The House Husband

I hate bind weed. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that before but even so…I hate bind weed!

When we first moved into this house, it owned the back garden. It was everywhere and took me an age to remove. I had to get rid of it bit by bit, waiting for it to re-emerge in order to discourage it. It felt like a constant battle to keep it away.

And then, at some stage, I broke its will to live. It just stopped growing. That was a great day. Sadly, though, it was not a permanent thing. It is an ongoing battle that will last as long as I am head weeder of our garden.

Personally, I think the bind weed lives next door with the Crazies, sending out the occasional guerilla troops to check out new territory. I am always finding stray tendrils starting to curl around our plants.

This morning, Mirinda told me she’d spotted some in amongst the mock orange and threatening the geums. I had to get in there and eradicate the rotten stuff! Which I did. And then, in the course of further weeding I found a lot of little incursions below the holly tree. Damn the bind weed! Still, I’m pretty sure I wiped out most of it…for the time being.

Red geums and our river of forget-me-nots

Ever since hearing about staddle stones, Mirinda has wanted one (or three). They are an early medieval invention, principally for keeping vermin out of granaries. And they look like mushrooms.

No-one knows who invented them (the word ‘staddle’ is derived from the Old English word stathol, meaning a foundation or trunk of a tree) but I like to think of a farmer, sitting beneath an apple tree, munching on an apple which had just fallen onto his head, watching helplessly as rats invaded his grain shed. Let’s call him Ned.

While idly considering the possibility of inventing the sniper rifle, Ned was distracted by the sight of a small rat trying to climb up a mushroom. He laughed at its inability to get on top, the rounded edge preventing it from getting any purchase.

Suddenly he stopped laughing. He threw the half eaten apple away as he was struck with a Newton-like revelation. All he had to do was built his shed on the top of lots of mushrooms and his rat problem would be over. As the mushroom he’d been watching collapsed under the weight of the rat, which then danced all over it in triumph, he knew his idea was very, very silly. Mushrooms just weren’t strong enough to support his grain store.

But old Ned wasn’t one to be so easily deterred. And then the pivotal moment came when his brain made the necessary calculations. He reasoned that if a mushroom was made of…well, mushroom…it wouldn’t be strong enough but if it was made of rock…well, that was another thing entirely!

Quite coincidentally, his brother, Ted, was a stone mason who lived about eight miles away (the usual distance equating to a country mile as anyone who’s watched Lark Rise to Candleford would know) so he quickly grabbed his coat and set off to see him.

At first Ted thought his brother had suddenly been touched by a witch. Stone mushrooms, indeed! What devil induced madness was this? But, as the brothers sat beneath an entirely different apple tree, watching a bunch of entirely different rats eat through his grain ration for the entire winter, he gradually realised the sense of Ned’s idea. They smiled with anticipation as they finished eating the apples which had fallen on their heads.

Realising the gravity of the situation, they set to work almost immediately (I’m pretty sure they’d have downed a couple of ales first, given they didn’t drink the water) with Ned designing and Ted carving.

Very soon, they had a prototype which they tested on Ted’s son Fred’s pet rat called Jed, trying to induce it to climb the giant mushroom upon which they’d placed a slab of very good and smelly cheese. Poor Jed went unfed that night. And this is no small thing because rats are actually quite clever. It’s a little known fact that the first grain store was actually designed by a rat, who was very well respected in her neighbourhood. Fortunately she died long before Ned’s mushroom idea took hold.

And took hold it did! Of course there was the usual cries of witchcraft when everyone realised that Ned was the only person who had bread but over a few ales down the local, Ned explained his ingenious idea.

Soon stone mushrooms were springing up everywhere in the countryside. After a very short time, sheds without staddle stones were considered de rigeur and looked down on. It crept into the local dialect with such advertising slogans as

Give the rats the paddle!
Get yourself a staddle!

Sadly the patent system had yet to be invented so poor Ned didn’t manage to make any money out of his idea (though Ted was inundated with orders, which kept him in food and beer for many years and Fred, carrying on his father’s business, made enough money to go on a World Discovery Tour for the under 30′s) but I like to think of him, still sitting beneath his apple tree, smiling with benign pleasure as the rats stared, baffled, at the sight of his giant mushrooms.

And now, many, many generations later, we now have three of them. This might seem odd, given that grain stores generally have four sides, but our three will never feel the weight of a shed on their domed heads. These days, staddle stones tend to be used as garden decorations and that is what ours are for.

