Another Entry in the JH-JN Leisure Visit Programme

Yesterday we went up the Lea Valley to see Myddelton House Gardens, the creation of plantsman E A Bowles, "one of the great gardeners of the twentieth century". To some extent, our visit was mis-timed: apart from it having been a very dry summer, which has had an adverse impact on all plants, we were a few weeks too late to see the Gardens' collection of award-winning irises in full flower. And the tea house and shop were being renovated, so we couldn't even have some wib and ebun....although the admission price to the Gardens had been temporarily halved for the duration of the work.

While there, we picked up a leaflet inviting us to "discover Enfield's hidden beauty", from which we realised that Forty Hall, another on our list of places to visit, was only a few minutes' walk away. So we went there too. The Hall, a Grade I listed building the earliest parts of which date from 1629, has much of its original plaster and stucco work intact, and is now run as a local museum and exhibition space by the local authority (much like our own Bruce Castle). Entry to it was free....which meant that, having been able to use the pay-as-you-go cash balances on our Oyster Cards to travel to Enfield, we had a really cheap day out.

Here are some photographs -- two views of Myddelton House Gardens, each with the Wugster; and one of Forty Hall from across the lake, plus two views of its interior.

A Sociable Weekend

This weekend just past was (1) the annual summer picnic for Tottenham and Wood Green Friends of the Earth on the Saturday, followed on the Sunday by (2) the local version of The Big Lunch, in which neighbours get together in a convenient bit of street and sit around sharing food and drink. We had good weather on both occasions, despite which turn-out for the picnic was down on the previous year (itself down on the year before that) which suggests that the idea might be getting tired, and in need of a rethink. Turn-out for The Big Lunch, however, was up on the previous year, perhaps because it's only the second year on which the event has been held; this year, we had barbecues as well as salads and rice dishes. All v enjoyable, and here are some pictures -- one of the FoE picnic, with Judith, and three of The Big Lunch, with Judith in Aussie hat.

Big Wildlife Garden

Yo, all! No wedding pix and comments yet? Meanwhile: work set up a 'Big Wildlife Garden' web-site -- I've been keeping my diary notes in a Notepad file on desktop, and suddenly realised this makes them easy to share these little 'today in garden' snapshots with you guys...


Sat 18 Jul
Seed harvesting -- columbines, nigella, foxgloves -- and lavender heads. This year, a lot of the self-sower seeds will go onto our Maysie memorial garden. And I need to chase up the venue for February seed-swap day -- have already set the date as Sunday 6 Feb.


Fri 17 Jul
Maysie memorial garden: I have local'Make a Difference' funding from the Council to plant up a patch of greenspace at the top of our street into a community garden. It is currently bare grass, one plane tree, used for dog-emptying, street drinking, sometimes prostitution, with the car park alongside used by kids as kick-about space. £1100 doesn't go far once you measure up and start pricing! Basic plan is to buy in enough lavender and rose bushes to make an attractive, fairly drought-resistant and self-defending border around a big bed -- to be filled up with plants donated by neighbours -- and a smaller bed with a magnolia tree in memory of Maysie. Spring and a few summer bulbs, of course. I've set up a project web-site at http://maysie-garden.wikispaces.com/

Maysie was one of the founders of our residents association, lived all her life in the house her grandparents were in at the 1891 census, so had lots of memories of how life and this locality have changed over the years -- through the Depression, WW2, and onwards -- very tender-hearted and looked after local cats, dogs, birds and wildlife, and her neighbours. We feel her loss as the end of an era here.

Jul 16
Baby robin on the fence as I was giving a webinar this morning: first baby robin of the year. We don't normally seerobins or blackbirds here during the summer: I presume its a combination of plenty of natural food around elsewhere, and the dense foliage making it harder to see birds than when its bare in winter.

Jul 15
Evening primrose luminous in the twilight: its grown enormous, looming over the path just beyond the greenhouse against our back wall. I hope the moths are enjoying it -- have seen magpie moths here and at the allotment this past week or so.


Sat 3 Jul
Picking strawberries down the allotment -- and a bit of strawberry bed jumps up and into the pond. Frog sheltering from the searing sun beneath the leaves...





Fri 2 July
Apple tree is thick with fluffy baby sparrows. On counting, this turns into 5 spuggies and a couple of invisible rustlings. (It's a very small apple tree -- bought as a minarette but not kept strictly pruned.)

