Elspeth Thompson's Weblog

8 NOVEMBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:17:18 +0000

The pumpkins in the last post have been carved into lanterns and lit and are now gently rotting away on the doorstep. We’ve had another beautiful full moon on the beach, and spending a little too long down there beneath its glow may have contributed to the ‘flu that has kept me in bed for much of the week. But it was worth it…..

We have also been to Amsterdam, where we enjoyed a very pleasant few days exploring the canals, looking at paintings, buying bulbs and eating cakes….

The Dutch, like the English are a true nation of gardeners, and I was particularly intrigued by the little strips of garden on and around the houseboats and in front of the tall narrow houses….

… and the way in which they take absolutely every opportunity to green their beautiful city….

One of the best things about the trip is that we stayed with one of ‘our’ puppies. Here is the gorgeous Fritsje, who has landed on her feet and is now living on this beautiful houseboat with her adoring owner.

To see the puppies a year ago, have a look back here – I think she is the small sweet-faced one at the front of the group and shot (not for nothing did Mary name her Little Sweet), but they all looked so similar back then…. How very very differently they have grown up – Tinker here seems to get hairier by the day!

For background on our project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home; more photographs, garden writing, other journalism and information on my past and current books, please visit my website.

28 OCTOBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:56:59 +0000

A very busy week, filled with unexpected sunshine and lovely visitors – and we are off to Amsterdam for a few days now… so I shall just wish you a very happy Hallowe’en and All Souls’ Day….

… with these pictures of pumpkins raised from seed from last year’s crop.

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

16 OCTOBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:57:41 +0000

No more seals since my last post, and though I ventured into the sea at the weekend, I think my swimming days may be over for this year. The dogs and I are enjoying long morning walks in the last-gasp sunshine of this glorious Indian summer.

I’ve loved seeing the leaves begin to turn colour, and have started to collect sloes for gin and rosehips for syrup….

Actually, most of the above came from a massive garden tidy-up I’m engaged in. The hedge along the roadside boundary had become congested, with a lot of dead wood in amongst the roses, hawthorn, guelder rose and hazel I’d planted four or five years ago. Over the years we’d been immersed in planning and building work, the ground at the base of the hedge had become so covered with brambles, nettles and remains of cow parsley that it was difficult to get in there to prune, so a major operation has taken place which means we are temporarily a lot less private, but a lot more tidy. There’s also room for me to plant lots of daffodils along the boundary (I love the white ones like old-fashioned ‘Pheasant’s Eye’ with its small orange corona) and put in a few more bare-rooted native hedging plants to fill up the gaps. And the more tangible fruits of my activity were several kilos of rosehips to crush, boil up with sugar and strain into bottles.

Even after that, there were still plenty left for the birds. The starlings are gathering in long long lines on the telegraph wires, and the air is filled with their chattering. Meanwhile, in the rest of the garden, it’s time to take stock, tidy up and embark on plans for a path between the two long borders beneath the pergola – and the large pond I envisage at the end. It’s an ambitious plan, but I’m looking forward to putting it into action. Here’s the view at present, so you can see there’s a lot to do (in fact, the borders have already been cleared and dug over, but I didn’t have the camera with me…)

I feel a bit embarrassed sharing that messy photograph with you, but it’s important to have the starting point in mind! And here are some lovely ones of the rest of the garden, including our little ornamental veg patch in it’s unruly late-summer splendour.

It’s been a good first year, with huge crops of salad leaves, spring onions, radishes, carrots, spinach, french and runner beans and more courgettes than I knew what do do with – the larder shelves are groaning with courgette, onion and dill pickle (fab recipe in my Weekend Book). The main mistake, apart from not quite getting the successional sowing right, was to put out the purple sprouting broccoli plants without protection. Inspired by a local friend who had some gorgeous plants interspersed among his front garden borders last winter, I popped in a seedling at the centre of each of the raised beds early in the summer. All went well until I noticed the pretty white buttlerflies flitting about the garden. It has been a good summer for butterflies in general, and cabbage whites are no exception. In a week or two the plants were so covered in caterpillars that, despite our best efforts out picking every morning, Mary and I were unable to keep up with their disposal. The result is leaves so riddled with holes they look like green paper doilies. Ugly though they look, I’m reluctant to lose the plants, as I love purple sprouting broccoli so much – it perks me up through those January and February months when there is precious little else to pick. So I’m leaving it in the hope that once the butterflies are gone it will recover. I think there’s just enough leaf left… And next year I shall have to resort to nets.

