The Good, The Bad & The Downright 'Orrible

I feel a bit of a part-timer, these days. It seems as if I'm no sooner here than I'm gone again, what with one thing and another.
A bit discombobulating, Life In Transit. I should write a book - I could call it something like There and Back Again - an homage to dear old Bilbo Baggins.

I've been in sunny, blossom-filled Suffolk visiting my folks again, and now I'm back in a, miraculously, sunny Sligo where my own patch, anyway, is also blossom-filled. June is in full swing. There can be no doubt - the Summer Umbrella is up in the courtyard - so you can tell, it truly is the season of wine and roses.

As it happened, this trip, I was away for my birthday, which was celebrated in the bosom of my family. My papa took us all out for lunch, and then my sister and I spent the afternoon happily rummaging through a couple of Suffolk's many antique/salvage/vintage/junk yards. Perfect.

I bought this pretty plate to hang on my kitchen wall.

On the way home, I met my charming boy at the airport. He'd just flown in from Brisbane, via Kuala Lumpur and Colombo and we did the last leg to the west of Ireland together.
It's weird, isn't it, when you are looking for someone in a crowded place. Either every person you look at somehow resembles the face you are hoping to see, or else the whole place becomes a blur.
Stansted was a blur, but that might have been due to my bus-induced headache.
It didn't matter - he found me and enveloped me in a 4-year-overdue hug that was wonderful, if slightly oxygen-less.
Have both my boys grown? I thought they'd stopped growing years ago. They are like cranes. They go up forever.
Perhaps that's why this boy loves climbing - his head is already in the clouds anyway.
I have generally been called tall, but I don't feel tall around them anymore.
Perhaps I have more in common with dear old Bilbo than I thought - he was vertically-challenged too, wasn't he?
Or perhaps I have shrunk.

It was very good to see him, and it was very good to arrive home to evening sunshine and sit in the warm, bee-buzzy potager drinking a celebratory glass to salute his return, my beloved Model Dog rolling upside down on my feet, waving her legs and tail in the air, grinning with delight.

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Just as good to hear him exclaiming over the changes the passing years (and my labours) have wrought in the garden, as we wandered around in the long, light, pre-solstice evening.

'The strawberries are coming along,' the In-Charge said. 'Some of the smaller ones are ready.'
We opened our hands and he placed a few beef-tomatoes in them.
Oh Barney McCreavy - what strawberries!
Fat and fulsome, juicy and gigantic.
And - typically - I've only got 4 empty jars on the shelf in the pantry.
Why didn't I think before recycling?

Climber-boy and I stopped in amazement when we reached the herbaceous border. I don't think either of us have ever seen such huge delphiniums. The girth of them - they are obese, like the paeonies.
Obese and utterly 'tivine' as my other son used to say when he was little. Utterly tivine.

And the bees! The garden is buzzing. Hundreds of our own bumble bees (of all sizes and colours) and lots of our new native Irish black bees to be seen and heard everywhere.
The In-Charge had seen a dark mass of bees on the outside of the hive just a few days ago and rang the Bee-Boss. 'I think they're planning to de-camp,' he said. But when the Boss turned up, he said no, they were just too hot in this sultry weather, and were outside cooling down.
He removed a chunk of honeycomb and added another storey, so now we have high-rise bees - and a foretaste of our very own honey!


Lots of good things to come home to.

But alas, not all good. Bambina's sister, for no good reason that we can think of, upped and died on the day of our return.
The In-Charge had put her into the quarantine cage, because she was sitting in the orchard 'looking a bit gleckit' - but to no avail. I am all the more glad of Bambina's ten little chicks.
Not so little any more. They are definitely entering the spotty, gawky teenage years. I've removed all mirrors from their pen, so that they don't get too depressed. And we won't show them the photos when they're all grown up and over it.