End of the reporting quarter for BTO's Garden Birdwatch logging sheet -- BTO is British Trust for Ornithology. The Garden Birdwatch is simple, quite fun and undemanding -- each week, you log the max number of different bird species seen in your garden onto their machine readable paper sheet (or enter it directly onto BTO web-site), at the end of the quarter their 'Bird Table' newsletter arrives reminding you that you should be at the end of the quarterly paper form. I log the weekly spottings in pencil, then at the end of the quarter ink in the sightings and rub out any lower-total bars, then send it off. Logging the sighting helps you recall the pattern of changes through the year -- we get robin, blackbird, wren over winter but seldom see them during summer. And it helps you note changes from year to year.




Thu 3/6: More swifts: the warm weather, with its winds from the south, should bring more swifts here from Africa, said Springwatch on TV. Sure enough I'm now seeing threes and fours, even half a dozen, at a time.

Fri 4/6: Ripping out spent forget-me-nots around back garden, and cutting back the jungle of sweet cicely along the shady fence. First crab spider of the season: fat white body, fell out among the compost. And first little black ladybird 'alligator' larvae. Am seeing small yellow ladybirds with many little black dots. And now first harlequin ladybirds appearing.

Sat5/6: Wild Day Out, Alexandra Palace

Bioblitz first spot: great spotted woodpecker seen from bus on way in to Natural England Stall, where we had 'make a kingfisher' bag-charm as a very popular activity for kids and parents. Taking a break, met a group of lichenologists examining one of the stone staircases, and was given a fascinating rundown on what they'd found by the NHM expert: seventeen different types, including black cyanobacteria botches and a white lichen with orange-red fruiting bodies that was a sign of warming climate. I asked about the whitish lichen patches I'd seen along local streets; 'like chewing gum patches, as the man said. Something muralis. They used to grow on house roofs, but an orange leafier species is apparently taking over there as urban pollution levels reduce. HOwever, it can't cope with being trampled on, as the muralis can.

The kingfisher bag-charms are made from turquoise and orange felt shapes, with a dark blue felt beak.


Sun 6/6: Planting out clary, agustache and alyssum seedlings in FG2. It was a jungle of creepers gone wild: white jasmine, silvery crimson virginia creeper (henryana). This spring, I got a local lad to help me rip them all out and hack them back, and am turning the space back into a flower garden. Just in time to rescue a ceanothus that seemed to be going under -- had put out very few leaves. I put in two rose bushes: a David Austin 'William Shakespeare' deep crimson which is supposed to have a fabulous oold-fashioned fragrance, and a crimson-and-white striped Rosa Mundi (rose of the world). According to that useful source, 'something I read', car exhaust fumes actively destroy flower scents, by binding to their molecules. We'll see whether Wm Shakespeare prevails -- my old-fashioned pinks, and even the jasmine, seem to get drowned out. Its only the soapwort, Bouncing Bet, whose delicately spicy fragrance really seems to come out on top in the urban air.


Tues 15/6: to allotment at the end of the day, to clear a patch where the climbing bean seedlings now in the greenhouse can get their feet down while we go off on hols. This means I have to rip out flourishing poppy plants just about to come into flower -- hairy, shaggy-leaved field poppies and smooth silvery-leaved 'breadseed' (or opium) poppies. I leave a good specimen of each, growing at the edge of the bed, so we will have some flowers there. Also weeded out: groundcover of speedwell and scarlet pimpernel, and a robust ragweed which was also just setting buds. If there'd been any sign of the yellow-and-black striped 'football sock' caterpillars that turn into crimson and black cinnabar moths, then I'd have left the ragweed.

"You Look Amazing!"

Judith and I were at the Cartoon Museum yesterday evening, at the launch event for the new exhibition on Children's Animation (we are paid up supporters of the Museum, so receive invitations to these events as a matter of routine). Inevitably, it was too crowded for us to view the exhibition properly, at least until the media types who'd come along to swig free wine and be seen by their fellow media types began to thin out; then we had an enjoyable time re-acquainting ourselves with Noggin The Nog and The Clangers (the exhibition has a complete diorama, with all the puppets and models), and confronting for the first time Bob The Builder and Peppa Pig (which by comparison with Noggin look very pale and uninteresting, but perhaps that's just childhood nostalgia talking). Anyway, as we were gathering ourselves to leave we -- or at least I -- was suddenly accosted by two women, one very sharp and attractive in black and the other more nondescript. "You look amazing!" said the sharp and attractive one. "What hair dye do you use? Where did you get your shoes?"

