One fine day

Another sunny day.

For weeks now, I've opened the heavy bedroom curtains to brilliant sun.  This is our fourth summer in England, but the first time we've enjoyed such a long streak of fine, cloudless days.  My flimsy cotton dresses have been dragged out of the back of the closet; usually, they only get an airing when we holiday in warm places.

I love the heat of a proper good summer, but the gardener in me acknowledges that the ground could use a good soaking.  Nearly every night, I'm outside watering the borders until the light begins to ebb and I can feel the damp chill rising from the earth.

Three summers ago, when we planted the new border and the rose/herb beds, it rained and rained.  High summer is not, typically, the best time to put in new plants, but the weather conspired with my impatience.  Only the lavender, which hates being water-logged, really suffered.

This year the lavender is thriving . . . it must think it got transplanted to Provence.

For the first time, we aren't plagued by the black spot on the rose leaves.  But the trade-off is that the roses bloom and quickly brown and shrivel.  They come apart like an explosion of confetti when you touch them.  Last Thursday, when I was at Jane Austen's House, every gust of wind blew a shower of rose petals through the front door.  I kept looking for the phantom June wedding.

I suppose we are all influenced by seasonal rhythm and ritual more than we realize.  I still expect SUMMER to begin on that last weekend of May.  It feels strange to fret, in July, with early morning alarm bells, piano exams and school bags.  The high point of the summer has passed, and yet here we are -- still limping along, trying to adhere to a routine that has lost its relevance.  I'm sure that by the end of August I will long for routine again, but just now I'd like to lay in the grass and listen to the hum of insects.

The raspberry canes are bursting with fruit that no one has time to pick.

We need to spend a day in our pajamas . . . or bathing suits.  It seems a shame to run the sprinklers without some tow-headed child running through them.

Only one more day 'till summer vacation.

Butterflies

August isn't the most colorful month in the gardening calendar.

Almost everything looks a bit frayed, overgrown, or yellowed at the edges. (You can just glimpse the dried brown heads of the once brilliantly purple allium. Their former glory exists only in my blog sidebar now.)

For some reason, though, there are great clouds of butterflies everywhere.

On Thursday, I had to take my youngest daughter to the Jane Austen House with me. For several patient hours, she sat on a wooden bench and knitted in the garden. There was one magical moment in which a swirl of white butterflies looked like a moveable crown upon her head. Sadly, it was captured only in my memory.

Why are butterflies such an irresistible subject for the photographer? Is it because they are the very essence of what is ephemeral?

My youngest daughter, still impervious to the charms of cell phones and the like, spent hours fashioning a sari from her big sister's old duvet cover. She still likes to play dress-up -- not for any alluring reasons, but just for fun. I wonder if this will be her last childish summer?

A few weeks ago, a dear blog-friend sent me a card with the following quotation from Edith Wharton: If only we could stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

Happiness is so hard to pin down, but I do try to recognize it when I see it.

Unsettled

Stormy weather

The weather has been extremely unsettled lately, and so have I . . .

On Monday, I was driving across the broad Oxfordshire Downs and it was like some weather god was bowling black clouds. Every time he made a strike, the car shook from the impact.

Yesterday, a friend and I made the trek to the Hampton Court Flower Show and the moody sky glowered at us all morning. Although we managed to duck into the Rose Tent for the first downpour, the second one caught us on the way out. I took this picture just minutes before the smooth surface of the water was disturbed by a million angry raindrops.

Hampton Court

The day was more silver than gold, except for these roses.

This display of Absolutely Fabulous roses

won a gold medal

It was the first time I had been to the annual show, and it was all a bit overwhelming. I think that it is probably better to go with a plan, instead of being buffeted about by the crowds. All of the serious gardeners had brought trolleys, which made the paths a strange sort of obstacle course.

That's been a bit of a theme with me, lately, as I seem to have overcrowded my schedule to the point of lunacy. Instead of relishing the long summer days, I feel like I have been running the gauntlet -- somehow worse for being largely self-imposed.

Some people like being busy, but I've realized in the last couple of years that I require a slower pace. I tried to cram in a lunch with old friends today, but I was time-crunched on both sides. I felt like a babbling, bubbling pot that was about to boil over.

We've been in England for three years now, and I wonder if I am feeling unsettled partly because we have always tended to move by the end of this cycle. My husband has a new boss, and unsurprisingly he want to re-organize. It's a story that has a predictable conclusion, even though this is still only the beginning of the a still-uncertain end.

One of our closest family friends will be moving soon. The other day, my daughter said that it feels like a wind of change is blowing through . . . which is exactly what I have been feeling, too.