One of three staddle stones

Mirinda asked for them for her birthday this year from Bob & Claire. They arrived this morning and, though not that big, they are rather heavy. It’s handy that I have a wheelbarrow, is all I can say.

Two of three staddle stones

I think they look quite good. In order to test them, I put some grain on one but the birds ate it all…D’Oh!

I’m fairly certain that this has been one of the worst Sunday’s we’ve ever spent in the UK. I admit, that could be a slight exaggeration if I include the Christmas we went to the Lakes, but even so, it was pretty dire.

It was like all the rain we’ve already had decided to double up and fall in one day. As a consequence, we didn’t leave the house. Of course I went shopping in the morning (and managed to get soaked) but that was it for me and Mirinda stayed inside.

I find that days like this are good times to perform a bit of essential housekeeping on the website – clearing out old files, fixing up photo albums that no longer work. While there’s no obvious evidence of my having done anything useful, at least I know the site is working a little bit better.

As I go through the many pages, I often wonder whether I should change it all. It does occur to me that I’m possibly one of the only people who actually look back over old photos and journals so, for that reason alone, perhaps I should make it what I want.

Perhaps, once all the travel journals are transferred to the blog, I will make wholesale changes, just to spruce it up. Of course, this can only be accomplished when the weather is rubbish and I have nothing else to do, given the size of our website.

In the meantime, I just look out the back window and thank Dave we now have a path. I reminded Mirinda how awful the back garden would be if not for the path. We may dither over other changes to our house but this one has proven a boom.

PS: The reason I might not be able to make the first FATN committee meeting (as I mentioned yesterday) is because I’m expecting a delivery on Tuesday and have no idea when it’s due.

After talking myself hoarse with Mum and Dad, I was feeling a bit better this morning so I decided I could finally do something in the garden. This was made a lot easier by the fact that the rains stopped for a bit and the sun made an appearance.

A couple of weeks ago, we bought a standard fuchsia and it has sat, morosely wedged between two of the patio chairs, avoiding the wind but collecting water. I noticed on the weekend that it didn’t look too happy in its confinement and said as much to Mirinda who told me where it needed to go. This was on Sunday and, unusually, I remembered the location.

I’d prepared the bed already (the bed doesn’t have a name except it’s the closest to the patio) and it was just a matter of digging a hole, dropping in some chicken poo and then plonking the plant on top. While it’s quite tall, the fuchsia isn’t really that big so this wasn’t what you’d call in any way, hard work.

Almost immediately, the plant looked happier (that could have been my imagination – what is the floral version of anthropomorphism?*) and, spurred on by my success and feelings of continued well being, I decided to feed the birds.

We have a lot of feeding stations in our garden so this isn’t as simple as grabbing a handful of seed and tossing it on the grass. By the time I’d finished, I was exhausted and needed a jolly good lie down.

So, the net result of my labours (apart from a happy plant and well fed birds) was the knowledge that my cold was still clinging to my insides like a fox with a chicken. I felt like rubbish again.

So the rest of the day was devoted to snooker, medicine and dozing off during the more exciting moments of play (Mirinda would probably say that I clearly couldn’t have dozed much).

Late in the afternoon I did manage to put away the clean washing but even this wore me out and I needed a rest afterwards. Stupid cold!

A Nicktor Night was planned for tonight but, in a rare moment of wisdom and sense, I’d postponed it until next week. Nicktor was very understanding though obviously disappointed.

And my blips are getting a bit boring…

* I realise that anthropomorphic refers to giving ANYTHING human attributes and not just animals particularly given we do it all the time.

It was a lovely day of sun and cloud and threatening rain which never materialised.

After shopping and a long overdue almond croissant, we decided to visit Old Thatch, an NGS garden which was open today. Linda (eventually) took us there, down quaint country lanes and over the Basingstoke Canal, and, eventually to Dogmersfield.

Old Thatch is hidden away in woodland, the land (about 10 acres) sloping down to the edge of the canal which, built in 1792, is not as old as the house. Mind you, the thatched house as we see it today is a good deal bigger than the original which was built sometime in the 17th century.

According to the hand-out we picked up at the gate, the original house would have been a “…simple A-frame hovel without a chimney.” Sounds pretty ghastly! Today, of course, it looks perfect for decorating the lid of a tin of biscuits or the final image of a 900 piece jigsaw. Quintessentially English, in fact.

I’d just like to mention the hand-out and map we received at the gate. A fantastic idea and very welcomed (by us at least). Apart from the obvious advantages of the map, the short historical notes are an excellent way to dissect the place and put it into context. It’s not so bad with small gardens but when you visit a big one like this, it’s always great to know a bit of the history of where you’re walking.