Then she unleashed the kicker: she was looking for a second husband.

I hastily introduced Judith -- "Your friend?" "My wife" -- and the conversation reverted to my hair colouring and my shoes. I could satisfy them as to the identity of the former (L'Oreal intense dark red), but as the shoes (white cork-soled sandals with flower detail on the cross-strap) were bought in a charity shop I could only say that I didn't know the name of their manufacturer. (For the record, I was also wearing a pleated grey denim mini-skirt and a pair of big dangly ear-rings: half-moons with chain loops. In other words, pretty much what I usually wear, to work or anywhere else.)

They took my picture. Then we left. I think that's the first time I have ever been quite so brazenly propositioned....

The Garden, in the July Sunshine

The heatwave which has characterised the past two weeks seems to be coming to an end as fresher weather (and more cloud) moves in from the west); but in the meantime here are some pictures of our garden in the sunshine -- the tomatoes in the greenhouse (which had only recently been planted out when we went to Purbeck; now look at the size of them); the tomatoes in the garden (how much smaller they are by comparison); the pond and its associated collection of pots of different sizes; the blackcurrant bush, with berries just about ready to be picked; and a display of flowers by the greenhouse.

Purbeck Vignettes -- 6: The Middle-Classness of Purbeck

"If we were to retire here," observed Judith, "we would probably become very right-wing in very short-order." And, much though I love Purbeck, it has to be acknowledged that it is a very middle-class, very comfortable, and very well-off area -- not just in the obviously expensive places to live such as Corfe, where the houses will be unaffordable unless you were born there or inherited property there, but even in former farming and fishing villages such as Kimmeridge. Until the Second World War, Kimmeridge and its like -- such as the deserted village of Tyneham, given up to the War Office in 1943 and never returned -- would have existed at or even below the poverty level, it inhabitants wringing a precarious living from the land and the sea; now, like the thoroughly tourist-centred Studland, they are places for incomers: second homes, 4WDs clogging the lanes at weekends, organic cafes catering to walkers such as ourselves. (Although in our particular case we were carrying our own sandwich lunch, so didn't need to stop for a latte and a carrot cake.)

Swanage has what would obviously be called "council housing", system-built terraces put up in the 1950s and 1960s to house the less well-off; but even these houses lack any air of indigence or unemployment. One gets the sense that anyone who falls into these categories sooner or later moves away, because living there is otherwise unaffordable. "Prosperous" is the word you want to apply here -- although it's equally possible that (counter-intuitive as it is) much of this properity is attributable to the recession, as people choose to holiday in the UK rather than abroad. If so, the Swanage news trade certainly knows its audience -- hunting for a copy of The Guardian on Saturday morning, I found instead huge piles of The Daily Torygraph, equally huge piles of The Daily Hate and The Getsworse, and only slightly smaller piles of The Sun.

For an alternative to a conventional middle-class life, it seems you need to go to Wareham, where can be found people who look as though they've fallen out of an earlier 1970s fashion plate (cheesecloth, dyed long hair, the works). It's almost as though -- because when we passed through it was the weekend of the Glastonbury Festival -- they'd set off for that first gig on Worthy Farm all those years ago, but had turned aside somewhere along the way.

Purbeck Vignettes -- 5: The Identification of Deer

Deer identification charts tend to focus on the rump, since that's mostly what you see as they run away from you. In wooded areas, however, you rarely see them at all: you hear a sudden commotion and crashing in the undergrowth adjacent to the path, and assume that you have disturbed a large animal which -- since there's nothing else large enough to make all that noise -- must be a deer. Just occasionally, however, your luck is in, and if you halt on the fringes of the woodland, keeping to the shadows, you can see them in the open ground beyond.

