IT’S SURVIVED frost and snow, it’s been pecked to tatters by Pheasants but I’m afraid what finally did for one of our purple-flowering broccoli plants was the bonfire we lit yesterday afternoon near the the compost bins, just beyond the cabbage beds. I hope that two or three of the plants will recover sufficiently to give us a small supply of broccoli florets in a month or two.
We’ve found that you can’t be in a hurry when it comes to purple-flowering broccoli. We had no florets in the autumn when you might have expected a first crop. Ours always does better in the spring, which is good time to have it as there’s a bit of a lull in the supply of garden veg at that time. We did harvest kale and cabbage – both red and winter varieties – from this little cabbage patch in the autumn.
Veg beds as they were in 2009, which, as that's 3 years ago, is the way they will be again this year.
This spring, because of the rotation system we’re using, the cabbages and the potatoes that we grow alongside them will move onto the next bed in a clockwise direction, ousting the beans which will in turn move on to the bed where we grew root crops (and had a rare success with carrots last year) which in turn will move on to the bed where we grew the beans.
THERE’S A NEW Pheasant, a cock Pheasant distinctively marked with white flashes above the eyes, in the garden this afternoon and, at least when I happen to look out and see him, he’s not being challenged by our regular bird, who’s down amongst the snowdrops near the hedge with a female ambling along beside him. The newcomer has also brought a partner. The two of them stroll up to the bird feeders.
The Treecreeper that works it’s way up the north side of the Golden Hornet crab apple tree – the side covered with powdery green algae – is an infrequent visitor to the garden. It makes its way up to the top of one of the main branches then flies off towards the large oak in a back garden three doors up the road.
Saint Valentine’s is traditionally the day that birds pair up and there’s a definite buzz of spring about. I’ve been up in attic and shortly afterwards I’m aware of a hum next to me; a queen wasp that was probably hibernating in the attic has a emerged and is sitting at the bottom of the window whirring its wings. I let it out but I’m afraid that it’s still a little too early for her to start a new colony.
WE CUT the autumn-fruiting raspberry canes down to about a foot a few weeks ago, although we should have done this a bit earlier when they became dormant in the autumn. Soon they will be springing into new growth, so it’s now time to cut them down to the ground. However hit-and-miss we are with pruning, we always get a decent crop from this variety, Joan Jay. The canes need tying back when they’re in leaf and producing fruit but at this time of year you can appreciate what small footprint they take up in the raised bed – about 3 feet by 1 foot.
We’ve still got jars of jam that we made with them in late summer and early autumn.
It’s a good idea to thin them out and stop them spreading too much so we dig out five plants to give to friends who want to start growing them.
This little Toad had a narrow escape; Paul the gardener and I were clearing the old fence panels behind the greenhouse and it was only when I was sweeping the path that I uncovered it, crouching in a hollow under a sheet of plastic – an old potting compost bag – that I’d put down some time ago to suppress weeds. I’d been working right next to it but luckily it had survived unscathed. I released it out of harm’s way behind the compost bins.
Crouched next to the Toad in his lair was a small round slug. Perhaps this slug was a commensal companion; destined to become lunch!
A Robin flits about us as we work. It’s evidently noticed that, as we cut back matted ivy and prickly cotoneaster to remove the tumbled and twisted old larch-lap fence panels, we are disturbing woodlice and spiders.
SO MUCH to do! But this corner behind the greenhouse, inevitably the most neglected corner of the garden, isn’t going to take too much sorting out if I divide it up into separate tasks such as cutting back, digging the veg beds, clearing the greenhouse and replacing three fence panels that blew down in the autumn.
I saw a total of six daisies on the grass verge on Quarry Hill this morning. How do they manage to flower after the snow and frost we’ve had recently? Being close to the road and sheltered by buildings might help and perhaps as the slope faces the setting sun they get what warmth is available at this time of year but I suspect the main reason is that cars parked on the verge overnight radiate enough heat from their engines to create a pocket of marginally warmer soil, giving this handful of a daisies a head start.
THE BIRD FEEDERS have been so busy recently. Not only do we have the cock Pheasant strutting up the garden every morning, he’s also accompanied by a growing harem of hen Pheasants. Whether he leads them into the garden or whether he tags along with them is debatable.
He was the first bird that we’ve seen drinking from the new bird bath and apart from him we’ve spotted only one Goldfinch perching on the rim, although we didn’t actually see it drink.
