"The garden is the site where man engages nature without defeating it. The garden speaks of human modes of order, where man is master, subduer, and transformer. The order within the flower is pre-human, and governs the flower itself. The key to a successful garden is to maintain the wealth of this tension, allowing the garden and the gardener, nature and humanity, to work in partnership."
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...........................(Rudolf Borchardt: The Passionate Gardener, 1937.)
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SUMMER REVISITED


..The sea tomatoes are ripening on the hedgerow of sand roses (rosa rugosa).

After a dry, hot summer and the record amount of rain in August, it’s as if the garden has been busy catching up with the regular routines in the wonderful warmth of September. It feels like an extra summer month with all the qualities of summer except for the shortening of the days. The sun sets around seven already.

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..Blooming bluebeard bush (Caryopteris) in front of a row of cinquefoils (Potentilla).

The cinquefoil hedgerow is covered in flowers for the first time this season. Their glowing buttercup yellow almost takes the breath away from the blooming rose bed and the summer flowerbed—both coming around vigorously for the second time—while it presents a fine match for the powdery blue flowers of the bluebeards.

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BUSH CINQUEFOIL (POTENTILLA FRUTICOSA)



The cinquefoil is a beautiful and durable plant that flowers throughout summer into fall and maintains a very usable size in the garden. One of its ancestors is the tundra rose. It was once far more popular but fell from grace as plants left unpruned become shabby. It should be cut back to half its size between late fall and early spring every year. Any large, old canes should be removed as close to the ground as possible, which will stimulate new sprouts to develop below the cuts. This way it will retain its fine shape and bloom profusely for many years.

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BLUEBEARD (CARYOPTERIS)



The bluebeard or the blue mist is a low-mounded, deciduous shrub with aromatic (when stroken) grey-green foliage and late summer flowers, which resemble clouds of blue smoke or mist and are highly attractive to bees and butterflies. Clandonensis hybrids typically produce about half a metre (one and a half feet) of growth per year, so the shrub height (usually up to one metre) depends in large part on the extent of winter dieback and the spring pruning. Although it’s technically a low growing shrub, Caryopteris can be treated as a perennial. It blooms on new wood and should be cut back (as much as you like) in late winter.



Though not well known, the bluebeard is one of the finest blue flowering plants of the late season. It grows best in full sun and well-drained soil with moderate amounts of water. If you push the lowest branches into the surrounding soil, it will spread quite easily.

THE $64 TOMATO
Or How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity,
Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis
in the Quest for the Perfect Garden



I began doubting my communicative skills when I read The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. A weblog friend recommended the book in a comment a while back, writing that she had thought of the garden calendar when she came across the tomato book.

Book folks may not approve of the editing of the jacket, but I couldn’t resist the temptation because Alexander, as distinct from an equable gardener, is aspiring to be a small-time farmer, whose garden, besides being a time sink, is a complete and very costly pain in the neck.

Changing the prize on the cover of the book, I could easily calculate the exact price of my tomatoes as I buy them at a stand up the main road—three for a dollar. How anybody could come to think of my garden at the sight of a $64 tomato is a mystery to me. I don’t ‘grow’ anything in the garden. Of utility plants, besides the old fruit trees, there are only a few bunches of chive coming back every year, which I keep because I like the flowers. The rest of the many plants in the garden are flowering shrubs and perennials on which I’ve spent about $150 a year ($5–$10 a piece) and only little time.

No pesticides seem to be too poisonous and no machinery too heavy for our battling hobby farmer. He will spend endless amounts of time and money protecting his crops and then spend some more time complaining about the trouble he has preserving and storing the excess produce. Unlike William Alexander, I wouldn’t dream of installing drip irrigation, cover the soil in black plastic or surround it with a six-thousand-volt electric fence. Only in a nightmare would I consider buying instant grass in rolls of sod and even then I wouldn’t roll it out between vegetable beds. Fighting the grass from spreading to his many beds combined with his complete lack of sense of timing when it comes to weeding, is what finally broke his back, I think.


