MARCH

March 14th – my birthday. The incredible Sandy Baxter and his team came all the way from Sussex this morning for a meeting at 8am to discuss a project we are hoping to do together and the pumps and Dancing Crown for here. They added a professional aplomb to our fumbling with hydraulics. Water is nothing but trouble -it runs away, gets in where you don’t want it, has a life of its own and will not be tamed easily. Mess with it at your peril. We spent hours looking at ‘curves’ – these are graphs which I think show litres per minute versus head of water or some such. They are very important when it comes to choosing pumps. There is so much to do in the next month, can it be done? We have just managed to finish the moss work for the interior of the Arundel Antler Temple – the kitchen and every inch of the house has been drapped in moss for weeks and with it come pine needles and living things and the smell of wet dogs – http://www.bannermandesign.com for pictures of the finished work. At least everbody seems pleased with the results, thank the lord. One of the night terrors off the list – but there are plenty more to take it’s place. My birthday is always the nadir of the year, things change with the equinox and St Patrick’s day but for now it is bitter and bone dry and the earth is holding back, leaving the hedgerows decked with carrier bags and crisp wrappers and only wisps of hawthorn leaves struggling to spring. But shining out are the Euphorbias in toxic gold. Used to hate them, thought them extra-terrestial and without merit. But somehow we planted some strays here and they love it and grow taller than I in this drained scree of a soil. Now we appreciate their generous early greening and even that feral smell. They are annoying for suddenly plunging into a sulk and dying, especially the most prominent one which I have left because its few plumes are vital. I know we don’t cut them back hard enough and Mary Keen tells me to root out the ones which have a black eye – they are all supposed to be E. characias wulfenii ‘Martinii’ I think and I am not sure that I have the temperament to worry about the black eyed misfits. To work to work, so much to do, we may want it to feel like the Garden of the Finzi Continis but we cannot be swamped with hairy bittercress. At least the Daphne odora will be a positive presence to accompany the weeding, smelling of sherbet lemons. The cousin, Daphne Jacqueline Postil, is close to flowering by the archway. Many kind hands and coronets, a covern a of lady gardeners, are coming next week to make a real difference to the mammoth task of getting the beds ready, but when will the diggers and dumpers be out?…..

Saturday, April 18, 2009