The house sits, more or less, in the centre and the grounds spread out around it. Not that the thatch is the only building these days.

The Thatched House itself

There’s the Chapel (serving teas and cake), the Millennium Barn (built in 2000 and housing, among other things, a dovecot) and another big building without a name to indicate its purpose (it might be where the owner’s actually live). There’s even a granary sitting atop the rat defying mushrooms so popular in gardens these days (Mirinda wants one which, in itself, makes them popular).

The Chapel was built on the site of a goat house. A blind owner had a rope fence leading to the goats so she could find her way down there to feed them each day. After the Chapel was built (sometime after 1986), the present owners were married in it without, as they state in the hand-out, any goats.

In fact, we didn’t see any goats so I assume they don’t live there any longer. Goats there may not be but they do have some sheep and three very tiny donkeys. The smallest donkey is not long born and garnered many an ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ from the many visitors who patted him through the wire fence.

Tiny donkeys

There’s a lot of tiny areas dedicated to various plantings but the thing about this garden is the whole which far greater than the sum of its parts, though the staggering amount of daffodils is almost incomprehensible. The current owner planted 5,000 bulbs every year for ten years. Makes our little offering a bit sad. Mind you, if I planted 50,000 daffodil bulbs in our little garden, there’d be nothing else.

Something we’ve never seen before was the use of sheep’s wool as mulch. It is spread among the plants in the vegetable garden. I thought it was to keep the young plants warm but apparently it’s mulch. It looks a bit odd but if it works, why not?

In the garden behind the thatch and spreading down to the canal, is a bronze, full size statue of a horse. It looks remarkably real (except it’s green) and I kept expecting it to stop it’s eating and look up as people wandered by.

The remarkable horse

According to the map they gave us, the horse’s name is Vegetia (or something like that – the copy of the map is a bit blurry). The only information I’ve been able to find is for a Roman pottery woman who is a member of the equestrian class and I have no idea if it ralates to her or not. Still…great statue.

Mirinda poses

Of course we indulged our taste-buds with tea and cake before gradually making our way back home.

Old Thatch is a very different garden to the ones we normally see but the feel of the place is very friendly and not in the least bit formal. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mirinda feeds the lambs

Another great NGS garden. There’s a few more photos here.

It’s days like today that I’m glad we don’t own a grand piano. Apart from the fact that I can’t play the piano, which would be a waste, I really have no desire to move one around a room. A gazebo, while lighter, is annoyingly similar when it comes to perfect placement.

Mirinda decided to work from home today (that’ll be this home and not the extension at Canary Wharf) and, given the fact that the sun was out, I decided to tackle the garden. The sun didn’t last long but was hidden by regular bursts of evil mothership proportioned black clouds which rained down upon all and sundry before moving on and allowing the sun to return. A strange day with a lovely warm light between the showers and hailstorm.

This makes it sound quite horrendous but the timings were perfect for me. I worked in the sun and managed to be inside for the rain. Sorted. And the poodles managed to avoid getting wet as well.

My first job of the day was to plant the two (red) bleeding hearts we bought at the garden centre yesterday. I put them in the holly bed, in front of where I planted the white ones the other week. They look quite spectacular at the moment and I hope that some flower eating nasty thing doesn’t turn up to munch through them.

Bleeding hearts looking lush

Next I had to move some crocosmias from the decimated lavender bed near the back door (decimated because Mirinda went mad with some weapons of plant destruction on the weekend) to the Home of Crocosmias down in the hot border.

Crocosmias are quite odd in that the bulb splits and grows and splits and grows until you have a big bunch of bulbs. I think (if you’re a proper gardener) you’re supposed to break them apart and plant them up as separate plants…maybe I shouldn’t write that I didn’t. I can always plead ignorance…D’oh!

My next job was not very nice. Mirinda wanted me to move the gazebo a few feet. The gazebo is a thin rusty metal structure on three legs. Not particularly heavy but a pain to move, especially when plants are growing up the legs.

Actually, to be completely honest, only one leg had a plant growing up it (a clematis) and I unravelled it pretty much successfully. Another leg had the rose from last week but that hadn’t started entwining yet.

So I moved it. Then I called Mirinda to come and tell me where she actually wanted it. Being a man (and the person responsible for big object movements in our house) I naturally left one leg near the clematis so it would be very easy to just re-tangle the vines around the leg. The only thing that had changed with this leg was the angle, the other two legs were in completely new positions.