The other notable harvests have been the pumpkins: three large ones like the above, and one small, which will soon be gracing the front steps of the house, and the grapes…

Not enough for wine-making yet, but next year, when I’ve been able to train them properly over the new pergola – who knows? As we gathered up some fruits of the garden for Mary’s harvest festival at school (note how I am fobbing off courgettes on the needy), I reflected that it has been a good harvest this year – of all sorts of intangible things, too.

Though my mother’s death in the summer is still the source of inestimable sadness, it has been a fruitful year in other ways. The house is in order, the puppies are grown and happy with their new owners, Mary is thriving at school, and we have begun to put down roots – both physical and emotional – in our new surroundings. So my heart is full of gratitude this autumn.

For background on our project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home, more photographs, garden writing, other journalism and information on my past and current books, please visit my website.

4 OCTOBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:01:13 +0000

The camera is working again! But before I get sorted with my own photographs, I have to share with you these few that my father has just sent me. Last week when he came to stay we took the dogs out for a long walk as we often do, and stopped for me to have a swim, as the tide was right and the sea a gorgeous calm and unrippled blue, the like of which I thought I might not see again this year. Swimming in it was utter bliss, with seagulls wheeling in clear sky above and the water just warm enough still to be pleasurable…. And I was not the only creature who thought so…. Look closer towards the top middle of the photograph and you will see….

…. an enormous seal! Thank goodness Dad had his super zoom lens on him – but in truth the seal was not terribly far out, and came nearer than shown in the top picture. As it swam along near the surface you could begin to get an idea of its length – around nine feet or so long, it seemed to me.

At first I was startled and swam back so I could stand and look and really make sure it was a seal. I’m used to seeing those squarish heads, reminiscent of a labrador’s, swimming quite far out, but this one was huge! He (she?) swam nearer and seemed genuinely curious and benign, so after a while I swam out again till we were only about 10 feet away from one another. Eventually the seal dived down beneath the surface and swam off. I later learned that he has been seen in the water quite a bit this summer, hanging around the fishermen’s nets. What an extraordinary thrill on a fine autumn morning.

For background on our project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home, plus more photographs, my garden writing and other journalism and information on my current and past books, please visit my website.

14 SEPTEMBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:28:21 +0000

In the continuing absence of a functioning camera, I’ve had a very pleasant trawl through my library of photographs for pictures of autumns past. This view, from 2005, has changed very little in the intervening years, although the stag’s horn sumac bushes have got a little taller. They are just beginning to turn now, and then there is usually a week or so of glorious fiery colour before the first October gale blows all the leaves away, leaving just the curious red-velvet-covered seed heads that look like glowing torches.

The bushes used to afford a fair amount of privacy, but I’ve allowed them to grow too tall so that the leaves block out the light rather than the sight-lines of passers-by. Time for a bit of judicious pruning once the leaves have blown away. The light can be truly lovely at this time of year, especially in the mornings when it shines straight in these double train doors into our sitting room, back-lighting the leaves. Here’s another view just before the leaves started turning….

…. and another in our bedroom, before it was painted, with the vintage patchwork quilts hung at the windows lighting up like stained glass.

There’s more autumnal magic – look at Mary, aged one and a bit, discovering dahlias in her bright red wellies in the patch where the porch is now….

… and these dew-spangled spiders’ webs – one of the true signs of autumn (along with rosehips, sloes and blackberries all winking from the hedgerows – more on them in my next post).