So much for the Good and the Bad .
And the Downright 'Orrible?
I've got all-consuming, uber-ghastly, life-diminishing, headache-grinding, sinus-punishing, sleep-destroying, med-defying, all-orifice-streaming, in-snot-drowning, push-me-under-and-hold-me-down-forever hayfever.
It just isn't fair.
I've been chewing on the honeycomb frantically. Some say it will make a difference.
I've been chugging down the echinacea - a friend told me it worked for them.
The anti-histamines ain't doin' nothin'.
Any other remedies I should try?
I'm willing to try anything - beheading starts to sound appealing...

Indian Summer

October cornflowers

Today, for the first time, there was a real autumn chill and dampness in the air first thing. It was still and grey, and hinted that perhaps our long, lovely summer is drawing to a close.But now I feel as though perhaps I dreamt that. It is warm and sunny again, I've just picked a bunch of cornflowers and paused to admire the pansies and cyclamen in the courtyard bed. And I've been working outside all morning in my shirt sleeves again - gardening, inevitably. Determined to get all my projects finished, my rooted rose cuttings planted, and my bulbs in today, because tomorrow I will be back at Clare's house.

Cyclamen and pansies

I've been helping my friend Clare to create a garden out of the desert of gravel which came with the house. It's great fun, and the hard work has been completely mitigated by the group of like-minded friends who have pitched in with every tool they own and dug, trundled barrows, measured, levelled, painted and heaved alongside me. It's not hugely big, the garden, but it's on a slight incline, so nothing is straightforward, but hey! - after a hard day's work, she has a little patio!
Joy!
But also a lot of stuff lying around.
And piles of mud.
And sand. And gravel.
And a vast heap of trip-hazards - like wooden stakes and trellis.
Hmmm.
Still - I guess it's a start.

I want to get it finished before autumn actually does kick in.
The trouble is, it feels like - what? - late August, early September? Some days feel like July.
It's been one of those blissful summers when time has seemed largely immaterial. The parasol has been up in the courtyard since June, the dogs' sunbathing beds are left out more often than not, and the table outside the backdoor is so much in use, it is covered in clutter.

I haven't caught up with real time yet, but the truth is, we are not far off half-term, and, almost unawares, the Models and I are gently slipping back into our term-time routine. I found myself looking anxiously at the New Girls this morning, trying to gauge how much their infant feathers have grown since yesterday. Not much is the answer, but they are coming - slowly. They will need them soon. I may even have to knit them little pinafores like these dinky ones I saw on Facebook a while ago.

Not my photo or my hens, but a great idea. Thank you, whoever posted it on Facebook

The trouble is, my knitting needles are still full of pole warmer. The one I knitted for Beltra Country Market two years ago has faded to oblivion, turned to a crisp in the teeth of the wind, hail, rain and sun it's been subjected to, and looks decidedly travel-stained from all the passing traffic on the road. However, the new one is nearly finished, and I think there might even be some of the neon orange yarn left over.

The new pole warmer is growing every day

Would the Yah Bird like neon orange, do you think? Jil, our Wwoofer loved it - and looked stunning in her wonderful neon fleece. It was all the rage in Paris too, so you never know. It might be just what the Yah Bird needs to set her up in the world.

Jil and SuperModel at the beach

It's been a great Wwoofing-summer. Apart from the lovely Jil, we had Chloe back for another visit which was wonderful. So lovely to see her again and catch up. She helped knit a bit of the new pole warmer while she was here, and trimmed lots of box hedges, and did a hundred and one other things in the garden. We spent long, lovely, sunny days out there together, chatting, laughing and catching up as we pottered about and weeded the vegetables. We went to a Garden Festival in Galway one glorious Sunday while she was here, and had a great day wandering around Claregalway Castle grounds, surrounded by flowers, food and families enjoying themselves.

Claregalway Garden Festival in July

And there was Marko - and Olivia and Marie Christine. It seems like years ago that they were here, sitting in the Moon Garden knitting, chattering away in Canadian French to each other, interspersed with regular cries of 'Oh-oh! Something weird...' when they'd either dropped a stitch or accidentally created several new ones.