Mirinda didn’t like it. She also didn’t like the other 340 positions she had me move the gazebo into over the next two hours. Finally, however, she was happy. The clematis was now two feet away. Two feet! I had to transplant the clematis two feet.

Why all the fuss, she asked...

Still, I did. And all was well with the world. I moved the rose, extended the mowing strip and, finally, had a lovely relaxing, cleansing shower. It’s the best bit, if you ask me.

I am now waiting for Mirinda to go out, look at it, frown and ask me to move it six inches to the left…Carmen’s face says it all…

She wants you to what?

The English just love their garden centres. This is never more apparent than when the garden centres are all closed on a Sunday and then re-open on the bank holiday Monday. Like today. It’s like when your drug pusher goes on holiday and then returns to find a very long queue waiting for him.

And it didn’t stop raining all day so it’s not like anyone can actually do anything in their gardens. The weather, however, will never part an English person from their gardening centre fix.

Mirinda gave me the choice of which garden centre we’d visit – like I have a preference – so I opted for Forest Lodge. I’m sure the only reason why I prefer Forest Lodge is because the car park is n the flat so there’s no need to push the recalcitrant trolley up to Sidney when it comes time to leave.

Naturally, the trolley is always full, heavy and the wheels refuse to work properly. It’s bad enough on the flat but just gets silly on hills.

Sidney, however, had other ideas and decided to go to the one with the steepest car park which was very, very full. Even the overflow car park was overflowing.

We parked on top of the steepest part of the garden centre and rolled down to the entrance, along with the thousands of other eager shoppers, dodging the rain drops and trying to ignore the wind.

People with families generally go to theme parks on bank holidays (Thorpe Park, Alton Towers, that sort of thing) but people with gardens decided Bagshot Lea garden centre was far more exciting. I’m not sure why.

As I watch the hordes, my first thought is (always) that maybe all the men are (also) dragged along by their wives but, no, in many cases it seems that this is a couples activity. I find any kind of shopping pretty much a duck in and out and get back to the security of the open air but these people make a day of it. There were even people enjoying a hot meal in the restaurant.

Anyway, we wandered around, choosing what we (Mirinda) wanted before I was despatched to find a trolley which was then loaded up with all manner of things. After a coffee, we then headed for the check out. This is not as easy as it sounds.

The trolley is about a metre wide and most of the aisles, while originally wide enough, have displays encroaching into them, making it impossible for the trolley to move down them. Given the fact that the trolley has six wheels, makes it pretty difficult to reverse, turn or go forward. Mirinda went on ahead and I tried to find the least difficult route to the tills.

My desperation grew as I became blocked in aisle after aisle. Clearly the Bagshot Lea garden centre doesn’t want its customers to leave, I thought, no unreasonably. Still, eventually I made it, bits and pieces of display, hoses, tools and small children left in my wake.

Back at home, I unloaded Sidney and then forgot about it all. Far too traumatic. The rest of the day was spent inside as the rain refused to go away.

Mind you, things could have been worse…the Cansfields spent most of the day in the rain, entertaining 25 German visitors!

Being Easter Sunday, it was time to make my second simnel cake. So, after pointlessly walking up to the shops that were all closed, I set to and made the whole house smell deliciously inviting. Eventually the finished cake came out of the oven (Mirinda having licked the bowl and the mixing spoon and anything else she could get her hands on that had cake mix on it) and I had to let it cool before slipping the marzipan over the top and grilling it lightly.

Rather than limit myself to simply putting a load of marzipan balls on top (like last year) I decided to be a little more adventurous. And this is what I ended up with:

Simnel by Gaz...in case it's not clear

it was lovely and moist inside and simply packed with fruity goodness. Fortunately it’s very rich so it’s impossible to eat more than a slice every 12 hours.

Oozing with fruit

By 10pm, we’d eaten half.

Mirinda spent a lot of the day in the garden and she’s made a big difference – so much better than me! We were going to a garden centre but, like Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Boots, and every other big shop, the garden centres are all having the day in church somewhere. That makes it sound like I’m bothered by it but, to be honest, I’m really not. I quite like a day where virtually nothing is open. It forces you to stay at home or to go out and enjoy the day for the sake of the day and not to go shopping.

Nicktor went to church so I guess you could always do that, although I’d feel a bit of a hypocrite and, of course, I’d never have made the simnel cake. And that would have (really) been a sin.

In case you’ve forgotten the story of the simnel cake, it’s included in this post from last year. The actual cake from last year is here. If you go back and look at last year’s you may notice that it’s very yellow when compared with this year’s model. That’s because I used golden marzipan last year (because it was all they had in Waitrose) and the normal one this year (because it was all they had in Waitrose). Anyway, it tastes the same.

