What A Summer!

I don’t think I can ever recall a summer when so much, and yet so little, has happened at the same time. I know that sounds nonsensical, but I’m sure you all know what I’m trying to say: at the personal scale things have been fairly busy, but more a matter of making constant small adjustments than confronting major catastrophes. Thanks to the ghastly wet winter, gardening has been busy, but still quite productive: I don’t think the vegetable garden has ever produced so much food – and it’s still continuing (the runner bean crop threatens to overwhelm us). But at the same time there are weeds everywhere and as soon as we remove them, new ones spring out of the ground and thumb their noses at us defiantly. Of course we’ve had to make changes to our lives – even as supposedly placid retirees: we try to get supplies delivered, we do our best to avoid going into shops and we haven’t had any social activity inside the house since the Covid lock-down began, back in March. Having said that, we frequently meet friends and neighbours in the barn or the garden – and of course on the poop deck at the back of the house. We take the view that open-air meetings are perfectly safe, provided everyone stays well apart. Meanwhile out there in the wider world, things seem to be going crazy: America is run by a populist egomaniac; Britain’s semi-populist government is, at best, semi-competent and of course Brexit continues to loom at a time when food prices are rising and world trade is in turmoil. And what makes it all feel so mad is that most of this chaos was self-inflicted: people voted for it.

Before lockdown was announced (which for non-British readers was on March 24th), Maisie and I had established a routine of booze-free Mondays. So we’d have our last drinks on Sunday night and only pour another one after six in the evening, the following Tuesday. That meant that our metabolisms were given a rest from alcohol for about 44 hours. It also meant that we drank rather less on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and having a regular alcohol-free ‘gap’ ensured that our overall rate of boozing didn’t creep upwards. We adopted this scheme about ten years ago after speaking to a doctor friend, who specialised in liver complaints. He reckoned that a weekly ‘gap’ of about 24 hours would give the liver time to recover from the ill-effects of alcohol. But then lockdown happened.

It was all so depressing that we both decided to suspend the Monday booze ‘gap’ for the duration of lockdown. Now I won’t say that our rates of drinking rose steeply, because I don’t think they did. If anything, they fell for a bit, then they started to increase and by mid-July I knew I’d have to cut down. Maisie, being perfect, had barely increased at all. I banned beer from my lunchtimes and tried to cut down in the evenings, but none of these things seemed to have much effect. It was then that I remembered what our friend had said about the cumulative effects of booze on the liver. And that did it. So about three weeks ago we re-introduced our booze-free Mondays and I’m delighted to report that things are now back to normal – and I’m even losing a little weight. I also feel a bit more cheerful. So if lock-down is getting you down, may I suggest you try something similar? As someone famous once said: ‘It might just work.’

By the end of July, the hornbeam hedges that form the framework of our garden were starting to look rather overgrown. Hornbeam loves the wet and it has thrived in our heavy silty soil this year. So we contacted Jason, our contract hedge-cutter, and he did a superb job. Some of the hedges had grown in height and  many were too wide, so it took time to get them right, but now they are looking superb. Here’s a view of Jason starting work on a new section of hornbeam.

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One of the reasons I like hiring Jason is that he always has superb tools, which he looks after with enormous care. He’s also very happy to offer advice on their care and maintenance – something I appreciate hugely. He scrupulously followed all advice on Social Distancing, which was such a relief, as both Maisie and I are both at an age where Coronavirus infection could be quite serious. He has a very informative and superbly illustrated YouTube blog, which recently featured him working on our hedges – complete with some superb semi-aerial footage. In Part 1 of my recent 2-part tour of our garden I mentioned how the hornbeam hedges can look very good untrimmed, especially when the growth is still relatively tight, in earlier summer. To make the point, the seventh picture in that blog post showed a length of the border with the hedge untrimmed. By way of contrast, this is how it looked after Jason had given it a haircut.