THE 34¢ TOMATO
Calvesgarden Tomato Manifesto



When I took over the garden ten years ago, I left it for a year, just observing and pruning the few plants that were there and scouting the neighbourhood for nice gardens. Then every autumn, I’ve cleared an area and planted about fifty new shrubs, half of which were gifts from neighbours. I prefer native plants with some drought tolerance and a rich bloom, because they need very little tending and look great after a few years. As I have time to potter about in the garden only once or twice a week, putting in a few hours of focused labour each time (if the weather is nice), I never make changes without weighing the added splendour against the work involved. A new bed of plants adds about a day of work through the season, I think, but as I get more experienced, I can add a new bed every year without putting in more time.

It seems to me that silly mistakes and easily avoidable accidents, even utter foolishness, are becoming overly exposed these days. William Alexander actually advices against planting rose bushes because he believes they caused a worm infection in his sod rolls. It’s so sad, I think. I favour inspired garden folks, especially the sensitive and unhurried part of the tribe, well considered in their exploits and gardening with temperance.

EUROPEAN GOLDENROD (SOLIDAGO VIRGAUREA)

Fields of goldenrod in full bloom are prominent features of the landscape around Calvesgarden in September and October. Waving gracefully also along the roadsides, they indicate the end of summer. I use them liberally to enliven the boundaries of the garden in autumn. As the other perennials that are native to the area, they present no difficulties in growing and virtually take care of themselves. Being rich in nectar, they attract more varieties of insects than most other flowers, and they give the honeybees – the most frequent visitors – their last chance at a good winter feed.

Unlike many tall flowers, goldenrod grows sturdy and upright up to just above the head of a tall gardener, requiring no stakes, and its flower heads make long-lasting cut flowers. Dried sprays are particularly useful in herbal wreaths and fall wall ornaments.


Binding with goldenrod filigree

While it has been a popular plant in European gardens for centuries, it seems that only recently, it has been introduced in American gardens. Contrary to popular belief, goldenrod does not cause hay fever. Its pollen grains, which are meant to be carried by insects, are much heavier than those of ragweed and other plants with airborne pollens that may be associated with allergies. It has been used topically for wound healing (solidago means ‘to make whole’) and is still enjoyed in herbal teas.

WILD BLACKBERRIES (EUBATUS)



My berries cluster black and thick
For rich and poor alike to pick.
I’ll tear your dress, and cling, and tease,
And scratch your hand and arms and knees.

I’ll stain your fingers and your face,
And then I’ll laugh at your disgrace.
But when the bramble-jelly’s made,
You’ll find your trouble well repaid.

– THE SONG OF THE BLACKBERRY QUEEN
by Cicely Mary Barker

The wild blackberries have begun to ripen in the last weeks. The bramble sowed itself in the terrain vague of the work yard a couple of years ago, and I let it be even though it’s very pervasive. It grows to three metres (ten feet) at fast daily rates and will colonize large areas in a relatively short time. I wouldn’t recommend growing it in a small garden without having a machete in the tool shed. However, in the work yard, it’s surrounded by huge flagstones and a solid hoarding, which help holding it in check. It’s very much worth the effort, I think. Blackberries are exceptionally good in pies and cakes as well as in fruit salads and game sauces, if you can keep your fingers away from them on the way to the kitchen.

Some English people will tell you never to eat blackberries after October 11, because the Devil, allegedly, was kicked out of Heaven on that day. He landed, cursing and screaming, on a thorny blackberry bush and avenges himself on the same day every year by spitting on the berries, which should make them unfit for human consumption.

THE FIRST TREE ON EARTH

The spells were vain
The hag returned
To the Queen in a sorrowful mood
Crying that witches have no power
Where there is Rowan tree wood.

When I took over the garden ten years ago, one of the first trees I planted was a rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia). It wasn’t because of its witch repelling properties as related in the old Celtic ballad, but I’d seen many young rowan trees in our area and liked both its leaves and its red berries in late summer. It’s a perfect tree for a small garden, I think: robust (it even grows in Vardø in arctic Norway), not too big (mine has grown to three metres (ten feet) and will probably grow another three in the next ten years) and very colourful (it has a lovely creamy-white blossom in late spring). The crown is easy to shape, provides full shade, but is still light when seen from beneath.