This is my one thousandth post on this blog. That’s a lot of drivel from my fingertips to your eyes…or ears if someone is reading it to you. Given my propensity for giving up on things that take too long, I’m amazed that this blog still exists at all!

Anyway, today was almost spent mostly in the garden. Having shopped, spoken to mum and dad and then measured the back garden with the hedge man (a lovely chap who insisted on taking his boots off to walk through the house), it was back at the weeds in the bed nearest the house. I was aiming to have it finished before Mirinda came home. And I was well on course when it started: A faint pitter patter which soon became a downpour.

At first we (Carmen on the table and Day-z on my lap) sheltered under the garden umbrella, trying to stay out of reach of the drops. When it eased off a little, I ventured out to recommence hostilities but that was when the heavens opened up and gave the entire garden a thorough drenching.

I won’t moan about it because it’s been an age since we last had any rain and the garden lapped it up like a camel at an oasis following a year long trudge across the Sahara. But it did put paid to any continuation. We all decided it must be lunch time. I grabbed camera, radio and gardening gloves and we all headed inside. Sitting in the lounge eating my ham and mouldy cheese roll, I stared in disbelief at the ferocity of the rain as it blanked out the other side of the road.

But then, as quickly as it had arrived, so it departed. The sun was suddenly out in force. The dogs looked at me expectantly so we took a chance and headed for the park.

I wasn’t the only one taking the air with my canine friends. The park was littered with over eager dogs and frustrated owners yelling for them to return in helpless shrieks. They all seemed to be rushing around, trying to get through their walk before the rain hit again. Looking at the sky and the dry ground, it was hard to believe that about half an hour previously, it was pouring with rain, let alone that it might happen again.

After the drenching...nothing

There were a few evil looking clouds in the distance but we managed to make it back without getting wet and I set back to the garden, the sun shining down…until the rain once more inundated the garden. And so it remained for the rest of the afternoon – rain on and off. Eventually I gave up trying to dig and decided to clear up instead.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
Looking back at this time last year, I posted a shot of our red tulips. Not wanting to buck tradition, here’s this years crop.

Very red and proud of it

I spent most of today in the garden. Seeing as it was all blue sky and sunshine, it was very pleasant. Having the radio on also aided in the overall pleasantness.

The main thing that has to be accomplished this week is preparing the bed closest to the house for some decent planting. This isn’t as easy as it is to type. But before that, I had to transplant the lady’s mantle and geranium from the front garden to the back. This was no easy task. They both are pretty deep rooted but I managed to get them safely (I hope and only time will tell) newly sited in the back.

Next I had to move a few Aquilegias that have self seeded everywhere. This accomplished it was then time to dig up the masses of bluebells. I moved a load last year and they survived under the hedge so I added some more to the sweeping river of green as well as popping a few in the mossy lawn in front of the hedge. Hopefully they’ll look good next year because they’re a bit forlorn at the moment.

Having managed to remove anything of any value, I then went mad and forked the bed up, weeding as I went. Eventually I could get to the fence (between us and the Crazies) and ripped the old, dead golden hop vines off the wires that generally suspend it when it’s growing. This was very fiddly!

Meanwhile, the poodles were annoying the resident frog so I had to keep rescuing it. I’m sure I’ve discussed the frog before. I’m not sure where it lives but every now and then it appears on the patio and the girls love trying to play with it. The frogs defence mainly consists of just sitting there doing nothing. This just makes the dogs want to play even more. Stupid frog. I must have rescued it 100 times before it decided to hop away to where ever it came from.

As soon as I finished the bed, the birds went mad, swooping down and inspecting for anything alive they could lay their beaks on. Most persistent was a little robin who didn’t even wait for me to finish! Here is my little foreman sternly watching over my work, just waiting to jump on anything not quite right.

All I want is a worm! Can't you hurry up?

Of course, after lunch, we went up to the park (along with the thousands of others seeing as it’s holiday time for the schools) and spotted the woman with the two big white dogs. They are lovely but one is really docile while the other is a bit of a terror. The Terror is always kept on a lead. It just growls and barks ferociously at any other dog that stupidly crosses its path. Needless to say, Day-z runs a mile every time she sees it. I have never seen two dogs walking together, that are so different.

The terror is to her left, the docile on her right

Apart from the Terror, Day-z was very inquisitive today, sniffing a few picnic baskets and generally being fussed over by groups of sun-happy visitors. It was all rather jolly.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, my gloves waited…

Hurry up!