We were lucky twice on our walk across Creech Heath towards the Blue Pool, meeting fallow deer -- identifiable as such by the white spots on their backs -- on both occasions. When watched through binoculars, there is something permanently skittish about their behaviour: their heads are up, their ears erect, their little black eyes seeming to look straight at you, one front leg being repeatedly lifted and lowered. When they do decide to flee, they all move at once, as though they've reached a collective decision rather than being spooked by a single individual. But for the minutes before they decide that the new patch of shadow on the edge of the woods is a human, they can be observed contentedly grazing the heather, shepherding their fawns, and nuzzling one another's necks.

Purbeck Vignettes -- 4: A Prospect of Studland

We knew of the long, white sand beach at Studland -- I'd been there as a boy -- but our principal interest was Studland Heath nature reserve, a dune-based heath habitat which is home to all six of Britain's native reptile species and would also host a number of different butterflies and beetles as well as the rare Dartford Warbler. The map provided by the National Trust, the Heath's owners, at Shell Bay at the north end of the beach -- coincidentally the official start (or end) of the South West Coast Path -- showed that there were a number of routes through it; our intention, therefore, was to progress along the beach as far as the naturist section, then veer off into the Heath and follow the paths to the bird hides at the southern end of the Little Sea before calling in at Studland village's Bankes Arms for a late lunch.

None of this really went to plan. Walking on sand is always slower than walking elsewhere; it therefore took us longer to get to the veering-off point than we'd anticipated (where we stopped for half-an-hour or so for Judith to sketch Old Harry Rocks). That was also the point at which we found that the signage on the ground was poor to non-existent: we could see the markers delineating the limits of the naturist area, but where were those to direct us onto the paths across the Heath?

Undaunted, we struck off into the dunes. To encounter no signs or waymarkers, but a number of slightly startled naturists doubtless wondering what these two "textiles" were doing blundering around in their midst. Asking for directions brought only the information that the Little Sea was a long way "in that direction", which was of no help. So we gave up and returned to the beach, our chosen path taking us past two young men behind a canvas shelter whose demeanour suggested they may have been interrupted while engaged in a manipulation of such frightfulness that it cannot possibly be discussed in a family blog such as this.

So we slogged on south towards Middle Beach, abandoning the thought of a lunch in the Bankes Arms (and a sampling of the local beers that would have provided), aiming instead for an ice cream at the NT Visitor Centre. And noting, as we went, that the Studland naturists have three principal characteristics: (1) they are nut-brown all over, presumably from their exposure to the sun; (2) they are all old and mostly overweight; and (3) when not lying down with their legs apart are striding boldly about displaying their, er, "equipment". Most unnerving!

Purbeck Vignettes -- 3: Sandbanks: Vulgarity on Stilts

We wanted to visit Studland Beach and the nature reserve which backs it, but before we commenced that walk we thought we'd take the ferry over to Sandbanks -- supposedly the most expensive piece of real estate in the UK -- and walk around it to see what money had done to it.

There are vestiges of what it might have been like between the two world wars, when it would have been inhabited by those who couldn't afford "proper" homes in nearby Poole and Bournemouth: older, run-down, often single-storey properties presumably still occupied by the artists, writers and other bohemians (or their descendants) who moved there decades ago and have resisted the pressure to sell up or move out. One or two were shuttered and had signs up announcing their demolition, but this appeared to have been "immiment" for several months. Perhaps for same economic reasons, since one or two of the new and seriously upscale developments with hoardings announcing their opening this month or next were clearly in stasis: nobody building, nobody buying.

Most of the new or newer properties which had replaced the original bungalows and terraces were relatively restrained: lots of Mediterranean-style white facades with huge picture windows, stainless steel verandahs and the like. But in some cases their owners appeared to be people who had more money than sense, and had handed their po-mo architects a brief which allowed them to do whatever they like, with results -- an enormous faux-Corinthian portico sticks particularly in the mind -- which shouted not so much "Look at me, I'm rich", as "I'm rich, fuck off".

All a far cry from John Brunner's observation, in one of his short stories the title of which I can't remember, that when the super-rich find the searchlight of publicity swinging in their direction they buy the searchlight and instruct the man behind it to switch it off. And the thought that rising sea levels will be lapping at their front doors within the next fifty or so years is a suitable corrective to the thought of the money wasted on such housing extravagance.

