view to Winspit from the garden is one I never tire of, whatever the weather. With purbeck stone quarries nearby, the garden is strewn with huge pieces of rock, cleverly positioned into seats and tables. In my mind, it is the best pub in the world. Afterwards we went home for a cup of tea before going down to the allotment. We met the little old Dutch lady who tends the plot next door to ours. Small and not strong looking, she looks after her bit with a vigour that puts us to shame, and is always willing to share any advice that's needed. Sadly her husband, a violinist in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, can't be with her for a while for health reasons.

 

 

It's Sunday now, 6.30am. Every year we visit Exbury Gardens in the hope of catching the Wisteria in the Sundial Garden in flower, but are either too early, or too late, and so I have kept in touch this time, and we head out today to what is promised to be the Wisteria at it's best. We probably won't get there until about 11am, as we have to stop at a wholesale nursery first, to pick up a van full of bedding plants for work next week. If I remember, I shall post a picture of the Wisteria on here.

 

Have a good and peaceful Sunday.



Going Up, Going Down

 Some friends of ours have a Rosa banksiae, or Lady Banks Rose. As many 'into' their roses will know, it's somewhat prolific. In fact, there is one in Tombstone, Arizona that was planted in 1885, and now covers 8000 square feet of a restaurant roof, and has a trunk circumference of twelve feet.

Our friends planted theirs to go around the front door of their house, and apart from the occasional tie in, have pretty much let it do it's own thing. It had got to the point where access to the house was getting tricky, and so something had to be done. It's flowering at the moment, and so nothing major with the secateurs at this point. They can take a good pruning if needed after they have flowered, but as this one must remain around the door, later we will take it down from the wall, lay it across the lawn, and remove any remaining dead and spindly wood, and spur back pretty much everything else to twelve to fifteen good long stems, before tying everything back in place.

 

For now though, a climb up the steps to do a little snipping and tying, to gain access to the bulk of it, and the long ladder was set up to tie the rest of it in more neatly. It's a thornless rose, so a fairly painless process. In the end, although looking a little trussed up, it did have some shape to it, and the front door and window were free once more. The cost?........two cups of really good tea.....perfect!

 

 

As well as mice in the garden and sheds, we have a couple of house mice. Very rarely seen, they live in a hole in the wall behind the fridge freezer in the kitchen. Usually their presence is only remembered because of Hobie, ever watchful, getting agitated as he glares under a sofa, bookcase, or kitchen cupboard. Occasionally he catches one of the poor garden mice and brings it inside for it's final minutes, and although natural, my anger does get the better of me, and he is banished to the outside for a while as I give the little fellow he has killed an appropriate send off. But he's never smart, or quick enough for the house mice. Or so I thought.

 

It's no secret among my family, indeed, it's often the subject of laughter, that on the occasions that I have thought that I have heard an intruder in the house or garden at night, I am to be found launching myself downstairs, hockey stick at the ready, in readiness to 'lay into' the offender.....naked, as like many others it's my preference to sleep this way. I don't see the need to don clothes when pummelling an intruder, it would just allow him to get away anyway.

 

It was four in the morning, Sunday, and I was laying awake in bed, when an almighty crashing and banging noise came from downstairs. I hadn't heard the catflap go, and so no intruder cat from a neighbouring house. I flicked instantly into 'burglar alert' mode. The trusty hockey was grabbed from under the bed, and a raced downstairs to defend my castle.

 

I was met in the dim hall light by two shadows, a tiny one doing fast circular moves going one way, and a cat shaped one trying to decide whether to chase it, or run from the man with the bat. He had caught the house mouse! Hobie was quickly locked in the kitchen, as I scabbled on hands and knees trying to catch the mouse to check it over. I heard Amanda on the stairs behind, laughing out loud at my predicament. Naked man grovelling on floor after mouse...at four in the morning. The mouse survived, with no punctures to it's body. I let it out the back door, and it headed straight for it's own little house entrance to once again take up residence behind the fridge freezer. Hobie?.......he's still in my 'bad books'.

 



Bank Holidays

 As far as possible, I try not to work on bank holidays. It's a little difficult at this particular time of year, because we have a four day weekend at the beginning of April, and another three day weekend just gone, which in spring is not helpful business wise. For the weekend just gone by, we had booked ourselves into The Battleaxes, a luxury b and b near the River Severn estuary.

 

 

As we have National Trust membership, we had decided to visit two estates nearby, one on Saturday, and another on the day of our return. We set off late in the afternoon on Friday, and not least because of the holiday traffic, arrived five hours later (a normal journey of half the time). The manager showed us our room, and we then enjoyed a couple of cold ones in the bar downstairs before retiring for the night.

