Some work

First bit of proper work in the garden for a long time. Cleared and mowed two areas of lawn; aired and put away the patio umbrella; got some leaves out of the pond and to my great pleasure saw a live and well looking frog/toad. Noticed that the sprouts are coming on nicely, which is gratifying.

The garden is in much better shape than this time last year. There are no bald or dead bits of lawn and the borders are in better shape too. I rather wish I'd got my bulbs in before the leaves fell, but never mind.

Saw a couple of tiny, very early flowers on the winter jasmine. Our main holly tree also has more berries on it than I've ever seen.

Yesterday I put some bulbs in little pots to grow on indoors. One will go on the landing, the other in the conservatory. It may be too warm in the house but I'm hopeful. We don't keep it tropical! They each have 1 tulip in the bottom (purisima) and some dwarf irises just above. Last year I had a gorgeous scented hyacinth called Woodstock but I can only find it growing rather than as a bulb and I'm too mean to buy it that way. Edit: ooh I see Avon Bulbs have them. Mmmm...

First attempt at making wine

Late on Friday afternoon I decided to pick our grapes. It was forecast to rain the next day and I didn't want to pick them wet. I'd left them as long as I could because I'd read that getting them to be sweet enough is meant to be very difficult.

Picking them wasn't the easiest job in the world; next year I'll have to get either the vine or the rose to go somewhere else!

The following day I settled down to prepare them. I had to get the grapes off the stems, and separate out any that were mouldy, as well as any other foreign bodies that had come along for the ride. It took ages, and in one afternoon I touched more snails and spiders than I ever have before...

Then I mashed them in batches with a potato masher, then put the whole lot into our apple press. The juice was a gorgeous colour, and quite soon the press was too.

My husband suggested we sterilise the juice with a Camden tablet and use artificial yeast, but I wanted to leave the juice natural. The risk is that it might well go peculiar if things weren't clean enough, but if it works I think the result will taste more interesting. So we compromised by adding extra artificial yeast as well, but not sterilising.

We put the pulp in too, in a bag made of muslin. This is what it looked like at the end of yesterday:



And this is what it looks like now:



So something's working!

Spotted today at home

Some more pretties

For some reason the rock garden feels like the heart of Wisley to me. I read recently that it was first made in 1912:



Part of the new glasshouse: (I won't show you any of my pictures from inside it, they weren't much good, but I loved it so much we went back there together 3 days later and my husband's pictures are much better so I'll ask him if I can show you one or two of them.)



I hadn't seen this Chinese pavilion before for some reason:



I loved these pots of grass but couldn't see their name anywhere - does anyone recognise them? I bet you will, please tell me what they are!



(Incidentally my favourite plant on our 2nd visit was gaura Whirling Butterflies.)

Finally, I don't normally like cannas but I think they look great here:

Spotted at Wisley

This was my favourite dahlia at Wisley, and this is where I saw it (worth clicking on to enlarge:



The trial fields. I'm sorry that my hand shook as I took the picture of the other side:



I don't normally like these but I think they look amazing en masse:

Wisley

Today I went to Wisley. I had such a good day... It was a bit of a bonus really. My husband is currently working near there and for practical reasons I needed to drop him off by car today, so the opportunity just arose.

I got there early so I had a little drive through the narrow lanes around there. I went over a couple of very picturesque canal bridges, round many windy corners, saw a ruined church... it was all very lovely, reminded me a bit of Constable's pictures. I hadn't realised from the main road route that there was as much countryside just there.

I will show you some of my pictures. I got terribly excited and just snapped away at whatever caught my eye, so they're not great and they don't include many of the major features, just the things I liked most on this visit. I've decided to do it over a few days because there are rather a lot.

First off: from the car park (as you can tell) this is the back of The Laboratory: I think the slightly ricketty-looking greenhouse at first floor level caught my eye, considering how many sophisticated and extensive greenhouses there are further into the garden... [Edit - actually I don't think it's ricketty, but it still looks amusingly out of place amongst the mock tudor chimneys]



Then I paid my entrance fee (£8:50, the best value attraction I've been to for as long as I can remember). My first sight was then these glorious agapanthuses:



In the last year or so I have been strongly attracted to very simply plantings like this.

Every time I go to Wisley I follow much the same route. It's a bit of a ritual to me. I look at nearly everything, even though I know certain things will be more in season than others. I find that as well as seasonality, my taste and interest will have shifted a bit too.

So the next thing I see after this is the huge double borders. This was the first visit in which I managed to see any appeal in them. Previously they have been either in early growth, or even if full-grown, have seemed just a great lumpy mess to me. To me, the secret is to look along them, even squinting slightly. I find they appeal at the level of a picture, mainly through colours. So if you walk right up to them and peer at them, it's just like dots on a screen.

This was my favourite plant in them, clematis kaiu:



And these were my favourite parts of the borders:



(I'm afraid I have shrunk them so you can't see much detail - you will do as you're told, reader!)



Tomorrow, the trial fields and other adventures.

and another one -

Mowed and cleared the bits of lawn today. Picked up quite a few apples; I'm putting them straight on the compost at the moment because when I get to them they're usually pretty manky. I did find one ripe on one of the trees though - the tree that is always our earliest, and ate it. It's a red letter day each year when the first apple is ready.

This was the second mowing of the lawns in this week, and the second of the far end in a month. There was far less grass to come off, and I will lower the blades a bit next time. Surprisingly, the grass is looking very good - to me, perhaps it helps to have "realistic" standards!

I've got the chance now also to assess some of the growing season. The star flowers have been sweet peas and snapdragons. The morning glories have been excellent - indoors, oddly enough; not much good outdoors. The little lantana I bought was a great move, along with the foliage plant - forget which but nothing unusual. As Bob said somewhere, it's been rather wet for petunias. The echiums have done well though. The veg hasn't been terribly good but then neither has the vegetable gardener! The pond is running beautifully, water clear as a bell, and to my eyes the garden is looking good. As I say though, it pays to squint a bit...