Perhaps it is the end of the summer. It must be or why else would I be looking back over months of memories and sunshine. But it's lovely to have so much to look back on. Paris; several visits to Suffolk to see my parents; the haze of ivory lace and sunshine that was my brother's wedding; the In-Charge's Mega Birthday complete with bunting, balloons and marquees; all the Country Shows we went to, the gardens we visited; our trip to Dublin... Not to mention walks on the beach, the Great Rescue and subsequent Hen Central, SuperModel suddenly starting to grow up, the garden looking the best it's looked for years.

Hens are family, not food. Hens are family, not food. Hens are family... Hens are family...but very tasty NOT food

Actually it will be nice to have a rainy day or two, so that I can sit down and catch up with everything. Look at all the photographs I took and perhaps even record a few of them on these pages for posterity.
But don't get me wrong - I'm not wishing for rain - heaven forbid!
I've still got too much do get done outdoors for that.
I've to finish clearing the bank and planting.
And Clare's garden isn't nearly ready yet. There's a raised bed to raise, an archway to put up, stones to be removed, compost to be hauled, trees to be planted, roses to be put in, bulbs to be bulbed, plants to be positioned, a shed to be painted....

Better scrub that line about a nice rainy day or two.
I am NOT even thinking about rain.

Helmingham Gardens: Walled-In Heaven

I've been in Suffolk, on the far eastern side of England.
Beautiful Suffolk, with cloudless blue skies full of shrieking swifts, endless fields of ripening, golden corn, stately trees marking horizons and hedgerows, and picture-postcard cottages straight off the lids of chocolate boxes.

Picture postcard houses

It was lovely to be there again - pottering in my parents' garden; listening to the church bells; visiting antique/vintage/junk shops with my sister; and whiling away scorching afternoons beside the open French windows, chatting with my mother over some gentle crochet.

Not to mention being almost entirely off-line.

Now I am back at home - to a rapturous welcome from Model Dog and the TeenQueen, it's true - but to the less enjoyable realities of normal life as well. My dear friend has been in a car smash and is in hospital with two broken ankles, the TeenQueen, in an enthusiastic but misplaced attempt to defend her home from canine intruders, has bitten another friend's lurcher, and the rain it raineth every day.

At lunchtime I rushed out to feed some roses and young blossom trees - a job best done in wet weather - and it was only as I changed into dry clothes afterwards that it dawned on me: a week ago this very afternoon, I was visiting one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen - the walled garden at Helmingham Hall.
How I wish I'd had my camera. My phone isn't the same thing at all. Apologies, Helmingham, for not doing you justice.

Side view of Helmingham Hall

It's not very far from my mother's village, but for some reason I've never been there before.
I shall certainly be going there again. In fact, I'm wondering if I might move in without them noticing.
There are several gardeners there, but I'm sure they could use an extra pair of hands, and I'd work very hard.
The Head Gardener, I was told, has been there for 50 years, since he was a boy.
It shows.
And the lady of the house is a garden designer.
That shows too.

I'm sure the walled garden at Helmingham has always been a thing of beauty, but now it has reached the peak of perfection.
You have to walk around the lovely Tudor Hall to get to it - along the side of a moat on which water lilies drift lazily in the afternoon sunshine. At the end, a notice on the gate says something along the lines of 'For the sake of the deer, please keep this gate closed', and there is a half-wild, half-mown path with topiary hedges that entice you ever onwards.

Even then you only catch glimpses of the joys ahead.
Have you ever noticed that about the best gardens? They lure you bit by bit. Never is everything revealed at once, and just when you think you have arrived at the pièce de résistance, a path - or a doorway - or an arch cut into the hedge tells you that there is more - still more - to come.

So it is at Helmingham.
After the moat, the topiary hedges, and the casually thrown out lure of a dappled apple walk, finally you arrive in a walled enclosure, with trees, urns overflowing with white cosmos and lavender-edged flower borders that look  like oil paintings, in which hide covered seats where you can sit out of the sun yet still smell the hot, sweet scent of roses.

