bought too many bulbs this year

I bought too many bulbs this year. This isn't all of them, but I got one of those cut-price fun boxes available from major suppliers that contains everything they have in bulbs overstock as well as some carefully selected bulbs of stunning beauty from my local weekday florist plus whatever was on sale in Wilko. And then when I'd done all those things, Instagram lobbed about twenty-five adverts in my direction for Farmer Gracy, purveyors of bulbs fresh from the Amsterdam hybridising glasshouses.




So I've done a lot of weird things with the bulbs - underplanting shrubs, bulb lasagnas, taking them up to the allotment, planting them in unsuitable spaces "to see how it works out". And I did make a very small Farmer Gracy order, just for a few interesting items I'd not tried before.

The Farmer Gracy order turned up in etsy-adorable little paper bags tucked into a custom cardboard container of surpassing specialness. It was very much like getting an early Christmas present. But it is possible that didn't help with having too many bulbs.

happy christmas

From the Buddleia growing on the upper storeys of the gas towers...



From the Old Man's Beard that smothers the tress with soft seed fluff...



From the birch trees that spring like ghosts wherever there is fenced in space...

Happy Christmas from all the self-seeded, ungardened, abandoned and left-alone plants.

The glittering weeds.

son et lumière on a semi-domestic scale

Oxford's Light Night often features quite small installations alongside the vast and astonishing things (yards full of church bells or melting icebergs, giant flaming moons and suns dripping onto the crowds, immense parades of lit-up willow Tardises and Morris Minors). So you can find things you might imagine bringing home with you, albeit on a smaller and simpler scale.



This overhead swirl of moving, twinkling LEDs and carefully cut and curled plastic, for example. The people are playing with a sensor that activates small speakers housed in waterproof cases hanging from the same frame that supports the plastic scribble in mid-air.



Maintenance and repair (and it was a proper soggy Oxford night, so there was some of that as speakers creaked and complained in the wet air) was carried out using a domestic step ladder (visible centre in the left hand picture above) and the structure was light, flexible, robust and made of readily available materials.

I could see something similar snaking through a mature tree in a back garden, or sitting on the ridge of a greenhouse roof. It wouldn't last forever, but then again, what does?

evergreening the edible garden

I was talking to a friend about their garden, which contains only edibles (by plan - all plants must earn their keep). In winter, the edible garden doesn't have a lot on, of course, unless it's a high activity garden (some of my allotment neighbours have leeks and sprouts and other overwinterers, but they need dedication). But there are evergreen edibles which don't need fuss and planning.

This is an expanded version of my very helpful and I am sure welcome (ho ho) suggestions on evergreening up the edible garden, that I provided to my friend. They do sound, as I said, a bit like Fourth Form at Hogwarts.

Myrtus Tarentina - a lovely dwarf myrtle. Myrtle is used like bay - flavouring for meats and roasts, scent for fires, discard before eating. There are variegated varieties if you want a little brightness, but the leaves are already lovely.  The berries can be used like juniper, though mine hasn't flowered yet. It is glossy and attractive, subtly scented and has a very pretty growth habit.

Laurus Nobilis - aka the Bay Tree - grows very enthusiastically in the ground, tolerates even quite small pots, and scents all manner of roasts and stews. Bay is the smell of victory and unprickly Christmas decorations. Mine has little white flowers and black berries, despite being crammed into a pot that's far too small for it.

Pinus Pinaea - Umbrella or Stone Pine  Buy a really small one and keep it that way by abusing it. Fresh green growth may be harvested and placed in a dehumidifier and then ground to create a green, strongly pine-scented powder that is high in vitamin C. You might get pine nuts, too, but that may take a while. You can also make Pine Needle tea, and as this article points out, any pine will do, which is just as well, as the one I've linked to is the classic pine nut pine which is not well suited to the UK climate.

Salvia Jamensis - Hot Lips Sage. Green foliage stays on all winter, and even the bright red/pink flowers cling on for a really long season. It's a little madly fragranced for most tastes, but I love it in a cocktail. You could use it in baking or making shrubs I think. Maybe even pickles.

Satureja Montana - Winter Savory - keeps its green all year round, though grows less vigorously in winter. It's my go-to herb to use in any savoury dish. Low growing, likes a bit of rough soil. Better at lasting through winter in edible state than the more standard thymes and sages, though those area great too.

There are doubtless more, but five is enough to start on.

the eyes in the hedge

On the urban stretch of the tow path I walk by households that front onto the tow-path. I also walk past full benches, wandering drunks, and the occasional encampment or bouquet taped to a post. It's a sign of the times, simultaneously cruel and compassionate.

This sparse thorn hedge grows over a front where a jutting full-length window provides a corner of shelter. Someone took this as a bed for a while, destroying the old hedge, etc. After a while the situation was resolved, but it's still visible as a flattened space, and still somehow encampment identified.

Firethorn, nature's barbed wire, has been planted across the front. The river view is now glimpsed through a leafy barrier that gets heavier every year. But though the space behind the hedge is narrow, it still has the look of a place a person could sleep.

Until today, when these broken sunnies were jammed thoughtlessly into one of the supporting posts. Suddenly blank mirrored eyes stare back at me as I glance as the soft trap of a space beneath the hedge and unconsciously I straighten, avert my gaze and move along.

sinister surveillance garden

One of the joys of Pokémon Go is that sometimes it tells you, quite firmly, that there is a through route, a shortcut, a cut-through of which you were previously completely unaware. These little discursions sometimes are of the short cut long delay type, but it's usually because you find a thing. For example:



This garden has a definite aesthetic, that of the schoolyard dare. Dare you to go over the gate, dare you to touch the tank, dare you to go into the shed. The message daubed on water tank 1 is a little hard to read, let me help you with that:



The smashed television really adds a nice Max Headroomish touch. But why do they need so many water tanks? What is that abbreviated glimpse of machinery poking out at the back? What is in those sinister sheds? Do the bins have a purpose? Is it dark?