Purbeck Vignettes -- 2: The Habits of Birds

The walk to Corfe Castle along the chalk ridge of the East Purbeck Hills is in my opinion the loveliest walk in England. Poole Harbour and Wareham Forest spread out to the right; the Vale of Purbeck and its stone-built hamlets to the left; ahead, the sway-backed West Purbeck Hills marching to meet the sea at Worbarrow Tout, like a snake undulating across the landscape; and closer, the ruined keep of the Castle emerging from the folds of the downs. And, above, the birds.

It's perhaps surprising how only a few minutes' observation is sufficient to be able to distinguish one species from another (especially if most of the birds you ordinarily see are urban ones visiting your garden rather than those of the countryside). For instance, kestrels and peregrines are both raptors, the latter larger than the first, although you usually need binoculars to resolve this detail; but even without binoculars the differences in their behaviour are clear. Kestrels hover over the slopes of the hills, their beak and head forming a downward-curving profile at right-angles to their body, and have to engage in bursts of frantic wing-beating every minute or so to retain their position. Peregrines, by contrast, soar and glide: their wing-beats are sparse, and they move slowly across the sky, clearly reserving their energies for the killing dive that will gain them their next meal.

Buzzards are different again: with square, distinctively barred wings, they patrol in rising circles, concluding each patrol with a downward slide to a different spot to commence a new one. Crows -- sociable, intelligent birds -- clearly enjoy riding the thermals, just because they can. And the skylarks....you'll never see skylarks in towns, because they are birds of the open field: trilling constantly, rising upwards, becoming a mere dot before suddenly folding their wings and plunging down to their nest somewhere in the grass.

And the other lovely thing about the walk along the East Purbeck Hills is that there is no background noise -- of traffic, or aircraft -- to blanket the bird-song: you'll hear it all.

At the end of the walk, there are the ruins of Corfe Castle, the most sublime of all the ruined castles in England -- see the photograph below. When I die, I want my ashes scattered on the slope of the hill overlooking it, just where the photograph was taken.

Purbeck Vignettes -- 1: The Lesser Ascot Fascinator

Changing at Oxford Circus on our way to Waterloo just over a week ago, we encountered what at first appeared to be three people on their way to a wedding: a smartly dressed young man in a grey suit, accompanied by two young women in summer frocks and the wire-and-feather contraptions pinned to the side of the head known as fascinators which are apparently this season's de rigeur fashion accessory for smart engagements. Instead of an elaborate hat (or het, as Judith and I pronounce it, thereby distinguishing them from proper hats), something which lets the breeze through and keeps one's head cool.

Getting out at Waterloo, we were passed by a third young woman in a summer frock and fascinator. Same wedding party, we thought. Then, arriving on the station concourse and encountering more (and more and more and more -- and many more smartly dressed men) of them, the penny dropped -- this was the last Saturday of Ascot, and they were off for a day at the races.

It was immediately obvious that few if any of them would be classifiable as proper toffs. For all of them -- the men as well, many in highly formal top hat and tails (often carrying picnic bags and folding stools) -- this was an opportunity to dress up and have fun: just the sort of thing to do (especially if one is in one's twenties and thirties, and most of them clearly were) to keep one's spirit up during the worst economic recession since the war (phrase copyright just about everybody, and can we please find another). But one couldn't help thinking that most of the women just weren't dressed for the weather (nine-tenths overcast, and the propsect of rain): bare legs (and often bare arms), thin dresses, no coats....many of them looked chilled already. And the shoes: how could they possibly expect to navigate grassy surfaces in such ridiculously high heels? (Even though the sensible ones were actually travelling in flats and carrying their heels in a bag.)

We left them to it. "It" included vast queues for the ticket machines -- presumably the decision to go to Ascot for the day was so last-minute that they couldn't organise themselves to buy their tickets in advance and save a bit of money....

Harvest Home

We went to the allotment yesterday, for the first time after a week away in Purbeck, and found that the summer harvest season is now in full swing. Pictured is the head gardener, Cde J Hanna, with yesterday's haul: a bag of red orache, a bag of parsley, a bag of lavender, three tubs of strawberries, two tubs of raspberries, and two of blackcurrants. And a vase of red roses to keep them company.

Last photos for today

Murder Mystery Party II - Gangster Theme !

One more..

Playing in the sand at little beach

And wait... there's more

Grandma in the workshop
Connor doing clean
and Dan drawing

(not necessarily in that order)