The ante-room

But it's only the ante-room.

Huge pillars entwined with roses and topped with winged horses' heads mark the entrance to the actual walled garden. They hold massive wrought iron gates of which I am deeply jealous.
Although to be honest, it wasn't just the gates I lusted after.

Someone once said to me: 'One garden is much like another.'
Wrong.
Gardens are like books. They are all different, although some may fall into the same genre. I have seen gardens that leave you depressed, others that leave you unmoved. There are many that disappoint and many that surprise and delight. But the best of gardens take you to another place entirely, a place that I, for one, never want to come back from.

Inside its high, aged brick walls, Helmingham's rectangular garden is broken up geometrically. A central grass path is edged with wide herbaceous borders backed by fences, railings or obelisks supporting endless roses, clematis and other climbing beauties.

The central path

And at regular intervals there are other paths leading off to the sides.
Some of these are arched allées - covered with runner beans, or wisteria or sweet peas.

Sometimes there are just more grass paths, with more herbaceous borders.

And hidden away in between are long rectangular beds of vegetables, or cutting flowers, or lavender.

Set against the outer walls, in between the planting, are benches and amusing topiary specimens.

The Snowman

The armchair so you can sit and watch your leeks grow

And there are side gates - of which I'm also exceedingly jealous.

Exceedingly jealous.

There is also the Coach House Tea Room serving delicious cakes to revive you for part two - the knot garden, the rose garden, and a newly planted garden with lots of trees...
Or maybe just a second, leisurely tour of the walled garden, where you can sit and watch the bees falling over each other to get at the veronica and the allium and the honeysuckle - and everything else. I've never seen so many bees in one place.




It was so hot last Wednesday that I was glad to slip out of the back gate for a moment in the shade, where a sort of secondary moat - or perhaps it was originally a carp pond - runs around the outside of the walled garden, dividing it from the Apple Walk and the Deer Park. It reflects the magnificent, graceful trees, and does what water always does. It brings heaven into the garden.

As if it wasn't there already.

Behind the walled garden

Between the Apple Walk and the Walled Garden

What else can I say? Except hie thee hence to Helmingham.
It's part garden, part oil painting, and part heaven.

Best Mates

Oh the joys of the modern world!
We have made a new friend.
Well - actually a virtual friend.

If only we lived in Suffolk, he would be a real friend, and Model Dog, SuperModel and I would want to see him every day because he is right up our street (so to speak. Alas not in actual fact).

After consultation with my girls we all feel that, quite apart from wanting you to meet this new and colourful character in our lives, we all would like to share his educational message and picture for the benefit of the less-informed.
I daresay there are many dog owners out there who live in blissful ignorance of a hound's very real needs at this time of year. Indeed, I confess with shame that I am one of them.
But worry not, after a severe lambasting for my total disregard for their welfare, I have promised Model Dog and SuperModel that I will mend my ways forthwith.

Here is our new best mate in all his glory.

And here is his educational message. Please read, learn and inwardly digest!
(I have tried to pick a colour of which he would approve.)

'Wen it be's sooper chillies, like wot it be's in Lowstuff ats the moment, it be's sooper himportant to keeps warm. So I did finks to meself to makes a heducayshonal foto fors all hoomans wot is new to ownings hounds this winter. Fings you will needs: sooper luffly warm coat wivs tummy warmings fing, leg warming fings, feets warming fings, hat ands scarf (probly best ifs thems matchings), ear warmings fings (wot can be dedded ferst like wot mine woz) ands a hot waterbottle. Then you's reddy for winter walkies bys the marshes!'

I am appalled at my own inadequacy. But before making this delicious boy's acquaintance, I hadn't realised just how important it is to keep those brindles warm, nor how many garments are required to do the job properly.

