Friend or Foe?

At last, and considerably later than last year, the first snowdrops have begun to appear. The clump below are a taller variety than the common or garden ones that appear in the hedgerows locally and all over our garden, and an earlier variety too. I’ve no idea what their name is - no doubt a galanthophile could tell me - but the appearance of them is always a cheerful sight in the gloom of winter. The ordinary ones, meanwhile, look like hundreds of pairs of tweezers stuck in the ground with small blobs of white popped on the top, impatiently waiting for the sun to shine to transform them into the real thing. A bit like butterflies. 

To me though one snowdrop looks much the same as another. Every year at this time various erudite magazines run features showing dozens of different cultivars but I struggle to differentiate one from another without the help of a magnifying glass, and then wonder why some people spend a small fortune to buy a bulb or two of the latest novelty. I suppose the triumph of owning something others don’t gives the sort of pleasure that most get by gazing at carpets of white mere-mortals. By the way, did you know that chewing the occasional snowdrop bulb can help stave off Alzheimers…apparently galantamine is good for you.

Talking of bulbs, a snowdrop’s are very similar to those of alium triquetrum: I love most aliums but I hate triquetrums. Nasty, unlovely, they reek of onions and spread like rabbits. They were everywhere in this garden when we arrived six years ago but I’m waging war on them now that I can tell the difference in their bulbs. And at this time of year their straggly leaves are a real giveaway so I can dig them up before they flower and spread their seeds around like casanova. Apparently all parts - bulb, leaves, flowers -  are edible and can be used for making pestos or in salads but that’s no reason for tolerating them in this garden. If anyone would like a few, let me know or else they’ll go on the bonfire.

 

Brrrrr!

This cold snap has put paid to spreading my home made compost and the delicious Puckamuck I mentioned last week. But it has brought other benefits instead. One of which is staying indoors and catching up with all sorts of jobs that I put off if there’s half a chance of being outside. The other is actually being outside when the sun sun is shining even if the temperature is below zero: on the coastal side of the South Downs we’ve had such a strange mixture of cold days in the last week or so, quite different to the weather just a few miles north of us. On foggy days there we’ve had crisp sun and the following day, vice versa. It doesn’t help that here in Westdean we’re in quite a frost-pocket so we’re probably chillier than most. Mind you, if it’s cold, sunny and windless it becomes quite magical with early morning hoar frost and then enough warmth in the sun that the birds sing, fish rise up beneath the ice in the pond and I am able to sit outside (albeit wrapped up well) with a cup of coffee and ponder on the delights of winter.

Which are many and varied: watching a thrush searching for snails, a green woodpecker for insects, seeing the sun turning frost into steam, wondering how the birds can be cajoled into springtime song by an hour or two of January sun, seeing the smoke from my bonfire gently drifting upwards, listening to children’s voices as they happily hurl logs into the village pond (little sods), and generally being thankful that I’m alive and able to take such pleasure in such small things. 

And at the same time contemplate that this time last year the snowdrops and early daffodils were flowering while today their noses are hardly above ground…with any luck that means the first mow of the year is still a couple of months away.

 

A mucky business

At last the apple pruning is finished and we can get on with the next urgent task: adding goodness to our soil. In this part of the South Downs it is free draining alkaline soil with lots of chalk, interspersed with lumps of flint of varying sizes and occasional seams of claggy clay not far below the surface. It doesn’t half need feeding regularly otherwise the plants begin to take on a rather sorrowful look. When we first came here in 2011 I rang around a few places - local farmers, livery stables, horticultural societies - to see if I could locate a source of good manure but met with no useful success. “We’ve got fresh stuff, and you can come and collect if you like” was the nearest I got, but as I was after mature manure delivered to our door it became obvious I was asking for the moon.

So, in case all this sounds depressingly familiar to you, I will let you into a little secret: my new friend Matthew at Puckamuck is the answer to a maiden’s prayer. He will deliver to your door manure that looks good enough to eat and stuff that your plants will love you for. Puckamuck is, basically, horse poo (equine manure as they say rather daintily on their website) but of the highest quality as it’s collected from racing stables in Surrey and Sussex and then shredded, mixed, turned and fully matured for a year or more. We’ve used it on our beds here for the last six years and I can thoroughly recommend it. Particularly as it’s easy to spread and it doesn’t pong. The only snag is that the job of barrowing the manure around the garden is a bit of a bore but you have to console yourself that it’s keeping you fit. If you’re interested, Matthew’s number is 07899 676166, his email is info@puckamuck.co.uk and he’s based in Findon, West Sussex.  (By the way, he doesn’t know I’m writing this, nor has he paid me for the plug…I just like to recommend people or products that deserve a mention.)