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I’m not saying that the hedge looked better either before or after its haircut. It’s just different, that’s all. And I like the garden to change over the seasons. One of the things I don’t like about some famous display gardens is that they never change. They’re always impeccably neat, controlled and oh-so-bloody BORING! A garden must change and come alive if it’s to avoid just being a three-dimensional picture.

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This is a view of the path leading from the long border to the rose garden. When we laid out the garden we didn’t want to go straight from one garden into another. We’re not very fond of the widely-accepted notion that garden’s should feature a succession of neighbouring ‘rooms’. Sure, they work well at Sissinghurst, but we didn’t think we wanted to copy that idea. We wanted our garden to be more a series of voyages, journeys or perambulations, of discovery. So we tried to separate some of the main elements and this curved walk is one of the ways we achieved this. But what we didn’t realise at the time we laid it out, is that it works very well as a feature in its own right. In this picture, Jason has just finished cutting and I’m carting the trimmings away in our John Deere garden tractor.

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Hedges do allow you to pull off a few tricks. I took the previous photo of the curved hedge in such a way that the ‘squint’ was concealed (it’s actually in the shadowy bit to the right). You’re only supposed to notice it when you walk close-by and then your attention is immediately grabbed by the contrasting scene it reveals. You are standing just off the long formal border, surrounded by imposing tall hedges – and suddenly you get a glimpse of a more airy, shaded and informal garden – we call it The Glade, through the narrow squint in the hedge. But that squint is carefully aligned to catch the view we want you to see. That’s why it’s so narrow.

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I’ve included this picture simply because I am getting very attached to this small bed at the back of the house, near the kitchen window. The large leaved Tetrapanax has really got going in the wet summer. At the start of the year it proudly displayed five big leaves. The current count is seven! This bed is developing quite a jungle feel. The ground-cover is mostly dog violets which look great in early spring.

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Earlier I mentioned that it’s been a very productive summer in the vegetable garden. We’ve had a good crop of tomatoes both in the greenhouse and outside and we’ve also had dozens of figs. In late July and August I was distributing soft, ripe figs to neighbours daily, but now the glut has slowed down and we’re reduced to just two or three at breakfast – and a couple at suppertime. I adore them.

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Over the past week I’ve been making regular trips down the drive to inspect work on the medieval droveway road that runs alongside our farm. To do this I have to pass through our small orchard where I’ve been delighted by the crop of plums. The apples look a bit disappointing (we had a late frost which affected the blossom), but the plums have been delicious. This photo shows some of the damson crop, which promises to be excellent. Damson jam is delicious, but I can also recommend damson gin; in some respects I think I prefer it to sloe gin.

The road that passes our farm has been pitted and full of pot-holes for a long time, but it got very much worse about fifteen years ago when heavy tankers belonging to a local contractor passed along it, at high speed, every ten or so minutes. This traffic essentially broke the road’s back and caused half of it to start slipping down into the drainage dyke that runs alongside it. There were times when it was barely passable for a car or two-wheel drive vehicle. But we learned that all of that was to change when the local council highways department announced that the road was to close for a week in late August for ‘recycling’. This involved the use of a very heavy-duty rotary cultivator that simply broke the surface up and allowed it to be graded and levelled. The next picture shows the road at this stage, following several hours of heavy rolling.

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The following day the rolled road was sprayed several times with tar before being rolled again and sprinkled with white granite chippings, which were then rolled-in. I can’t believe how smart it looks in this picture. About ten minutes after I took the photo, a huge tractor passed over it, shedding vast amounts of mud on the spotless white chippings. Ah, the joys of living in the country…

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British readers will still remember the rather vicious storm, named Storm Francis by the Meteorological Office. It featured severe gales – arguably the worst I can remember for August – which brought down fruit in orchards and had a terrible effect on those bamboo cane frames for runner beans. Mine was blown over and half the bean plants were snapped off. Yesterday morning friends living on the edge of the Fens in Norfolk reported exactly the same thing and then had the temerity to blame me!

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