Henry and his Birds

King Henry the VIII: a man who knew all about regime change.

Sweetpeas in the fruit and veg bed

At least all of this rain is good for the garden . . .

Seeing Red

Red poppies and pale pink lavatera

I think that I've been spending far too much time in the garden . . . I'm starting to read "signs" in the flowers.

After two months of pastel lushness, tall red poppies are springing up everywhere. I don't remember planting them. Perhaps they seeded themselves?

Over the last week, the burning sun has scorched the edges of flowers and grass. The Met Office has issued its first heatwave alert. We can't sleep for the early morning light and the suffocating heat.

The colour red, as you probably know, has the longest wavelengths of light. Summer seems to be gathering its energy. The long days are intense with it.

Red is also the colour of anger -- and love. Our weekend was emotionally jagged; the heat builds up, and then there are storms.

Midsummer Magic

Watering the borders

nepeta (catmint) and cotinus (smoke brush)

Do you think that a responsiveness to nature is a genetic gift like any other?

Are some people born more attuned to the ebb and flow of the natural processes all around us? Are they more inclined to notice the beauties around them? Are they more likely to feel nourished by what their senses can absorb?

And why do some landscapes speak to us, while others don't -- or at least not so much, or in the same way.

I've never felt that I was particularly responsive to nature, but there is something about England that makes me feel like a tuning fork which is vibrating to the perfect pitch.

Last night I was watering the garden in the early evening . . . and there was this magical combination of hot sun, cool earth and the smell of water soaking through herbs and flowers. I wish that I could capture it in words: the deliciousness; the sensual quality of pure notes of rose, thyme, lavender and basil.

I always feel keenly aware of that moment when the sun reaches its peak, and then begins its slow, but inevitable, decline again. It has that gorgeous repleteness, but also that shadow of decay, like a ripe piece of fruit or a full-blown rose.

Another kind of magic:

the first ripe raspberries

Last November, we planted raspberry canes in the dull wet ground. They looked like lifeless sticks, and it was hard to believe that anything would or could fruit from them.

All through the spring, my daughter plotted the progress of rough green leaves and then tiny green beads and then, in late June, ripe red fruit. (It is midsummer, but autumn's apples and blackberries are already emerging, raw, hard and green.)

I wonder if gardeners find it easier to accept that the nature of life is constant change. Being new to cultivation, I am constantly surprised how quickly plants flower and fade or just lose their shape. Last week, the nepeta which was a perfect mound all spring had to be cut back. It had sprawled, and grown leggy, smothering a rose, a fuschia, a heuchera.

Today I read: One morning, Polly saw a crimson rose show its heart to the sun, only to fall in a cascade of petals by the end of the day. (from Love in Idleness, by Amanda Craig) Only a few days of sun and the ground has baked hard and dry. The roses fall apart in my hands.

Every clear, warm night we eat outside now. We try to follow Herrick's advice.

If it is raining: Butterscotch Rice Pudding

Throwing open my bedroom window to catch

the fleeting sun, peeking through wisteria

Within minutes, the sky was covered

again -- with black clouds

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land)

A day of storms -- outwardly and inward.

This morning, the gardener and I huddled under the porch as the rain pelted down. The daisies will live another day, because the lawn mower couldn't eat its way through the long, sodden grass. It's spring to the eyes, but not to the chilled skin.

After a week of sunny days and tempers, my teenage daughter had a miserable bout of Texas homesickness -- and a storm of weeping which could not be appeased. I made homemade chicken soup for my emotional invalid, and sent her early to bed.

Sigmund feels tired and blue, too. But there is butterscotch rice pudding bubbling away in the oven, and we will eat a comforting bowlful with some early raspberries.

Like many good things, this recipe comes from my mother -- who clipped it out of the newspaper and mailed it to me. It can also be found in Judy Walker's book, Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

File it under comfort food:

Butterscotch Rice Pudding

Ingredients:
12 oz water
pinch of salt
5 1/2 oz short-grain or pudding rice
24 oz milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 oz unsalted butter
8 oz heavy or double cream
5 1/2 oz firmly packed dark brown sugar

Method:
Grease a 2 quart ovenproof (Corningware or similar) dish.

In a saucepan with a lid, bring the water to a boil, and then add the rice and pinch of salt. Reduce to the heat to low, then cover and cook for 20 minutes (or until all of the water is absorbed). Keep an eye on it, because it may not need the entire 20 minutes. After the rice has cooked, stir in the milk and heat for approximately 5-10 minutes -- just until the milk steams. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175 C.

