Christmas with the family was great and we are taking a breather from festive food before the New Year celebrations begin. Over the last few days Doc and I have craved simple meals like beans and toast with a poached egg on top (thank you girls!) and pumpkin soup from the freezer. Mind you, we could not resist a couple of pieces of Christmas cake and chocolate covered Brazil nuts!
We received two lovely gifts earlier in December, having been surprised by not one, but two amaryllis bulbs – a red one and a pink one. I am not generally a fan of houseplants because I struggle to give them the right conditions. I also get bored with them too because many of them stay the same, year after year and attract dust. Recently, our collection has consisted of:
A succession of orchids, the remains of which are in the spare bedroom in the hope that they will leap out of dormancy any minute now.....
A large palm-type triffid, donated by Number One Daughter when her flat could not accommodate it any longer.)
A coral pink Christmas cacti, that reminds me of my mum because she loved them so much. They are weird plants in that the little flower buds form at the tips of the fleshy leaves. She had one once which grew so big we could not sit at the dining table to eat!
A prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura erythroneura). This plant is amusing in that close to the evening, the leaves start slowly folding as if they are praying. Ah!
A Peace Lily (not a lily at all but a Spathiphyllum) which I rescued from an odds and ends shelf at the local DIY store.
A Poinsettia - well you gotta have one of these at Christmas because it is traditional and christmassy. However, we don't go in for trendy pink ones at Springfield, it just has to be gaudy red. My Australian pen-friend tells me that they are the floral emblem for Queensland which is nice. Anyway, they can be a bit temperamental so my advice is to buy them from a good nursery rather than a supermarket. In recent years, I have managed to keep them going for weeks and weeks. I am lucky this year because my friend J gave me one as a present. I must try to ensure it is here to show when she to visits us again in January. But there there was a double leaf drop yesterday.....!
My next trick is to achieve a second flowering from these exotic blooms. If my orchids are anything to go by, I have the feeling that this may not be as easy second time round. Watch this space!
Every year I deliver the last batch of local Christmas Cards in an evening, on foot. There is something magical about putting on my boots, scarf and bobble hat and wandering through the quiet village streets alone, with all the lights sparkling. I call it my Christmas night walk and it helps get me into the Christmassy mood. It is always such a frenetic build up to the Big Event but now that most of the preparations are finished now I can sigh with a deep sense of relief (I got there!) and start to enjoy the festive period.
I love the Christmas lights and decorations and people take such trouble over their creations nowadays. (I admit to coveting some of them which is not seasonally generous but at least I am honest!) Usually I am taking a quick glance at the lights as I drive past in the car but tonight I had the time to stroll, close up, and it was amazing to see all the detail.
There is a lot of what I call traditional lighting where jewel coloured bulbs are strung in rows on spruce trees, positioned by the front door. White lights that twinkle or blink intermittently are popular too and I saw some that are what I can only describe as ‘running’ lights, where one pulse of light appears to travel round and round until it reaches the top of the tree. It is great fun.
I saw endless variations on the Christmas wreath, read signs asking Santa to call and that the chimney is This Way. There are Santa gnomes and an elf sitting on a rock by a gate. And of course there are snowmen (not real ones yet!) with knitted scarves and cuddly polar bears that nod and wave a paw.
My favourite decoration is the tall branch of silver birch with branches sprayed white and silver. It is strewn with the tiniest of fairy lights which shimmer in a sequence of waves, first white, then red and finally blue. It is very contemporary but seems to capture that magical feeling of Christmas, in a simple and stunning way.
I enjoyed my walk and posted my good wishes to our friends and neighbours. I wish everyone a happy Christmas and healthy and happy 2012. I don’t know about you but what I need now is a nice glass of mulled wine and a mince pie.
And next year, I will be a little more daring with Springfield's Christmas decorations!
The origin of the evergreen wreath dates back to pre-Christian times when Germanic peoples gathered evergreens in the cold darkness of mid-winter, arranged them in a circle to symbolise the cyclical nature of seasons and as a sign that spring was coming and there would be new light. Later, Christians adopted the wreath and it became a symbol of Christ’s everlasting light. Traditionally the Christmas wreath had 4 candles in the circle and a fifth in the centre. The first candle was lit at the beginning of advent and then the remaining candles were lit, one a week, until December 25th.
Nowadays, it is usual to see Christmas wreaths hung on front doors and our house is no exception. It is a welcoming sight for visitors (especially the Postman!) and since we generally use our back door more than the front door, it encourages us to change our habits for a while and enjoy the greenery every day.
Usually, I spend a happy Saturday afternoon in December collecting a mass of greenery from the garden, including holly and ivy. After 3 hours of faffing and positioning and re-positioning of the berries, bows and cinnamon sticks, I hang it on the hook with pride and satisfaction that I made it myself. Then I usually go and find the sticking plasters because holly does not respect fingers.
This year, Number One Daughter, who is a florist, has made our wreath this year. She lives a long way away but the timing of her last visit was just right so she brought us one of her specials. It took her half an hour or so to make it, but she is a professional after all. I love her traditional design. I don’t go in for wreaths made of sprouts or tinsel!