The whole thing looks laughably, almost tauntingly easy to break into. It's literally on the school route, too, I was walking among gaggles of children creched with the late shift parents, their sidelong glances through the gate suggesting that there is local mythology about this place. Ghosts, serial killers, adults in rubber masks waiting to be found out by feisty teens. Old Roberts, it was you all along!



I was very impressed by how the owners had managed to capture this perfect modern horror look for their garden. You can't see the hatch leading down into the terrifying basement space this place strongly implies must be here, but then you wouldn't be able to: it would be heavily disguised.

I didn't dare trespass, and not just because there were lots of people around. Can you imagine this place after dark? Brrrr.

glorious didcot allotments

There's a set of allotments in Didcot I often go by on the way to some work thing or other. I'd turned up a half hour early to a training morning as a result of some careless diary work. Just the right amount of time to take a really good look.




Lush growth for deep November. There was a microclimatish feel to the space; a warmth rolling up from the railway, the arehouses, the old powerplant. It's an old walled garden with no security; just a space you can walk through. I walked through. Signs about thefts from sheds, good sources of horse manure. I love a good allotment noticeboard.




Wildish borders are in vogue in allotments at the moment (mine literally has 3 metres of brambles) and you can see some wild fierceness peeking out through the portico blocks in the curtain wall. Look at those sweet baby stepovers! I'd like some of them. The fox might have the fruit though. Fruit trees were a local controversy, though; posters explained firmly that large trees caused soil dryness issues for neighbouring plots.

 


There were a lot of big, tasty-looking winter veg about the place, apples falling from trees. It was edenish, in the way of some old allotment sets that have been working for generations, getting richer and sweeter and more productive. Below; grass paths between plots, an interesting alpine strawberry tangle, and various vegetable netting solutions.




Oh, and you might have spotted this in a few of the previous photos, presumably a shed:

By the time I got to photographing it, my real camera had run flat. so used my phone. 

gardening stretch goals : scaffolding waterfall

Most back garden waterfalls hide their artificialiaty in a plethora of faux-rock rill bits. This suggests another approach:



This is from the recent Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Tate Modern, which also contained other suggestions; soft reindeer moss walls, water misters in shafts of sunlight to make rainbows in dark back gardens, geodesic domes, again, and transparent, water-covered barriers simulating rain.





Water wastage is much discussed. But if the water in question is rendering an area green and fertile, then it becomes a patch of green in the desert, in the tiny canyons of our back gardens.

the gloom of dark november

In the gloom of dark November, the wind steps up and slaps the leaves from the trees. A first hard round of frost whips around the geraniums and begonias left carelessly outside, rupturing cell walls, scattering flowers. The plants withdraw water and drop down their leaves like the ears of a panicked cat. Petals brown in sudden shock on the deciduous lingerers (Forsythia, Roses) and the year-round chancers (Abutilon, Marigold). The winter jasmine opens its starry eyes in earnest; the pansies raise their bright ceramic faces to the sky. To be a flower in November takes a certain vigour, a grit, a minimalist fierceness.

And then you come across a winter cherry, already in opulent bloom; a garden so full of blowsy Michaelmas daisies that they're been tied up with string so the bikes can squeeze past; an unexpected mass of marigold, fuchsia, roses, nodding unconcernedly from a sheltered spot.

And it's not just the garden flowers. Down on the tow path, every day, I'm walking past a White Campion in bright, defiant bloom. Up on the allotment, my winter crops are sprouting, despite being planted weeks behind schedule.

The twigs are already showing red, as if spring is stretching back across winter to take autumn's hand, gently, inevitably, terrifyingly.

dreaming of spring in the dark season

I just cracked and bought all of the bulbs. It's impossible at this time of year, not to head into fever dreams of next spring's flowers, and opening boxes of promises of flowers, all crushed into the shape of bulbs, corms and tubers, but some days that isn't enough the lift the darkness of November evenings.

Enter the games of looking at catwalk shows full of flowers. This is Rodarte, 2018. Some sweet shots from backstage, and the full show.

This is Christian Dior Couture, 2003

Click through to view the whole gallery is highly recommended, as it is full of dramatic, ecstatic detail shots. And this:

Funeral flowers cascade over the brides in the Comme des garcons wedding collection from 2005, in gothly black white and incongruous rainbows:

The tinsel is a particularly fine touch; in one look not shown here, it forms a kinds of nest with giant pearlescent "eggs" nestling in the model's hair; alas, the high res photographs seem to be unreachable.

The Maison Margiela creepily faceless 2013 Fall Artisanal, with its blocked patterns and colours is bedecked with artificial flowers; some almost seem to crawl across the models' faces.

But my biggest, sunniest smile is reserved for Moschino's split personality spring-summer 2018 RTW punk-femme/flower fairy show, bonus points for hilarious items like dresses pretending to be made of petals, pretending to be a discarded bouquet and more.

 

But they all pale compared to Erykah Badu on the saffron carpet at Black Girls Rock this summer, with many more bold and brilliant looks through the link,

Not terribly practical for everyday wear, but maybe I could sew some artificial flowers to a bobble hat...

november's dak botanicals

Ivy on my street corner (early morning) chrysanthemums in a garden (early evening). The dark days are upon us.