Later, I have learned that the name ‘rowan’ comes from the Old Norse name for the tree, raun or rogn, and that it has been considered magical for thousands of years in the North. According to an ancient Finnish creation myth, the Earth was barren and devoid of plants when the goddess Rauni came down from heaven and took the form of a rowan tree from which, after it was struck by lightning, all plants and trees descend. Besides witches, it is said to offer protection against most mean-spirited ghouls as well as fire and storms. It should be excellent for bow making and protect against lightning when used as a walking stick.

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ROWAN TREE SLING

After all the rain we have had in August, the young rowan tree lost its grip in the wet soil during a gale. Overnight, it developed a lean of more than fifteen degrees. Fortunately, it was easy to push it back up. For support, I tied it to the old cherry tree, which, despite its frail appearance, is steady as a rock.

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SPANISH LACE



In the last week, the garden has become a virtual bird-zoo. The starlings are congregating in enormous flocks, flying low over the Wolf Sound in the evening. Last night, tens of thousands of them passed Calvesgarden in what looked like huge pieces of waving black lace. When they land in the big birch trees, they make a tremendous bells-like noise. From a distance, it sounds as if the trees were singing. After a few minutes, it suddenly stops and—swoosh—off they go in a commotion of fluttering feathers sounding like a giant sail flapping in the wind. The swallows whisk about the house in smaller flocks, diving under the crowns of the fruit trees at breakneck speed and then over the roof with all the bellies showing. Sometimes, my mind takes off with the birds, wondering how the sense of joy comes about with such ease.

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FAVOURITE THICKET

In the front, if you look closely, you may be able to spot the top of a miniature beech tree just left of the dusty-red spiraea hedge. Behind it, from left to right, you see a hawthorn, a lilac hedge, a witch hazel standing in front of a buddleia tree and, in the background, a wild cherry tree.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

After two days with heat and humidity building up, we had the most magnificent thunderstorm last night. Fat, white lightning broke the sky just after dark and a hard rain came down as if fired from a shotgun. The first huge clap of thunder sounded like a whole room of heavy furniture going through the floor.

It has been raining on and off for a week now. After the month-long drought, we’ve had up to 150 millimetres (6 inches) of rain, two months’ worth, coming down in one day in some places on Zealand, causing complete havoc in the areas that were hardest hit. In Calvesgarden, we’ve had only half of that and well spread over the week. The meteorologists explain that it’s only natural to have record amounts of rain after a record summer because the warm sea around the islands produces the thunderstorms. They also predicted that we won't have another summer like this in a hundred years. It's to be seen, I think. Their predictions about the summer weren't very hot as far as I remember.

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SUMMER LILAC

To the garden, the rain was a saviour. The roses have been looking tired for a while and the lavenders pale and dusty. The butterfly bush on the other hand is at its finest. It has been joined in blossoming by its lovely cousin, the brilliant yellow and orange ‘summer lilac’, buddleia x weyeriana ‘Sungold’, whose flowers are tightly packed in small glowing balls. I’ve learned that a new rival to ‘Sungold’ for the best yellow, B. ‘Honeycomb’, has a more refined habit and slightly lighter flower.

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THE PASSIONATE GARDENER

The German novelist Rudolf Borchardt’s famous guide to raising flowers, The Passionate Gardener, has just come out in an English edition (McPherson and Company). The book, which was written in 1935, but first published in 1951, can also be read as a history of gardening, from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, through the nearly flowerless gardens in the Roman Empire and the artfully artless flower gardens of the German Baroque, to the botanical gardens that flourished in the age of exploration.