2007 was the year we grew ten enormous pumpkins and had a great Hallowe’en party here, with each of Mary’s little friends able to carve a pumpkin lantern to take home.

And then came The Build. Compare this shot from 2007…

… with this from last September. You can see the porch just taking shape on the very far right.

I must remember to look at this picture next time I feel impatient about my lack of progress in the garden. We have come quite a way….

There’s still a long way to go until it’s the garden of my dreams, but we are getting there. And the journey has certainly been a lot of fun so far…. I’m really looking forward to the next stage.

I hope to be back with some more recent pictures soon.

For more background and archive photographs of our project to turn a pair of Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home, plus writing on gardening, interiors and green issues, and details of my current and past books, please see my website.

4 SEPTEMBER 2009

elspeth thompson — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:37:29 +0000

Apologies for the blog hiatus over the past few weeks. We have been in school holiday mode doing a lot of this:

….. and then in Devon doing a lot of this:

…. as a consequence of which the garden is rather overgrown and the house very untidy. Added to which, I dropped the camera after taking the above picture, after which none of the subsequent photographs are downloading on to the computer – so even if I wanted to post some pictures of the overgrown garden and untidy house – I can’t! So there’s only one thing to do… which is start restoring some sort of order to the place…. Not a task I particularly relish, but it has to be done. I am rewarding myself an interim swim in a couple of hours’ time. Normal Blog service will be resumed as soon as possible.

The only other thing to report is that Tinker had her first birthday yesterday. How amazing to think that just a year ago all those six puppies were the size of small guinea pigs. What an awful lot has happened in the course of this year…

For more background on and photographs of our project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco-house, plus more writing on gardening, interiors and green issues, plus information on my past and current books, please visit my website.

11 AUGUST 2009

elspeth thompson — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:59:40 +0000

Sorry if this sounds smug, but in between the bouts of rain, we seem to have had a fair amount of sunshine around here. There have been beautiful afternoons on the beach like this…. swimming most days in sea like this….

Sometimes bringing a picnic to eat as the sun is going down….

… and most memorably, going down to the beach for a moonlit walk on the night of the last full moon….

What rain we have had has often, rather blissfully, happened at night – the way it almost always would in an ideal world. It has made watering the garden much less of a chore than usual – and given rise to luxuriant growth in my little kitchen garden. Hard to believe that this did not even exist just five months ago.

Now I can hardly keep up with the salad leaves, spinach and courgettes – in fact, I’m compiling a collection of recipes of what to do with a glut of the latter. I will share the best of these as soon as I can, and would love to learn any favourites of your own. (I do a mean courgette and dill pickle, a very simple yet delicious courgette and garlic pasta sauce, and have just discovered, in Sophie Dahl’s rather engaging new cook book, a very successful courgette and watercress soup, which is a good way of using up the big ones that get away.) Meanwhile, rain on the windows has also created some rather pleasing tableaux around the house, such as this the other day. So I’m really not complaining. I hope you are having a good summer, too.

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

30 JULY 2009

elspeth thompson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:44:19 +0000

I’m actually away from home at the moment, so it’s probably not the best moment to file an update on the garden, after all. Plus I think I used up the best photos on the previous post. So in the meantime, I thought I would point you in the direction of a few other nice gardening blogs, interspersed with just a few more photos. By the time I get back, I hope that the new beds will have filled out and established a bit more.