For much of today there have been up to a dozen Goldfinches feeding, often joined by Bullfinches (2 males, 1 female) and more occasionally by Greenfinches (3).
A female Chaffinch skulks around below, picking up spilt grain but Barbara spotted it briefly visiting the feeder during a quiet spell at breakfast-time. I don’t remember ever having seen one on the hanging feeders but the type that we’re using now have accessible perches (plastic rings at each hole) and they’re very close to the hedge which the Chaffinch perches in so it’s surprising that we don’t see it going directly to the feeder more often.
It’s the RSPB garden bird-watch this weekend, so we’re hoping that all these colourful finches will turn up to be counted during the allotted hour.
Another bird that uses the feeders infrequently and with difficulty is the Robin. It returned several times to the fat-ball feeder.
There were two Robins in the hedge by the feeders this afternoon, one soon chasing off the other.
Note; My drawings today are from sketches I’ve made over the years, some going back to the early days of this diary, a decade ago. Screen resolutions and average bandwidths were so different then, so if I could get a sketch, like the little one of the Bullfinch down to 1 kilobyte, I thought I was doing well. Seeing these on my latest computer I’m surprised how flat and dotty those early GIF (graphic image files) are. They used to look just about acceptable but I’d do things differently today.
THE WIND builds up again this morning, swaying the tops of the tall conifers, a Leylandii and a fir, in my mum’s back garden.
The needles of the fir are small and strap-like, each about 1.5 cm long, coming to a point at the tip. Unlike pines, where the needles grow in pairs (or in threes or fives), these grow individually from the stem.
I could see the fir’s long sausage-shaped cones growing from some of the top branches but despite the wind, I couldn’t find any on the the ground to take closer look.
The bark is smooth, pitted with pores.
Leyland Cypress
Female cone of Leylandii, diameter 1 cm, one third of an inch, photographed with the microscope.
The leaves of the Leylandii, (Leylandii) x Cupressocyparis leylandi, are scale-like. The small female cones have eight scales and the seeds (2 mm) are disk-shaped (right).
The multiple stems of this Leylandii have rough bark.
Spring Flowers
The snowdrops at my mum’s have been showing for a week or two now with yellow aconite, a relative of the buttercup coming into flower this week.
The hellebore or Christmas Rose has been in flower throughout the winter but the yellow crocus is only just showing signs of bursting into flower.
AT SOME POINT during the night the wind blew the hinged plywood lid off the compost bins, luckily missing the greenhouse just feet away. Elsewhere in Yorkshire, lorries were overturned and trees brought down. On a positive note, the level in our leaky pond has risen slightly thanks to all the rain we’ve had.
According to weatherman Paul Hudson we’ve had rain on 34 of the past 35 days. Winds reached 93 mph at High Bradfield, South Yorkshire. Chimney pots have come down and one lean-to roof was blow right across the roof a house.
IT’S HARD to believe that at last we’ve completed all our Christmas errands and finished off as many home improvements we need to before Christmas. The days are now getting longer, just two minutes a day, but that will soon add up. To celebrate this small but significant change and to draw a line in the sand (well in the mud at this time of year), we set off for a short walk along the towpath in the rapidly fading light.
A heron flies past Beckside Farm and over the old grey viaduct. Two Mute Swans bring grace and elegance to the canal basin at Horbury Bridge.
On one narrowboat, they’ve improvised a giant Christmas pudding by the tiller, using a black plastic bin bag and cut-out holly leaves.
We turn back when we reach the pylon wires, which are sizzling and crackling in the rain like sausages in a frying pan. The pylon, standing on the steep bank above a belt of broadleaves, makes a stark Christmas tree silhouette.
Just 15 minutes walk from our doorstep and I feel as if we’ve escaped into real countryside and experienced the wider world.
As we walk back up from the towpath alongside the Bingley Arms, I rub my fingers through the Wormwood to smell this bitterly aromatic herb. It’s appropriate that it should be planted here by the pub as it has been used in brewing and as a flavouring in absinthe and in some Polish vodkas.
IN A STRIP in one of the raised beds we planted a row of leeks in the spring; flimsy grass-like seedlings from a punnet we’d bought in the garden centre. This morning I dug out one from the end of the row and it’s now so large that this one leek gave Barbara enough to make a large pan of leek and potato soup. It’s one of our most trouble-free crops. They were watered a few times when they first went in, weeded two or three times since and that’s it. An impressive crop from an area the size of four or five sheets of A4 paper.