Borchardt admired the botanists who brought back exotic species from around the world as much as he admired the amateur spirit of English gardening and its many eccentricities. During the Hitler years, his strong anti-Nazi views and remote Jewish heritage made him persona non grata in Germany. Only after the war did his reputation revive, with his collected works gradually appearing in a 16-volume edition. To this day, he is almost unknown to English readers: This edition of The Passionate Gardener is the first of Borchardt's books to appear in English.

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WEALTH OF TENSION

In a highly favourable review of the book in The New York Sun (Gardening as Spirituality, July 19, 2006), Adam Kirsch writes:

“Above all, and most important for readers today, Borchardt addresses the concerns of what we now would call environmentalism. Ideally, the garden is the site where man engages nature without defeating it, an encounter he expresses as ‘the eternal tension between the flower and the garden. ... The order within the flower is pre-human, and governs the flower itself. The garden speaks of human modes of order, where man is master, subduer, and transformer.’ The key to a successful garden, he insists, is to maintain ‘the wealth of this tension’, allowing the gardener and the garden, nature and humanity, to work in partnership.”

A View in the Elysian Fields from the Spring of Helicon in Buckinghamshire

Beside its philosophical overtones, The Passionate Gardener is also full of practical advice about soils, compost, weeding and such although they are often followed by endlessly ramifying digressions. Kirsch notes admiringly that within a few pages, Borchardt can find his way from “considering a window box of blue petunias in a slum apartment — a shrunken, pitiable effort which nonetheless shows ‘the essence of the human garden’ — and within a few pages find his way to the Garden of Eden, the Elysian Fields, Calypso's island, and the lilies of the field from the Sermon on the Mount.”

THE CHURCH ON THE HILL

I like the sound of church bells in the morning. You can hear them loud and clear in any wind direction because our church stands on a hill overlooking the Wolf sound only a few hundred metres down the coast. Its nave and choir was built in Romanesque style around 1250 and the church tower was erected in the Gothic period, around 1400. The tower has two huge bells, one made in 1477 and the other in 1618. They sound old, too. Rather unhurried at first because of the wear along the edges, I suppose, but soon boomingly alive as if the metal had dressed to the vibrations over time, defying even the hardest winds and rains. I don’t so much like to hear them in the afternoon. Not because of the beautiful sound, but because of its connotations. The sound of them in the evening brings consolation. It’s as if they were saying: We’re still here after all this time.

THE ROAD TO LAGOA SANTA

Only one man of world prominence is buried in the cemetery surrounding the church. Henrik Stangerup is perhaps the most well known modern Danish novelist after Peter Høeg and Thorkild Hansen. It might not mean much to most people, but I was glad to meet him at the vicarage in the year before he died, because I've always admired his work. The Road to Lagoa Santa (1981) is his best book, I think. It's a historical novel, which deals with Søren Kierkegaard's thoughts on ethics. The plot is somewhat like the first half of an Indiana Jones story with the hero dying when he finds the proof of his theory. I'm not giving away anything because he's a historical figure whose fate was already known to the Danish readers when the book came out. Henrik Stangerup wrote very well and had a great gift for rambling, I think, although I can't speak for the English editions.

BUTTERFLY BANQUET

I have never been particularly partial to rain, just thinking that it was an okay element of the whole weather package. Inconvenient at times, but mostly refreshing and a great excuse for staying in reading a book. I’m becoming very personal here, I realise, noting a good excuse for reading books. Thankfully, I don’t need it anymore. I even think back with mild forbearance on the time I had a very nice copy of Francis Bacon's Essays thrown at me from a first floor window. Time is a great healer. It has also renewed my sense of rain by the length of the drought, which seemed to be without end. I’ve watched expectantly and listened in envy to the thunder and lightning passing by in the distance, letting off great splashes of water in neighbouring areas, but only little in Calvesgarden. Until this morning, that is, when an intense shower caught me by surprise bicycling home from Harry’s. The rain just lasted a few minutes, but it was quite spectacular, more like a body of horses relieving themselves from the sky in jets as thick as thighs. It left me drenched to the bones, but minding it not one bit.