In another saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat -- and then add the cream and brown sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour this cream mixture into the prepared rice. Stir well and spoon into the prepared dish.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until the pudding is thick and has a golden crust. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving. It is best hot -- but also delicious when cold, if you like that sort of dense gloopiness.

a delicious clump of tulips

one of the nicest things about April

(and because rice pudding isn't very photogenic)

The financial news still reeks, but my garden is fragrant

A glimpse of my garden in late September.

No matter what time of year, it can be chilly and wet in England. Because of this tendency to what I think of as the English "default" weather, the distinct outline of the different seasons tends to blur.

This year's wet summer has meant that even the trees which change with the autumn have clung to their leaves. We have conkers and blackberry bramble -- sure signs of fall -- but my garden is full of the blooms, and even the buds, more associated with summer. One season can bleed into the next and the only way to tell the difference is by what is coming out of the ground -- but even that method isn't foolproof.

"It's been a good year for fruit, but a bad year for grain," says my gardener. The tomatoes, which had showed early promise, never got enough heat to ripen and ended up rotting on the vine. But we've had a bumper crop of apples, and the roses have bloomed again and again.

After a dreary August, which kept gardeners inside and the butterflies away, we have had a good run of sunny days. It always seems to be this way. We get one more precious blast of glorious warmth before the dark door of October closes.

So as September slips away, I offer up a fond last look at summer.

"The Pilgrim"

I picked this rose because I am a sucker for a name, and I liked the American association. Too late, I learned that the "pilgrim" refers to Chaucer's pilgrims, and not the ones who took the Mayflower to the New World.

Never mind. It is a beautiful rose, and a really "good goer." I guess that pilgrims tend to be tenacious.

I can see this rose by looking out my kitchen window . . . and the colours echo my kitchen curtains, by design.

Except for some of the ramblers, which tend to flower only once, all of my roses repeat throughout their flowering season. The Pilgrim rose has been flowering since June, and it looks like it may keep going for a while. Another good repeater is Jubilee Celebration, the showy pink rose pictured below. The Jubilee Celebration is new to my garden this year -- and it is probably my favourite. The picture doesn't really do it justice, as the colour is actually quite complex -- a pink shot through with peachy gold. It glows in the sunlight.

It's a shame that this picture isn't a scratch-and-sniff.

The fragrance is described, by experts, as "strong and fruity,

with a hint of fresh lemon and raspberry."

This is the infamous rose hedge that I planted on a wet and windy Bank Holiday weekend.

There is a mix of pink Penelope shrub roses and pale yellow Malvern Hills climbers. Someday, if I'm lucky, the roses will cover the fence and hang in garlands from up above.

A lovely little willow tree, just out of the picture, casts its shadow.

At the foot of the garden, you can see the Chicken Pen -- home to Ralph and Lauren.

If you look carefully, you may just be able to glimpse Minstrel, our tabby cat.

He likes to lounge here, between the tall grasses and the Iceberg roses.

His days in the sun may be numbered. For this year, at any rate.

Signs

After spending many messy, muddy hours in my garden this morning, I realized that it was nearly 3 pm . . . and that I would have to motor in order to get to the grocery store before the end of Sunday trading hours. Although I did change out of my extremely muddy clothes and wellies, I was wearing no make-up and had my semi-dirty hair scraped back into a skimpy ponytail.

Just a mere two years ago, it would have been inconceivable for me to appear in public looking so au natural (ie, scruffy). It suddenly struck me that there are various signs indicating that I am beginning to go native . . . and blend into my new habitat.

• I have dirty wellies in the boot of my car.
• It doesn't seem like a Sunday if we don't have roast dinner.
• I cannot get going in the morning without two cups of tea.
• I would rather have some antique garden urns than new clothes.
• I was discovered clipping out information on the opening times of local gardens who are participating in the National Gardens Scheme.
• I am becoming *somewhat* impervious to the vagaries and extremities of English weather . . . for example:
• I stayed outside until after 9 pm last night, even though it was cold and extremely windy -- all because I was determined to finish planting my new rose hedge.
• Even more shocking: I was gardening all morning, even though it was raining off and on, and even though I have at least three good books which I am hot to read.
• Finally, I actually have dirt under my fingernails!

Will this gardening craze prove permanent, or it just a passing fancy? Who will predict? But stay tuned for the next installment in my rose dilemma.

I need to go plant some bay trees now.

Gardener's Hour

I was walking through someone’s beautiful garden yesterday and I suddenly had an epiphany: I am becoming a gardening enthusiast.