Come tomorrow, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I will continue to load wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow until our large pile of Puckamuck has finally disappeared. Then we’ll feel really virtuous. Oh, and healthy. 

 

Prunings musings

I don’t know about you, but we had an amazing apple crop this autumn. So many we gave them away at the gate from the time they began falling in mid September right up to early December. Regular dog walkers (we’re on the South Downs Way so there’s no shortage of them) know that there’s always a dog bowl for their thirsty hounds so for about ten weeks they had no excuse for not baking Dorset Apple Cake, brewing their own cider or concocting Crumbles of various sorts. Our five trees are fairly ancient so we’ve no idea what varieties they are though we have worked out that we have three separate types of cookers, one of which ripens to become a very edible eater. Delving into a book on Sussex Apples I came across a old variety called Alfriston which had similar characteristics to one of ours: bearing a local name it presumably was first grown locally so might easily have been planted here. If that logic bears fruit that just leaves the other two varieties a mystery. 

What isn’t a mystery though is the need to prune the damn trees. I really shouldn’t refer to them in such a fashion but for all their summer beauty and autumn mellow fruitfulness when it comes to winter they are a curse…hopping up and down ladders in the cold and rain is enough to make anybody cross. If one can convince oneself that pruning has therapeutic value or that the finished article is akin to an art form and better than anything in Tate Modern then it becomes marginally less irksome but after five days at it and only two trees done I’m beginning to doubt my own propaganda. The only consolation is my trusty iPod and a constant stream of Wagner, Bach, Mozart and the Beatles. (Talking of pruning as an art form though, if you’re ever near the other West Dean - the one near Chichester - pop into their Victorian Walled Kitchen Garden and admire their apples and pears pruned and trained into exquisite traditional shapes and espaliers. And be inspired.)

As for my remaining three trees, what will tomorrow bring? Procrastination, exertion, perspiration, satisfaction. In that order. I hope.

 

Happy New Year!

Having decided to begin a blog I now understand how a writer feels when he’s about to begin a book and faces a ream of blank paper. Thank goodness I’m not burdened by having a huge advance from a publisher hanging over my head. Perhaps a dive into the deep end is the only thing to do. Mind you it shows my age by referring to reams of paper, and for that matter, assuming that all writers are male, but technology and political correctness apart, here goes:

Rosie and I own The Long House and do the garden entirely ourselves. We scaled down from three and a half acres in 2011 having been at Bankton Cottage in Crawley Down for nigh on 30 years. We loved our old garden - it had a walled garden, a lake, an orchard and woodland - and we opened it for the NGS for a number of years with our final opening attracting over 700 visitors. The Long House garden is, by comparison, just an acre so theoretically easier to look after but for years having longed for different levels in our garden we now are on the side of a down so the height difference from one end of the garden to the top (where the compost heap is) is a gradient many many times steeper than the slope at Lords. Still, it keeps us fit, adds an extra dimension to the garden and if it ever snowed here would be the perfect nursery slope.

After quite a mild autumn with plenty of food still in the garden for our feathered friends it was finally time over Christmas to erect the bird feeders. Rosie had no sooner hung the containers of nuts, sunflower seeds and fat balls up than the first birds flew in at exocet speed and began guzzling away. Some were obviously alive last winter so on the lookout for their winter sustenance but this year’s youngsters must have their homing instincts bred into them. Even more surprising, and much more amusing, were the family of four squirrels that equally quickly arrived on the scene. But their luck was out: last year we’d been plagued by the blasted things so we’d bought a squirrel baffle this year and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the following short video clip. Suffice to say, they haven’t returned since being completely unable to puzzle a way to reach the food…maybe they’re all in conference working out how, or maybe they’ve just given up. I live in hope.

 

All photographs © Robin Lloyd