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POINT-DE-VUE OF THE ROCOCO GARDEN

I came across a horticultural observation by Oswald Spengler “that the most significant element in the European garden is the point-de-vue of the great rococo park, upon which all its avenues and clipped hedge walks open and from which vision may travel out to loose itself in the distances. A feeling for the faraway is at the same time one for history. At a distance, space becomes time and the horizon signifies the future. The baroque park is the park of the late season, of the approaching end, of the falling leaf. A Renaissance park brings us a vision of a midsummer noon. It is timeless, and nothing in its form-language reminds us of mortality.”

Although I have only a quarter of an acre under hoe with hedges that don’t need much clipping, I can still identify with the gardeners of great rococo parks because the Wolf Sound at the end of the garden allows the travelling of vision to the coveted loosing of itself in the distance. The big old apple tree stands too close to the axis of the garden to allow for a perfect point-de-vue, but I treasure the apple blossom too much to do anything about it.

I seem to have always been more interested in having many flowering shrubs and trees in the spring than in anything else about the garden. The roses and lavenders are the perfect bloomers of the summer time, of course, but the only other shrub blooming right now is the beautiful purple butterfly bush (buddleia davidii), which is attracting scores of butterflies. I’ve seen peacock butterflies, small tortoiseshells, red admirals and cabbage whites swirling around it in the bright sunshine. I’m quite ready to settle for this smaller scale Renaissance vision of a midsummer noon, keeping up the rococo ambitions of the garden and forgetting about any baroque ideas like ruins and gnomes. Hopefully, it won’t make the calendar entries too dull in the coming months.

The top photograph was taken by Linda Walls for her beautiful Butterfly Garden Journal. A must for butterfly connoisseurs.

ALMOST LIKE A SHOWER

It finally happened. Last night, we had a lovely drizzle after another unyieldingly hot day with temperatures moving into the mid-thirties (mid-nineties) in the afternoon. Usually, I can smell rain a mile away, but this came quite unexpectedly. I was moving a few buckets of water around in the garden when it suddenly started. Very lightly at first, but then almost like a shower. It sounded as if rice was being poured. I turned my face upwards, savouring the feeling of nice, cool rain. Afterwards, the air was full of sweet and spicy fragrances of flowers and wet soil.

This morning, a fine haze of heat is hanging over the Wolf and the light is a bit misty although there isn’t a cloud in the sky. The water has reached the implausible temperature of 25 C (77 F) and the humidity of the still air is mind-boggling. Don’t mind the figurative sense of the word. It’s a fact. The mind boggles. The perception of reality begins to blur. Given the choice of being fried or boiled, I’d take fried anytime. Boiling is airless. The frying you can counter by moving into the shade or taking a swim, even in lukewarm water, but this wet air is everywhere. A fish could survive in it, wagging its gills vigorously.

THE BIOGRAPHER’S TALE

In the present overheated circumstances, reading matter for the siestas in the garden should be like the conversation at a friendly gathering, I think. Something not too upsetting so you can lower your sombrero now and then without worrying where it will all end. For this, the finely modulated voice of A.S. Byatt is exceptionally well suited. Her unhurried and knowledgeable studies of the lives of book folks are fascinating and often very funny. The brick-like novel Possession won her the Booker Prize in 1990. The Biographer’s Tale (2000), besides being smaller, has the added attraction of being told by a young scholar, who has decided to leave the narrow path of post-structuralist criticism and approach biography with a completely open mind.

“One of the reasons I had given up post-structuralist thought was the disagreeable amount of imposing that went on in it. You decided what you were looking for, and then duly found it – male hegemony, liberal-humanist idées reçues, etc. This was made worse by the fact that the deconstructionists and others paid lip service to the idea that they must not impose – they even went so far as half-believing they must not find, either. And yet they discovered the same structures, the same velleities, the same evasions quite routinely in the most disparate texts.”