And my own hounds have made their feelings very clear. When I showed them this picture, I perceived immediately that they had (to use our new friend's inimitable language) their most envious 'eyeborls on'.
No words were necessary.

We are still in major discussions at this end, as to style, colour, yarn texture and overall look, though inevitably - being ladies of decided but individual fashion - we are not yet in complete agreement.
But I am preparing.
The wool is out.
I am sharpening my knitting needles as I write, and just as soon as a decision has been made, I'm ready for the off...

Under starter's orders...

After all, you know what I love best! You know how itchy my fingers get!


In the meantime, you can learn more about this remarkable hound by clicking on the link below.
Read how, in true crusading spirit, he has written to the Queen with 'hinformashons on his polly-sees to ban flashbangs' and also his 'Campayn to be Prime Mincer'.
His manifesto is full of good, sound stuff, and although the 'elekshuns' are not imminent, I know who'll get my household's vote!

Maybe I should knit him a soap-box while I'm waiting for my girls to decide?
Or a campaign banner? 'VOTE FOR THIS DAVID!'

Read all about it! Read all about it! 

                     

Picture it in your Own Words - Illuminations

I am a long-lapsed contributor to The Weekly Photo Challenge, but this week's subject has brought me back into the fold.

It is Illuminations


I took this picture at Christmas in a little gem of a church in Suffolk on the eastern side of England. It is part of a stained glass window depicting elements of the coat of arms of the family on whose estate the church was built.

This photo was the result of an experiment when I was taking a photo of the rising moon next to a streetlight.

And lastly, this is a photo I took of candles I lit for the Winter Solstice in memory of my sweet boys.

You can see other Illumination pictures here.

A Suffolk Christmas

My sister's 'pet' pheasant.

December, normally one of my happiest months, has been so overshadowed this year, that it seems to have passed me by. But Christmas itself was lovely - truly lovely.
The In-Charge and I flew to England to spend four brief days with my parents, my sister and my brother-in-law, and it was the best thing we could have done.
For one thing it forcibly removed us from the axis point of our very real grief.

They all live in Suffolk, a part of England we have loved for many years - even before first my sister and then my parents moved there. Some of my father's family originally came from Suffolk, and he has happy childhood memories rooted in the county.
When I visited in the spring, it was a dust-bowl that had received only 8mm of rain in three months.
No longer.
The flooded fields visible first from the plane and then driving East from Stanstead were a sight more familiar in the Emerald Isle. My parents, who live in a charming 500 year old weaver's cottage, are fortunately located at the highest point of their village, so water has not been an issue, but my sister, whose own delightful house is probably of similar age, lives in a picturesque country lane beside an ancient ford. Fortunately the building is also raised out of harm's way, but the ford - through which she and others have to pass in order to commune with the outside world - has been in full, and deceptive, spate. In the last few weeks it has seen off not only her car, but also at least two others whose owners mistakenly thought they could cross unscathed.

'Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours' - cars included.

We have only spent two other Christmases in England in the last 19 years, and it was lovely to do so this year. A balm - a much needed balm - to our sore hearts.
And to my delight I found these creations nestling amongst the presents under the Christmas tree.
They were not there as gifts but have apparently - in my extended absence - become part of my parents' yuletide tradition. They were made some years ago by my aunt, my mother's twin.

Oh how I do love knitting!

I don't suppose they quite qualify as guerrilla knitting, but I'm very willing to make an exception!
Although, now I come to think of it, in the politics of the time, I suppose this lot were pretty much all guerrillas!

Especially these guys.

I particularly love the black and white lambs - but then that's not really surprising, is it?

On Boxing Day, or Stephen's Day as I've learned to call it in Ireland, we went for a long walk - on the safe side of the ford - and ended up at the tiny Church of All Saints, lost in a copse of trees in the best Meaulnes tradition.