There are an awful lot of gardening blogs about, and I must confess I do not have a lot of time to visit many regularly, but some I enjoy catching up on include The Garden Monkey (sadly seldom blogging these days, but worth checking up on for the odd blast of wicked brilliance, and if you have not visited before, trawling back through old posts until your sides hurt from too much laughing); Fennel and Fern (very stylish, with beautiful, inspiring photography); The Edible Gardener (funny and informative, by my Sunday Telegraph colleague Alex Mitchell); The Guardian newspaper’s gardening blog (always something interesting, and I love Howard Sooley’s updates on the Observer’s organic allotment); Silver Trees Daze (Nigel Colborn’s sometimes ascerbic but always entertaining and knowledgeable take on the world of horticulture); Victoria’s Backyard (musings from a ’subtropical suburban oasis in Wandsworth, south London’; Veg plotting (by a keen gardener based in Chippenham); Emma Cooper’s blog which includes offers and regular podcasts as well as witty writing; and the many blogs of the Independent’s excellent gardening writer, Emma Townshend. Though more of a crafts than a gardening blog, I always enjoy what Jane Brocket has to say about her garden – she certainly knows a good tulip when she sees one, and I love her colourful close-up photography of the flowers she grows.

Relatively new on the scene are In the Greenhouse with Lila das Gupta (a fellow allotment fan, whose appearances were one of the highlights of the BBC’s coverage of The Chelsea Flower Show this year) and The Enduring Gardener (entertaining insights and tips from my friend and neighbour Stephanie Donaldson, garden editor of Country Living).

Finally, the garden blogging crown, or should that be daisy chain, has to go to James Alexander-Sinclair’s blog from his garden, Blackpitts, in Northamptonshire. Blessed not only with heaps of horticultural experience but a quicksilver mind and a talent for a terrific turn of phrase, ‘James the Hat’ as he is known to many was the well-deserved winner of the first ever blogging award from the Garden Writers Guild last year. He also takes a mean photograph and updates the site regularly with pictures of his own garden. Though the blog occasionally gets bogged down in in-jokes and even the odd feud with fellow bloggers, he is definitely worth reading – and check out his excellent book, 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers: Ideas for Year-Round Colour (BBC Books, £4.99). How can you not admire a writer who likens Dicentra spectabilis (bleeding heart) to “a pantomime dame’s washing line of freshly-laundered, luminous pink bloomers, blowing in the wind,” or a parrot tulip to “Dame Barbara Cartland emerging from a spin drier”. Oh, and it’s his birthday today, too, I’m told… So Happy Birthday James! Pull up a deck chair and take it easy for the day….

For background information on my project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco home, more photographs, garden journalism and other writing, including my past and current books, please visit my website.

24 JULY 2009

elspeth thompson — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:35:52 +0000

This will be a short post, as life has been very busy recently, but I wanted to give a quick update on developments in the garden. Look out for a longer post later next week. I spent much of last weekend filling the new raised beds around the deck with plants – or rather, filling them with soil first, which took more time and effort than I had thought! Laying large lengths of salvaged sea defence timber a couple of feet out from the deck has proved a simple and relatively cheap way of creating a large planting area that wraps right around the two sides of the house. Filled with wispy grasses and diaphanous flowering plants it will, I hope, create a shifting, shimmering living screen through which the house and deck will emerge in summer. Here’s another view from the front steps.

And there’s another to the right of the front door. The different aspects of the sections of the bed, together with varying soil and drainage conditions, mean that distinct planting areas have been created: small shady ‘woodland’ beneath apple and silver birch trees just visible above. I’ve enjoyed finding places for what initially seemed like a huge collection of plants: things I have been growing from seed, or growing on as seedlings for a few years, recent purchases from Hampton Court Flower Show and favourite nurseries, kind gifts from Ray Brown at Plant World in Devon and a few last-minute purchases to fill the gaps – of which, I am pleased to say, there are still quite a few – a good excuse for some garden-y gadabouts this summer. More detail on all of this next week.

And here’s the latest shot of the kitchen garden – already out of date as things move so fast (on the path you can see some of the grasses in pots that were waiting to be planted out). When you compare this with how it looked just a couple of months ago the progress nature makes is astounding. Though my decision to plant on the diagonal was, I confess, mostly done on aesthetic grounds, it has proved extremely practical, too, with rows of various lengths depending on our liking for the crop and/or seedlings/seed available. In the top right hand bed a long line of perpetual spinach running across the centre of the bed is now providing welcome shade for emerging salad leaf selections bought from the wonderful Rebekah’s Veg stand at Hampton Court.