I’ve always found modern literary theory difficult to grasp. Its meta-language throws me off course in no time. It seems to be such a joyless enterprise to dissect books as kinds of specimens. I’m well aware that texts have lives of their own, but then it should include some rights, I think. Byatt is like an animal rights activist of the written word. This novel presents a cheerful approach, a form of gonzo biography writing, which regards theory as just a thing among other things—interesting, but not essential.

The young biographer goes for letters, notes, samples, maps, photographs, anything tangible. ‘Whole lives’, however, are hard to come by for a biographer, he must realise. To put the idea of a person together from miscellaneous fragments is not an easy thing to do. His decision of writing the biography in the first person turns out to be a splendid solution to the dilemma. If you can’t get it right, you can add the joys and disappointments of the attempt, share it with interesting people and maybe fall in love with one or two of them. Then it’s a novel.

I remember Rudolph Waltz alias Deadeye Dick worrying that it might “be a bad thing that people try to make good stories out of their lives. A story, after all, is as artificial as a mechanical bucking bronco in a drinking establishment.”

It’s a peaceable image, I think, dismounting the wild horse of your life’s story. Waltz even suggested putting up signs over doorways saying LEAVE YOUR STORY OUTSIDE. I’m not sure as to the relevance of this. It may be beside the point I’m trying to make here. The freestyle logic of metaphors bridges the gaps in an argument so effortlessly that it’s easy to get carried away. In any case, it’s too hot to do anything about it now.

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SUMMER VIEW OF THE GARDEN

The long period of warm, sunny days seems to have suspended the growth of the garden in a moment of summer bliss. In the last few days, a light, dry breeze has been coming from the north, cooling things down in the evening between the hot flushes. If there’s any fury to the colour purple, it’s in the blooming rows of lavenders around the rose bed on which scores of yellow brimstone butterflies are dancing all day. The radiant bed of reel cress flowers has bright specs of yellow summer flowers popping up through the cover of reds and oranges, and long stems of purple flowers droop from the top of the buddleia next to the reddening spiraea hedge. Of the shrubs blooming simultaneously, theirs is the most beautiful match, I think. It’s easy to keep the garden when it’s being fried every day. I collect so little garden refuse that it’s hardly enough to feed a rabbit with a healthy appetite.

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EVERYMAN

Usually, I prefer to make notes on the books I’ve enjoyed reading. Adverse comments are better left to the professionals, I think. However, as I’ve already mentioned the new novel by Philip Roth, I thought I should write a few lines about it.

Everyman begins with the funeral of the unnamed main character, an old serial husband who abandoned his Jewish faith as a teenager and never looked back. It turns out to be the most cheerful moment in the book. In the story of his life, which then follows, he makes a point of believing in nothing except his body. This makes his garrulous dying a rather tedious affair, I think. Long passages read like a medical record, which doesn’t achieve much, I think, besides giving Latin a bad name.

Regardless of its subject, Everyman is only for readers in exceedingly good health and comfortable circumstances, I’d say. P.G. Wodehouse, who is my yardstick in judging moral literature, was sometimes taunted for being widely read in hospitals and prisons. He modestly pointed out that it might be for the lack of competition of which Roth, to me, seems to be a most reliable source.

KAYAKING THE NIGHT AWAY

Returned home in the most beautiful weather last night. Past the old smokehouse, I caught the last glimpse of the sun on a fiery backdrop of yellow and gold beaming out from behind the hills of Longbrook. The Wolf sound was smooth as a millpond. Its glassy reflection of the trees and reed woods under the dark-blue sky made up intriguing sceneries below the surface. Gliding through these viscid images, the water moved like mercury, giving off a soft tinkling as from strings of tiny bells when the paddle’s blade slid through the subterranean landscapes.

A couple of big white swans set off from a cove when I reached the landing of Calvesgarden, their wings slapping the water as they crossed to the other side of the strait obviously most annoyed with my presence. Some ducks seemed to back the opinion. They flew up, complaining vehemently all the way to Peter’s Shipyard. Some nocturnal commotion. I put down the paddle to see what else would stir up things, but nothing did.

