25 JUNE 2009

Happy sunny days. There has been much time spent at the beach, walking the dogs and paddling at low tide, or swimming out to where the sky and sea meet in a merging of limpid blues….

The evenings seem to stretch on for ever, and Mary and I often take a bike ride after supper, dogs running along behind, with our pudding in Mary’s little bike bag, to eat in a grassy sheltered grassy spot alongside the sea.

When the light begins to change, we go home – and often all flop out on our various beds at the same time.

The house is feeling more and more lived in – and I’m winning my battle against clutter, with a lot of under bed storage and some ruthless throwing out.  The atmosphere is mostly peaceful, particularly in the mornings and early evenings, when golden light illuminates all it falls on.

Outside,the raised vegetable beds are continuing to fill out, supplying us with radishes, rocket, spring onions, a few early courgettes and two large home-grown salads every day.

We’ve recently sown dwarf french beans in one corner and they are already up, nudging through the soil and opening in the sun, their heart-shaped leaves unfurling and hanging up as if to dry.  Another corner has a repeat sowing of cut-and-come-again varieties of lettuce – to take over from the wildly successful red and green cut-and-come-again mix I was sent from Crocus.

The rows on the diagonal are not merely anal, I swear – though they DO look pretty, as I think you’d agree…. They are also a good way of ensuring you have plenty of your favourite vegetables and less of things you may not like so much – and extra or spare seedlings can easily be popped in as a short row at either end.  One bed has been given over almost entirely to courgettes, interspersed with several sorts of nasturtiums, and I’ve also sown a row of white cosmos and another of old-fashioned pot-marigolds – partly because I like them, partly to use as cut flowers and partly to encourage more bees into the little kitchen garden.  Next year I very much hope to have a hive or two to produce our own honey….

What we have been producing, along with vats full of elderflower cordial (which I wrote about here), is rose petal syrup from the amazingly full and fragrant flowers of the Rosa rugosa ‘Roseraie de la Hay’ that flanks our front gate.  The other day there were a good dozen flowers on it which were about to blow their blowsy bright pink petals all at once upon the ground.  Remembering a recipe I’d copied down years ago, I pre-empted nature and did a spot of pre-dead heading into a bowl.

I boiled up some sugar syrup using the same volume of water as the rose petals, loosely packed, and half that of caster sugar, with the juice of half a lemon added and, when this was still quite warm, poured it over the rose petals.  They seemed to surrender their colour almost immediately, turning the syrup deep deep pink, and filling the air with their fragrance.

I left it all to steep, covered, in a cool place overnight, and then strained through muslin and poured into little jars to give as presents or pour over vanilla icecream.  It really is like essence of roses – and I’m tempted to try to make rose creams, my mother’s favourite sweet.  The colour and scent of my Rosa rugosa are particularly strong; I have yet to try making rose syrup with any other type of rose, but the flavours and hues would vary considerably.

As for work on the garden, no sooner had I got the front of the house looking pretty than the guys from the Hastings Recyling Wood project arrived to help me construct the low beds I’ve been wanting around the deck and to either side of the front steps.  The idea is to use old sea defence wood the same chunky thickness of the steps to retain the soil – about 2ft in depth – and fill it with a mix of “see-through” diaphanous planting such as wispy grasses, feathery Gaura lindheimeri, Verbena bonariensis, Thalictrum delavayi with its clouds of tiny purple florets, the odd eryngium and echium – things that will enjoy the sun and well-drained (stony) soil we have down here.  This will not only hide the edges of the deck (always ugly, no matter how well constructed) but will also disguise the concrete base on which the railway carriages and new extensions rest.  My vision is for the entire construction to seem to be emerging from a shifting, shimmering fringe of flowers and grasses….

From the deck steps, the bed will wrap around the deck, passing around the apple tree and along to the front door – this stretch seen above will have a further length of wood along the middle, creating a two-tier bed which will become shingle steps just to the left of the water butt.  It will then neatly meet the similar timber we have used for the front steps (the next job is to get the spirit level out and secure the lengths of wood into their final positions) and on the other side of them create new beds hugging the perimeter of the house right round to the verandah.  If this does not make sense, I hope to have pictorial updates before too long.  It’s the perfect time to be planting grasses, gaura and other late-summer plants – and there will be space to tuck in some spring flowering bulbs in autumn. It will be my first bit of “proper” planting here and I have been scribbling lists with great enthusiasm.  I’m not much good at “before” pictures, so will just leave you with this – dead heads on the pinks and all – as I love the colours, and the fact that Mary is showing great horticultural promise and good taste by deciding of her own accord to start a collection of pinks.

For more on the background of our project to turn two old Victorian railway carriages into an eco home, plus photographs, journalism and more of my garden writing and books, please visit my website.