And look how Mary’s little garden is faring. I do love Californian poppies and am hoping they will self-seed themselves around the garden liberally. This is a particularly nice selection with rosy pink and dark ruby red flowers in amongst the radiant orange. She has taken to choosing and sowing seeds in little pots herself now and has sweet williams for next year on the go, along with two tiny lemon tree seedlings.

After all that planting, I was exhausted, and had to have a bath and join Wilma on the sofa for the evening. (Well, actually, this is morning light here, but you get the picture…).

For further information on our project to turn two Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home, plus more writing on gardens, interiors and greener living, and information on my past and current books, please visit my website.

8 JULY 2009

elspeth thompson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:10:30 +0000

There was a thunderstorm last night, with torrential rain. The dogs, who hate thunder, hot-footed it into our bedroom at the first rumble, and were allowed on to the bed. Mary followed shortly afterwards and everyone went back to sleep apart from me. But I didn’t mind at all; in fact it felt good to be tucked up in the warm and dry, listening to their breathing and the rain drumming on the roof. Time was, before the building work, when I’d have to be creeping round the house on leak patrol, putting pans and buckets in strategic places. I lay here and thought of one of my favourite poems, WHO LOVES THE RAIN, introduced to me by Susan on her lovely High Desert Home blog.

WHO LOVES THE RAIN
By Frances Shaw
“Who loves the rain
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
Him will I follow through the storm;
And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes.”

I particularly loved this rainfall because we had been needing it for so long, and when it was time to get up, I wandered outside to find the garden lush and green and quenched.

There is something magical about gardens wet with rain. There’s that astonishing Van Morrison song In the Garden, where he remembers…

“When I saw you standin’
Standin’ in the garden
In the garden

Wet with rain

You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow
And we watched the petals fall down to the ground
And as I sat beside you I felt the
Great sadness that day

In the garden”.

And then there is the lovely Morning has Broken, whether crooned by Cat Stevens or sung by a church choir:

“Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day”.

Life goes on…. and thank goodness for that.

At Hampton Court Flower Show on Monday I saw another kind of rainy garden: an award-winning display garden called The Rain Chain, designed by Wendy Allen, which featured rainwater harvesting from a green roof via a gutter and “rain chain” leading into a sculptural metal water butt and overflowing into a sunken “rain garden” where excess water can soak away naturally.

This is an idea I’ve been interested in ever since reading Nigel Dunnett and Andy Clayden’s brillant Rain Gardens book a few years ago (published by Timber Press). The intention is to harvest and store water during times of heavy rain for use during drought, while also helping to prevent flash-flooding. All surfaces are permeable, and plants are chosen for their ability to tolerate short periods of both waterlogging and drought. I particularly like the rain chain itself – rather than channel the rainwater down an ugly plastic pipe unseen, it is sent dancing down a metal chain – and the splashy sound effects only add to the enjoyment.

I like the look of this, with its rusty metal water butt and grassy plantings. I recently saw another example, at a garden in Kent I was writing about, with the chic-est tidiest shed imaginable – see the chain flowing from the custom-made galvanized metal gutters into an old florist’s bucket (strictly speaking there should then be an overflow into something else – a “storm garden” planter or a ditch (some resemble a dry river bed in dry periods) leading to a pond or sump, or if necessary straight into the main drain).

I’m told there is also one at the Bernard Leach Pottery Studios in Cornwall. Originating in Japan and popularised in recent years in rain-ridden Oregon in the United States, I have a strong feeling that rain chains will become much more popular in years to come.

After all, it is possible to love the rain even more if one knows it is being collected up for use in drier times ahead.

Enjoy the rain everyone, should you be lucky enough to have some. And love your homes….

For background information about our project to turn a pair of derelict Victorian railway carriages into an eco-home, plus more garden writing, other journalism and information on my past, current and forthcoming books, please visit my website.