And talking of leaks, the pond is still a disaster area, damaged, we guess, by rodent activity beneath the liner. There’s still some water and some pondweed in the deeper section, so hopefully the pond life can survive until we can find a solution to the problem.
The whole garden is in need of attention after the distractions of selling Barbara’s mum’s house this summer, followed by me working on my book. The wood chippings on the paths are in need of freshening up. In the shade of the hedge near the plastic compost bins by the shed, honey fungus and another variety that I’ve forgotten the name of are sprouting luxuriantly.
Victorian Fair
This morning I enjoyed a rather light-hearted piece of graphic design, using Microsoft Publisher; designing a poster for the launch of my book (so please do look out for me if you’re at the Victorian Fair). It’s in the style of a Victorian playbill rather than trying to be a facsimile, an excuse to use some of the hundred plus fonts that I’ve accumulated over the years.
Correction, that’s, well over a hundred; my font folder contains 1626 items!
Well, you can never have too many fonts can you? I remember my college days when the typography department was limited to little more than Times New Roman and Univers, while Letraset offered exotic possibilities such as Carousel and Bookman Bold Italic. But on my limited budget I’d be just as likely to put the Letraset catalogue in the Grant Enlarger and trace my text letter by letter. I couldn’t have dreamt of having access to a thousand fonts via my desk top at home.
But even with so much choice, I still feel that sometimes hand lettering works best with my sketch maps and drawings.
Line versus Half Tone
I’ve been using Microsoft Publisher 2010 for the layout of my book and it’s been working well but I decided to take the opportunity of giving Serif’s PagePlus X5 a try when they rang me with a special offer. I used a previous version of PagePlus for my colour walks booklets but it proved to be unsuitable for my new paperback format. Unfortunately the same applies to the new version, which I tried on my computer this morning.
Line art in Publisher 2010, magnified about ten times.
I’ve enjoyed the discipline of working in black and white for the new book and that’s how I want the drawings to be seen on paper; in crisp black and white.
That’s the result that I get with Publisher (left) when I scan my drawing at 1200 dots per inch. Any pixel has to be either black or white so the image is made up from a mosaic of tiny black and white rectangles. This gives a stepped appearance to a line, particularly a diagonal line.
This close up is from a PDF of a page produced in Publisher and printed on my laser printer. You can’t tell what the paper output will be like simply by looking at the artwork on-screen.
Line artwork in PagePlus X5; where did those half-tone dots come from?
Unfortunately that’s not what I get with PagePlus (right). Dots appear around my pen lines showing that a half tone screen has been added. This softens the appearance of those stepped lines but the effect is almost imperceptible unless you look at the drawing through a hand lens. A halo of half tone around lines is something to be avoided if your work is intended to be printed professionally as line artwork as those dots can clog up with unpredictable consequences.
You might think that I’m being over fussy but, after the weeks that I’ve spent preparing and scanning my drawings and designing my pages, I want everything to turn out just as I’ve planned it.
I’M DRAWING a motley crew of folk; ‘an assemblage of odds and ends of people, a rabble’. This rabble has yet to be roused but they’re a sufficiently motley assortment.
I used ArtPen on layout paper, filling in with a Cotman watercolour brush and Calli ink, making up the characters as I went. With no sketched pencil line to follow and no rough to trace I felt as if I had more freedom. The result looks perfectly idiotic, so I quite like it.
The actual size that I’d be printing this would be only an inch or two across, so you’re seeing the widescreen version here.
The Lawn Ranger
11 a.m.: A neighbour’s ginger cat is paying close attention to one particular spot on the lawn, sniffing it with intense interest.
What is it up to?
It turns around and sticks its paw into a hole –
a vole hole – reaching right down, like someone trying to retrieve keys from the back of a sofa.
It reminds me of a friend of my mum & dad’s, Denny from Dovercourt, who once saw a man lying by the side of the road with a look of agony on his face;
“Are you all right? Shall I send for an ambulance?”
“No . . . ugh . . . I’m fine . . . ugh . . . I’m just . . . trying . . . to turn off this stopcock.”
IT’S SURVIVED frost and snow, it’s been pecked to tatters by Pheasants but I’m afraid what finally did for one of our purple-flowering broccoli plants was the bonfire we lit yesterday afternoon near the the compost bins, just beyond the cabbage beds. I hope that two or three of the plants will recover sufficiently to give us a small supply of broccoli florets in a month or two.