You need vision to be a gardener because developing your dream space takes time – unless you have a large budget that facilitates ordering a garden in a van. You have to be able to visualise what the little shrublet in the pot at the garden centre, will look like as a fully grown specimen in ten years time and ensure it is in harmony with its surroundings. Sometimes my visionary skills are tested and this Sorbus Sargentiana is a case in point.
For a long time we have planned to re-plant the bed at the front of our property and add colour which we can enjoy from the house. 2011 saw the start of this process.
There is an established, if a little tired, laburnum tree so we decided on a palette of the hot, jewelled colours. We also have a small fir tree in the bed which would look lovely strung with fairy lights – if we ever get round to it! Anyway, we overhauled the bed and planted some perennials and spring flowering bulbs. Until they grow, there are a lot of gaps and too much brown earth for anyone’s liking.
Planting a tree was definitely part of the vision. After consulting books, the internet and other gardeners, we decided on a Sorbus Sargentiana - because a Rowan can deliver high impact in a medium sized space.
The Sargent is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree growing to 6–16 m tall, with an attractive rounded crown. There are stout shoots of large, sticky red buds in winter, white flowers with yellow stamens in early summer, followed by red berries which are a joy for the birds. The long, green leaves turn a fiery orange and red in the autumn so this is a fantastic tree for interest all year round. Needless to say, lots of other gardeners think the same and sourcing one was quite a challenge.
A supplier put our name on the waiting list for the next shipment of bare rooted stock. A pot-grown tree can be planted any time of year but bare rooted trees are planted from late autumn when they are relatively dormant and there is still enough warmth in the soil to become established before the really harsh weather sets in. So a week or so ago on a very wet day, our bare rooted tree arrived in a cardboard box. Or should I say, our stout ‘stick’ arrived in a cardboard box.
Bare rooted trees are field-grown, dug up for re-planting and have their roots trimmed. They need to be planted immediately, before their roots dry out so Doc set to work the next day and we now have a stick in the ground rather than a stick in a box. Bare rooted trees need less attention ie watering, than their pot-grown cousins so basically all we do now is wait for the vision to be realised ...and wait...because Sorbus Sargentiana is a slow growing tree.
A neighbour has told us that a friend of theirs planted the very same tree and it sat in the soil for two years without so much as trying to grow even an inch, let alone reaching anywhere near its potential. They dug it up and put it on the bonfire which was such a waste and all because they lost patience.
We do wonder if we have enough life left to see our Sargent reach perfection but that is what having a vision is all about, isn’t it? It is not about now, it is about an indefinite point in the future. It is an act of faith. Still, it would be nice to have something nice to look at when we are drinking our coffee. I wonder if we should drape a few fairy lights around it for Christmas?
Note to self: when buying a tree as a gift, choose a pot-grown specimen because the chances are it will be older and look like a tree, with arching branches and leaves....
During the last few days we have had the first flurreys of icing sugar snow and heard the snap, crackle and pop of hailstones bouncing off the roof light in the kitchen. Those warmer than usual autumn days have long gone and it is time to upgrade to heavy duty boots and thicker jumpers.
There is plenty to do outside but it is a tough gardener who ventures outside to tend the plot. I do have a pair of thermal gardening gloves but at the back of my mind there is the idea that walking on wet ground will compact the soil structure and store up trouble for next year. Well, that’s my excuse anyway. I am very happy to put my ‘I’d rather be in the garden’ mug in the back of the cupboard, until it feels a degree or two warmer.
So, gardening at Springfield is currently a series of quick dashes up and down the garden path. Of course, the chickens need constant care and today they were sheltering underneath their new rain cover, looking a little pensive. I bought the cover from
www.omlet.co.uk and the great thing about it is that it is made from clear, heavy duty plastic so the hens can see out and I can see inside the run more easily. We are now waiting to see how much weather the winter will throw at it.
I still have some salads in the raised beds. The radicchio leaves are soggy on the outise but the hearts are still going strong and bring a sharply flavoured, ruby-red crispness to a salad. The spiky mizuna and glossy spinach are hanging on in there too. In the greenhouse, there are trays of cut and come again salad greens and I have some little Winter Gems bobbing along nicely.
Now that the plot has been well frosted, Doc digs some parsnips every week. After a blast of cold air, the starches turn to sugar and the parsnips caramelise in the oven and taste so much sweeter. If we don’t need to use the parsnips immediately, Doc leaves the soil on them because they store better this way and as I write there are a couple waiting expectantly in the utility room.
The leeks are another joy of winter and Doc regularly digs up half a dozen or so. He cleans them all, pops them in a poly bag in the fridge and then we cook with them through the following week. They are just as versatile as onions but offer a softer, oniony flavour. One of our favourite dishes is leeks sautéed with bacon and covered with a thick, cheese sauce and topped with crispy breadcrumbs.....
Fortunately we managed to arrange one of the bigger autumn tasks to be finished before the cold snap this week. A large, variegated holly was in need of a substantial taming so a friend of ours who has the kit, offered to tackle the job for us. The result was a huge mound of prickly potential for our family florist. Number One Daughter was visiting last weekend so she took a huge bag full of it back to Arcade Flowers in Ringwood. Stored outside, it lasts for ages. As for the rest of the heap, a more local florist has taken it away which is great. Instead of being consigned to the bonfire heap, the lovely holly will brighten up many a front door over the festive period.