Built in the 14th and 15th centuries, it was a gem and a delight, decorated throughout with bunches of holly for the recent candlelit carol service. The church was apparently restored to its original medieval glory in 1862, when the changes made in the 17th and 18th centuries were rectified. The whole church was beautiful, from its hammerbeam roof and painted coat of arms to its stained glass windows, but the bits that pleased us all the most were the poppyhead pew ends, each carved with different leaves and fruit. I particularly like knowing who carved them (and everything else in the church) 150 years ago - James Wormald and William Polly. What pleasure it must have given them to create so many beautiful objects.
Some of them are decidedly Christmassey.

Holly

And, of course, ivy

And the pear tree, although I didn't see a partridge lurking amongst the leaves.

Works of art, each and every one - quite beautiful.

There may not have been a partridge on the pew, but there is a crow perched on the top of the little spire. Apparently it was put there when the church was renovated again in 2004.

The day was just fading and rain beginning to spit as we arrived back at my sister's house, the pretty lights in the bushes around her windows shining to welcome us home. We sat around the fire and ate far too many delicious mince pies and slices of cake for tea, all washed down with mulled wine or a cuppa according to taste, while Tilly, her new cat, went from lap to lap to be stroked and admired.

What a perfect way to spend Christmas.

Tilly being admired

Distant Thunder

I woke up with a terrible headache this morning, as is, regrettably, my wont.
It was a miserable, wet morning, and as I opened the shutters, I hoped Suffolk was enjoying better weather. My Papa is in Suffolk, and today is his 91st birthday.
Thanks to the rain, the early constitutional in the orchard was brief, damp and unrelieving, but by mid morning, however, the sky had cleared a little although my head had not, so when the In Charge pulled on his boots to take the dogs out, I dropped everything and went too.
My headaches don't generally like fresh air.

We went to the headland and found that the catamaran had pulled in. It has been gone this month or more.

Apparently it belongs to a family who used to come and camp on the headland every summer with a bevy of children and dogs. They live in the same area the In Charge comes from in the south west of England, and being a sociable sort of fellow, he often used to stop and chat with them in the old, camping days. It seems they have sold the van and the tents and whatever else they had, and bought a catamaran instead.
It flew, they said, at an almost unseemly 14 knots across the Bay of Biscay recently.
It is lashed together, Polynesian style. Not with string, I hope. Or dissolving stitches.

The tide was so low that we decided to go to our favourite beach. We haven't been there for awhile.
On the way we drove past flaming red hot pokers growing wild by the side of the road. My father would like them - he likes orange flowers. Were he closer than Suffolk, I would have picked a bunch and taken them to him this afternoon, in time for tea perhaps, and a slice of Happy Birthday Cake.

Not far from the red hot pokers is the little gateway that leads into the back of an old estate. I always want to duck down and go in but we never do. The laneway beyond the gate looks impassable these days, hedged in with brambles and thorn trees, though once it must have been their path to the sea. It leads to the woods behind the house. I have heard there is an old pet cemetery there, the last resting place of the family's beloved dogs, but I have never seen it.

When we got to the beach, we had it to ourselves, and ambled along the shore watching the young gulls, and the dunlins dancing over the water.

We hadn't thought to take Model Dog's ball with us, so she contented herself with motorbiking and pursuing the end of a piece of seaweed which the In Charge threw with satisfying dexterity. Model Dog never complains about my ineptitude with ball-throwing, but it was obviously nice to have a proper sportsman around.

We stopped to inspect the mussels on the rocks by the swimming pool. They have grown a lot over the summer, the In Charge informs me. He notices these things. Who knows, by next year, they might make a handy picnic for someone armed with a bottle of wine and a frying pan. (Note to self.)

I paused to take a picture at Lover's Leap before we turned and wandered back again.
My headache was gone, and as always, we felt calm and unravelled. A perfect Sunday outing.

As we left the beach, I stopped to listen to the crashing roar of the waves.
Like the sound of distant thunder.
It varies in intensity and volume, but it is the perpetual soundtrack to my life.
I hear it from my bed, from the garden, from the courtyard.
I don't know if I could live without it.