Cornflower

A garden

"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot -
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not -
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine."

    These lines are by T.E. Brown, fellow countryman of mine, but I quote them as I do hope my garden will still be a lovesome thing after my husband has spent the next few weeks in it. Mr. C. is currently on garden leave prior to joining a new company in September and he has decided to take the term literally and apply himself to a fairly comprehensive remodelling of our modest town garden. He has Big Plans, but he is of the slash and burn persuasion, so with the exception of our enormous and venerable Scots pine, almost no plant is safe!
     I would show pictures but this site is dedicated to 'loveliness alone' (said she, wafting around, counting only the sunny hours), and as the first part of his scorched earth policy leaves something to be desired, it is better not to offend the eye with images of ..... well, of the current work-in-progress.
    But, the question remains, what will have been accomplished by the time Mr. C. is back in the office? He's been heard to mutter the words "golf" and "fishing", but sloping off to the links or the river is hardly likely to lead to the construction of any "fringed pool" or "fern'd grot", so I shall have to crack the whip.
Or get Monty Don.....

Cornflower Book Group 2009: Volume 8

     "A head of department, working quietly in his room in Whitehall on a summer afternoon, is not accustomed to being disturbed by the nearby and indubitable sound of a revolver shot."

To find out which book this opening line comes from, click here.
Please join us to read the rest!

Friday ferns

Cool green shadows, welcome in this enervating heat!

Especially for our North American readers

     Following up on yesterday's post, Alice made her JFK connection and got home safely and virtually on time. Scarcely had we left the airport when she made a point of saying how struck she was by the friendliness, courtesy and hospitality of everyone she encountered on her American trip. This is something I particularly remember from my visit to New England and parts of Canada many years ago now, but it was striking, and is duly noted here, appreciated and applauded!

Parenting

    There's lots of freshly turned soil in the garden just now, and this robin has been foraging for food constantly while Mr. C. digs. The worms, etc. are all going to the bird's young, who is fatter than the poor, thin, worn-to-a-ravelling parent and who squawks loudly  - and frequently - to demand its next meal!

   

   As I write this I have one eye on a flight tracking site, watching the progress not of birds but of one of my own young, who is on her way back from the US.

   A delayed take-off from Atlanta means she could miss her New York connection, so we are willing the plane on to make up time and get Alice home safely in a few hours.

     With all our children travelling hither and yon just now, our role as parents alters. We 'facilitate' their trips - in more ways than one - act as ground control for their check-ins, and keep home going for them to return to. And we barely even get to rest on a spade!

Do you like chocolate?

     Well, it's a rare person who doesn't, but this is not a source of theobromine, it's Chocolate Cosmos, or cosmos atrosanguineus.

     And a bit of a non sequitur but still on the subject of gratification, would you like a book?
Then have a look here.

Doors open

Thanks to The Persephone Post for the link to this house - quite extraordinary!

Looking up

   We haven't had a "looking up" post for a while, so here is the St. Stephen Centre (formerly St. Stephen's Church) in Edinburgh's St. Vincent Street.

Designed by William Playfair and built in 1827-8, it is described here as being "... of vast scale, Baroque power and Grecian severity".

It's now cheek by jowl with contemporary buildings.

And look - blue skies! Told you!

Golden shred

   Mr. C. was indeed busy in the kitchen yesterday. After the breakfast pancakes he made Zuppa di Pesce for supper and in between times, a batch of onion marmalade. The little specks you can see in the jar above are caraway seeds, and the flavour is a nice balance between sweet and sharp. We've already sampled this with cheese, but it will be perfect with many other things, too. If you'd like the recipe, just let me know!

Recipe below:

Slightly famous

   My name may not be in lights, but it is on the back cover of a lovely book!
More here, and a proper post about it coming up there later.

Sunday breakfast

   The excellent Mr. C. has been making blueberry pancakes for breakfast. He used a drop scone or Scotch pancake recipe from Mary Berry's Aga Book, cooking the pancakes directly on the simmering hob (see here), and he slightly stewed a punnet of blueberries for a couple of minutes, adding a dessertspoon of icing sugar and one of Crème de Mûres (optional - unlike accents, wish I knew how to add them!*).

I think he's made a rod for his own back here as they were so good, we shall be requesting them again soon.

*Later: thankyou, Barbara!! Barbara emailed to tell me how to put in accents, and I am so pleased as leaving them out offends the eye!

Pattern books

    

     The V&A are launching a new series of books on pattern, each with a CD of images from which you can redraw or rework the designs.
The first lot comprises:

William Morris

Indian Florals

Digital Pioneers

The Fifties 

and you can get the lot as a boxed set.

There's more on the pattern theme in the V&A Shop including this intriguing necklace!

Hailes!

