Easter Sunday

What a day to be alive. Early morning was like the dawning of the world. Everything newly fashioned and fashioning it self before one. The lipstick red tulips are knockout with the euphorbia. Julian says my tulip choice could only have been made by girls on acid, but there isn’t much else to amuse out there. The honesty or ‘pope’s change’ as the french neatly call it, seems to be knitting itself into flower as I walk round. Horror of a badger has wormed his way in through barbed wire barricade’s and rootled out the bone meal we foolishly added to the heleniums when we planted the other week. Bonemeal is like truffles to brock and he, for it is a he, tossed the heleniums far an wide in a slurping frenzy. Luckily we found some juicy Moreheim Beauty at wonderful Downside Nurseries only last week – thankfully have had no time to plant so will block the invasion route and just to be safe plant them without bonemeal. And what of the last furious frazzled few days before opening and the opening itself? The labour camp swelled with sisters and cousins and kiwi kind help, and the diet reduced to soggie chips late at night followed by more pva and emulsion. Seem endlessly to shift things from A to B and back to A because you need it, and then it all had to be swept under the greenhouse staging or anywhere out of view on Friday morning. Friday was raining and cold but there were people at the door at 11am sharp. Mary Keen blessedly brought a troupe and a thermos as I had to say that soup was not even off, it was not possible. Shirley Ann brought gooey boxes of cakes and meringues and everybody unpacked the Bridgewater china in a flurry of paper and cardboard which then had to be shoved into a corner. The crown danced – was it on Thursday night for the first time?- but on Friday morning is fell off its perch every time we turned on the hot tap in the kitchen and the lights dimmed, something amiss with the electrics. Later somebody said that their tea was stone cold, but all in all the reception was good – especially to the garden where the Magnolias we waving their flashiest flags and the fritillaries were fritting. Saturday dawned in deep haze, promising pearl of a day, and so this morning. Unreal to have blinding new gravel down and the stumpery planted. Everything a bit raw round the edges but hey.

Magnolia “Elizabeth” in the dell

Wednesday, April 22, 2009