 

Saturday, and we awoke to a fabulously sunny day. After a rather large breakfast, we headed to our first house, Tyntesfield, only a ten minute drive away. It's my experience that NT car park 'ushers' are in some way snobs when it comes to seeing a Ford Transit van enter the car park, and on nearly every occasion head over as soon as we have parked up to ensure that we don't take up too much space. It's a laugh really, given that even with the trailer on, I can get ours in, out and through most places that a lot of car drivers cannot. As van drivers, we are used to handling some pretty tricky situations. So it was that I chose the middle space of three, with ample room for a car either side, and as though by fate we spied a hi-vis heading our way, for the gentleman to then ask us to park in either of the other spaces 'as tightly into the edge as we can please', as though we were turning up in a lorry!

 

Finally parked to his satisfaction, and we headed towards the house, along the winding wild walk for about twenty minutes.

 

 

The National Trust are rather special in the way they take on and look after so many of their properties, and in most places encourage investigation all over, and for all ages. There were signs dotted about, suggesting 'going barefoot on the grass', 'exploring inside a tree', or in this case 'rolling down a hill', a pastime of my own youth, but one that would leave me feeling pretty ill nowadays unfortunately.

 

 The house and gardens are very special indeed, and we took loads of photos, but I will just use a few as a 'taster'. The box hedging had yet to be clipped, which to me made it look quite stunning with the sunlight shining on it, and producing a two tone effect.
 

 

The house is really quite gothic, and full of treasures. There is also a kitchen garden, orangery, rose garden to name just a bit. A chapel had been added a long time ago, part of which is visible in the right of the photo below. Following the design of Sainte Chappelle in Paris, it gave me a pleasant surprise on entering.

 

I recognised the style and technique immediately, Salviati mosaic work, and in this case a reredos of five triptychs....marvellous!

 

 I wish there was some way that I could afford to once again work as a gardener on such an estate, but at least we have the good fortune to be able to visit.
 

 

We had dinner in the restaurant that evening. The day seemed to go really quickly, but then, as one gets older, time has a habit of doing that. We had an early night, as there was our second place to visit on Sunday, and then the journey home. Clevedon Court is only open between the hours of 2pm-5pm, and so we had some time to kill, and a need for tea, and so we decided to have a walk along the seafront at Clevedon town. All very victorian in style, with ornate drinking fountains, three storey terraced houses, and even a salt water lido, it was quite the step back in time. We found the pier, and headed along it to the oriental style tea room on the end, where a cup of de-caf quenched Amanda. For me it was Earl Grey. We sat there for quite some time, watching the fishermen, and looking out over the Severn estuary.

 

 

The starter motor on the van had been randomly sticking. Not a major problem, and can be temporarily fixed by, believe it or not, by hitting the offending part with a hammer, but for now I made certain that we were always parked on a hill in readiness for a bump start. We arrived at Clevedon Court, and being the first there, I parked in a very advantageous position, at the top of the sloping car park, and facing the exit road. If the starter motor stuck, then I just had to roll forward.....sorted.

Amanda spied a hi-vis heading our way.....again! 'You are going to tell me to move, aren't you?' says me. He did, and informed me that large vehicles and caravans must park in an area that is, lets just say, out of the way. Large vehicle?? I let him know that if our vehicle is buried too deeply in the estate, then he and his fellow elderly friends would have to push me out, and so he grudgingly got me to still park 'out of sight', but in a position that enabled me to roll the van across the grass and down a gentle slope.

Although smaller than a lot of other estates, Clevedon Court is nonetheless really lovely. We walked around the terraced gardens for a while, before heading inside.

 

 I rather liked the small and unassuming fountain, with a tired and aged trickle, very peaceful. I would have liked to lay there for a while, but apparently tics are being a problem in the grass at the moment, so we kept our legs moving.

 

 

 I thought she was beautiful.

 

 

 And would you believe it? They even had a glass collection, of which these were just a part.

 

 Only three hours, but it was enough. Our minds were stilled and calm. We got back to the van to find that it had virtually been boxed in by other cars, with just enough room to make a sort of uphill s-bend out. NT parking attendant strikes again! Just as well the van started without needing a push, after a couple of goes anyway. The journey home only took two and a half hours, a record for us.

The bank holiday Monday had to be a work day. I had been asked if I could jet wash algae from the paths of one property, as it was getting a little slippery when it rained. There was also some mowing to do (below). A week ago the grass had been scarified, and so I needed to just 'tip' the grass out before feeding it later in the week. The third place had two tons of shingle that had been dropped in the driveway, ready to cover some areas, and so this too was dealt with.

 

 

Not a bad day really, and with an early finish to boot.

 

Have a good week.....what's left of it anyway.