Where I used to be a person who would vaguely register “purple flower,” I am now a person who knows the difference between an “allium” and an “agapanthus,” and even realizes that they are plants suitable to a herbaceous border. Slowly, gradually, I have learned to recognize dozens of English plants and flowers. If I knew them before, it was only in a storybook way: “hollyhocks,” “lamb’s ears,” “dahlias,” “catmint,” “delphiniums,” “lupins,” “sweet peas.” Somehow I have crossed over from a person who loved reading The Secret Garden, to a person who wants a secret garden. I was thrilled when my peonies recently started blooming, and visiting the garden center for a plant shopping binge has been the highlight of my week. Believe me, it hasn’t always been this way.

I don’t remember a lot of flowers in Central Texas, where I grew up – only the rather boring, hardy varieties like pansies and marigolds. One suited to the mild winters; one suited to the arid summers. Bland, ubiquitous flowers. We had “lawns” of thick, coarse St. Augustine grass instead. Maybe some trees and a few shrubs.

A lawn is serviceable; it is frontage for your house; it is something that has to be mown and edged frequently. If you do take pride in it, it is because of the rigorous neatness, the vigorous greenness, the vanquished weeds.

A “garden” is something entirely different.

A garden is a creative enterprise; an aesthetic statement; a revealing form of self-expression. It is a constantly evolving project – full of delight, surprise and heartbreak. It may take years, even decades, of plotting and shaping; yet it can change overnight. A garden resists the control of even the most masterful hand, as it is constantly subject to weather vagaries and the self-seeding propensity of so many plants. It is never “done,” but always a work in progress. A garden is cyclical – and therefore, a source of ever-renewable small pleasures. I will be sad to see the wisteria, clematis and peonies fade with the end of May, but by June the roses will start blooming.

Many keen gardeners have a flower that they are particularly passionate about – and for me, that flower is the rose. The David Austin Handbook of Roses is like horticultural porn: seductive and highly thrilling. I drool over the descriptions, lingering lovingly over: “exquisite little buds,” “good, bushy growth,” “light musk rose perfume with a hint of myrrh,” “luxuriant healthy foliage,” and “richest velvety crimson.” Each rose is almost more beautiful than the last – and there are hundreds of them. I know that I can’t have them all, but I can still have lots. I fantasize over them, making wish lists. I like the old roses the best; the peony-like ones, with proper rose fragrance.

Being a word lover, I also love roses for their names. No doubt “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but I can’t help believe that there is something in a name. “Alan Titchmarsh” and “Eglantyne” are both beautiful pink roses – but which one would you rather have?

I have no problem confessing that I get a strange satisfaction from rose names – both the beautiful and the quirky. I know that proper gardeners learn the Latin names of their plants, but I would so much rather have a “Falstaff” rose or a “Shropshire Lass.” When I was choosing a pale apricot rose to mix in with some lavender and purple salvia I could have gone for “Abraham Darby” or “Evelyn” or “Pat Austin” – but when I spotted the “Ambridge” rose, I knew that I had to have that one for Sigmund. (English readers will recognize “Ambridge” as the village in which “The Archers” – a long-running radio drama that Sigmund is devoted to -- is set.) Although I picked “The Pilgrim” for its delicate yellow blooms and strong climbing prowess, I still delighted in its American overtones. (I hope that it will be a vigorous adventurer, swiftly conquering the ugly garage wall it has been trained against.) “The Generous Gardener,” a pale satin slipper pink, will hopefully bring good luck in the new border. “Celsiana” and “Penelope” will be massed against the side fence. Old English names, like “Glamis Castle” and “Winchester Cathedral,” are mixed in with my herbs. At some point, I just know that I will have to establish my Poet’s Corner for roses: with “Jane Austen,” “William Shakespeare, “The Dark Lady,” “Thomas Hardy,” “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and so many others to choose from.

Gardens really are about putting down roots. Because a garden can take years to properly establish, it is a long-term vision – an investment in the future. In July, we will have lived in this house for two years – nearly a record for our family. Even though we have spent nearly all of that two years renovating our house, I still think that I could happily “up sticks” if the right adventure presented itself. A house is a house. (And besides, I really need a bigger kitchen.) We have lived in lots of houses, but this is our first real garden. I can imagine that with a few more years of putting down roses, I may not ever want to leave.

After two weeks of glorious sunny weather, what I have come to think of as “default English weather” has returned: 50 degrees, damp, gray, soft, misty. I know that my newfound gardening outlook is starting to change me, because my first thought was thank goodness it’s raining, because the garden needs a good soak!