    Yesterday's cryptic post (and well done to all who hazarded a guess) referred to this unique sporting event!
     As Max Boyce used to say of another, gentler sport, "I was there!", and so I was to watch my son take part in the annual Hailes match. Leavers vs. Ephors, all in fancy dress and with the added atmospherics of a smoke machine and amplified rock music, water bombs to keep the competitors on their toes and watched by the whole school, some brave parents (we were close to the action) and bemused passers-by, this is a game like no other.

   The clacken (derived from 'cleckenbrod') is the bat, but it's more like a giant wooden spoon and is used to hit the ball  - rather than the opponents - the aim being to score goals. What other rules obtain is anyone's guess, but great fun was had by all and I think everyone emerged unscathed, including the referee. This was a sight which will linger in the memory, and a fine Edinburgh tradition to keep alive!

Cryptic

    I wonder if anyone can guess what I'm going to watch today.
No, it's not Wimbledon but it does involve a tennis ball.
I'll give you a clue: "cleckenbrod".
Are you any the wiser?!

Ispahan

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.....except when it is, apparently, a dessert!

Radio silence

     Cause for perturbation: my email has gone somewhat haywire! Certain messages are not arriving at all, others are taking days to get here, some - from perfectly reputable, frequent correspondents - are going into the spam folder, and a few of the ones I've sent have apparently vaporised in the ether.
    This has happened before and it did right itself, so fingers crossed it does so again. Meanwhile, if you've been expecting to hear from me and the wires have gone silent, this may well be the reason.

Her dark materials

     As it's midsummer, the Royal Botanic Gardens here in Edinburgh stayed open until 11pm last night. The weather was overcast and rainy which may account for the lack of people wanting to walk round what is a beautiful and magical place at an unusual hour - we had it almost completely to ourselves in the late evening.
   The photographs are on the dark side as the light was fading fast, so I ought to get some similar shots in full sun, just to show what it's really like. However, these do give something of the atmosphere. That's the Pool of Peace above.

  
 A suitably 'midnight' blue iris!

  

The Palm House.

The Castle from the lawn in front of Inverleith House - the rooftops of the New Town in the middle distance.

   
     The way home!

We'll have something lighter and brighter tomorrow, I hope.

Wee sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie

I've deliberately made this picture tiny so as not to scare my mother when she logs on as she is not enamoured of the likes of this creature, but you can click to enlarge and you'll see he's actually very sweet!

Clearly drawn into the house by the recent arrival of Monty, the wee thing was found cow'rin' in the kitchen, so having been carefully scooped up in a plastic container he was released back into the garden (where the bishop weed is providing more than adequate cover).

Meet Monty Mouse

   

   

    Meet Monty Mouse, a most superior mouse.
    I first saw him a few days ago sitting on a Persephone book (that was him, not me, and I think it was a Dorothy Whipple, which shows what excellent taste Monty has). He was in Rebecca's new online shop, and I just had to buy him. After all, who could resist a bookish mouse with a smiling countenance and a very smart reversible waistcoat which you can take off?

Monty arrived today beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and fine brown ribbon, but as soon as I took him out of the box he looked at home here in the study. He's got his ear to Warren Buffett as you can see in the picture below, though Haruki Murakami and Joyce Grenfell make interesting neighbours, too.

     
But then I thought he could do with coming closer to the action, so I moved him first to one of the (many) TBR piles, and secondly to the Cornflower Desk of Power itself, which is where I think he will stay as he makes a charming companion.

     
But we mustn't forget his creator. Rebecca has long entertained and inspired me with her skills as (and you'll see this on any visit to Poshyarns) she is as adept with the camera as with the knitting needles, the clay - for she's a potter too -, the makings of a quilt, or a length of linen and a spool of thread, and she bakes as well! She has an artist's eye and a craftswoman's hands, so I'm delighted to own a piece of her work and I wish her every success with all that she does.

Monty seconds that!

Lost property

   A quick post inspired by yesterday's pictures of the rose whose vigorous habit and mature state threatens to hide other plants and even parts of the house.
    Hidden or lost gardens are a particular fascination of mine. I don't know where this started - an early reading of The Secret Garden, perhaps? Or was it a walk many years ago in the Perthshire garden pictured left when it was long abandoned and overgrown, the balustrade broken, the pool empty and the fountain dry?

If, like me, you are drawn to such places, then here are three books I can recommend which will feed your appetite for these forgotten pleasure grounds, some of them lost forever, others lost and found again.

Kathryn Bradley-Hole's Lost Gardens of England (from the archives of Country Life)
Jennifer Potter's Lost Gardens (which accompanied the Channel 4 series of that name a few years ago)
Tim Smit's The Lost Gardens of Heligan (Heligan website here - listen to the birdsong!)

  

    Every picture of these gardens in their heyday exudes a romanticism or suggests an idyll which masks the enormous amount of labour which went into their upkeep. Not only are the physical structures and the plantings no more, but the time in which they flourished and were photographed has gone too; we can't walk into that world -were we to try to re-create it - we can only glimpse its beauty as an outsider might look wistfully in through the garden gate.