The hot weather all through the week made me adopt the Mediterranean practice of lying low in the early afternoon. Instead, I’ve sailed in the morning and evening, enjoying the sight of the day breaking in a sea of rose water and the slow waning of the light when the night falls like a feather in the hours before midnight. One night, I stayed out longer than usual to see the moon set over the sound. As it went down, it turned into a glowing fireball before melting into a crimson haze.

Kayaking is the ideal way of getting around in the shallow waters between the islands. You can go anywhere, pull in for a rest wherever you like and you’re always in sight of land, making it easy to find your way.

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SPIRAEA, LAVENDERS AND ROSES

Today, the temperature has already reached 27 C (81 F) around ten and the light is getting hard and white. There’s a Grecian look to the whitewashed walls of the house in the fierce sun and to the calm Wolf an almost Aegean expression. Some tall, bony, old man with small, round sunglasses—a stranger in these parts, I think—is crossing the sun-scorched drying ground in his sleeveless, grey undershirt and a pair of baggy shorts hanging casually from his wide black suspenders. He reminds me of the retired American architect who hired out good reading for the hot siestas in his dime-library in San Fernando, Formentera. Not a soul was out in the midday sun as I remember it. Being into Beckett then, I recognised that “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new” (Murphy, 1938) and stayed in as the locals. It’s a fine opening line, I still think, but it doesn’t apply to the situation in Calvesgarden.

Here, the rose bed has produced a wealth of new shoots and flowers. The yellow ‘Tivoli’ roses have become as big as lettuce heads. You may count them on your fingers as opposed to the roses on the ‘Brilliant Cover’ and the ‘Schneewittchen’ bushes where you’d need an abacus just to make a rough estimate. For a moment, looking at the big, meaty yellow roses, I contemplated cooking them, but I’m uncertain of how to go about it and the library is lacking a good Chinese cookbook. They would be the ones eating them, I think. The heavy fragrance of the roses blends beautifully with the fine scent of the surrounding lavender hedge. I follow the advice of an old Spanish woman, I once knew, who had a huge rose garden. Manure is all right if you like, she said, but watering is much more important. With the right sandy soil, full sun all day and plenty of water, you can easily do without it.

Both the wild and the sweet cherries are beginning to blush along with the rowanberries. As I don’t cover the trees in nets, the blackbirds are already feasting on them long before they’re ripe. The utter lack of placidity to the temper of those feathered barbarians communicates itself whenever they have a cherry in the beak. They rustle the thing as if they were fighting another customer over it instead of quietly enjoying the treat, littering the lawn in the process with the sticky remains of their loot.

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THE KEEPING OF CHERRY TREES

I discussed the keeping of cherry trees with a Czech student whose family have a big orchard in his home country. Birds aren’t as stupid as you’d think, he said. You simply shoot a couple of the little thieves and then the rest will stay away. He offered the advice with the most innocent expression on his face as if it was the most natural thing to do. I couldn’t help smiling, thinking of what my neighbours would say if I popped a few of the little buggers. They might even make a nice mincemeat cherry pie but I also don’t have a Corsican cookbook.

It’s time for lunch, I think, with the way ideas for exotic dishes keep coming up when I should be writing about the state of the garden. Despite the month-long draught and the intense heat, it looks fine after two rounds of thorough watering a fortnight apart. Even the new queen bush, the emperor bush and the star top are blooming profusely in their first season, adding much white and rose to the eastern boundary.

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GOING ON VACATION



A mile down the coast, Queen Alexandrine’s Bridge connects Zealand with Moen Island. The bridge was opened in 1943 and spans 750 metres across the Wolf Sound. I won’t be crossing it, though, but passing through the span in the kayak. In the first days of the vacation, I got the kayak in the water, testing my condition with a trip to Long Island and then further up the coast to the woods south of Longbrook. Yesterday, the sun was going down when I drifted back in on the quiet waters, but I felt fine even after six hours on the Wolf, so I’m ready for a longer trip, I think. The weather forecast for the next week is just perfect for it.


GO TO THE WINTER CALENDAR

GO TO THE SPRING CALENDAR