A season in shift...
The weather…I know it’s long been a moot point in conversation…derided as boring and yet…don’t our mood swings and levels of comfort (or discomfort) depend so very much upon its vagaries? As a gardener one becomes attuned to the weather’s every whim, and living beyond the cityscape, my own experience has, over time, come to realise the evolution of a heightened relationship with weather patterns. One of the abiding joys for me, living here at Glenmore over such a long period of time, is the deep and innate recognition of the ebb and flow of our very own weather patterns.
Sometimes they are a question of endurance; about that there can be no doubt, though they pass. And when they do, they are yearned for once again; particularly those long days of suffocating heat about which I’ve written to you so often before…when the house is shuttered and the garden watered early, before the sun’s intensity prickles the skin should one venture beyond the shade the verandah offers….(though at times I do; hat on head, sleeves rolled down, with the infamous words and upbeat tune of Noel Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ go out in the midday sun; out in the midday, out in the midday, out in the midday sun’ on repeat in my head).
But at this time of year, the atmosphere is inclined to be utterly changeable and electric. Which I love. I find the build and expectation of a storm to be addictive. A pure, primal thrill. Although an outcome of rain for the garden, replenishing rain for the land is at the core of my heart’s desire, which often leads to disappointment and deflation; during days of intense heat, even the build-up of cloud cover can be enough of a relief for me and the poor wilted leaves and burned-at-the-edges petals. So often, teasing rumbles of thunder yield no more than a big drop of rain here and one there, as those dark, sonorous clouds roll away…and nothing more.
But when a storm actually breaks? The cracks of thunder so loud one literally jumps out of one’s skin, heart racing, adrenalin pumping…counting the seconds between lightening strike and the next clap of thunder accompany the anticipation and the big question: will it…or won’t it….spill? If we’re lucky, a brief, sweet breeze might break the calm that hitherto permeated a dense, heavy atmosphere and then…down in comes…big splashes bouncing off the ground, a downpour of great volume and intensity pounding the deep, tin verandah roof overhead. Yes!
Slide your volume to full throttle for the little clip below but be prepared! This thunderclap unleashed the first drops of a short, sharp shower that was followed a couple of hours later by a storm of immense intensity.
I always strive to get back to the kitchen verandah before a storm unleashes! I’ve been caught out so often over the years, leaping up the verandah steps like a drowned rat, having miscalculated the arrival of a downpour by just seconds! It’s from that verandah we have such a broad view of weather patterns and over the years we’ve watched so many storms gather momentum from that very spot. Sometimes the storms are so wild we need to batten down the hatches and retreat inside, but my favourites are when the rain falls like stair-rods…unaccompanied by wind, when one can just absorb the sight, the sound and inhale the petrichor essence that infuses the atmosphere.
It can be all be over in a flash…or it can shift the season. Today, I can clearly see this last one (that left us without power and therefore no water, internet, or phone for a day) has shifted the season. It’s freezing and I’ve had to don jumper and jeans (though with bare feet…altogether my happiest guise!). But I expect in a few days I’ll be back to sweltering in a sarong. When the sun returns this time though, the light will be different, the colours altered, the saturation deeper.
To be honest, my attention this week has been entirely distracted, as Bonnie’s home; and when adult children visit for short periods, it’s a time to relish. Parenthood is such a conundrum that doesn’t become easier over time. Time…in this context, being the operative word. How I worry for new Mums and I worry for babies born into this age, where expectations of women are so intense. For babies, toddlers, children, teens, young adults and grown adults all need copious amounts of that precious, fleeting commodity.
While I managed to juggle my work and early motherhood, I can’t pretend it wasn’t a fine balancing act. Dreading the day when each had to go to school, I was lucky to run my own timetable, which though intense (and thanks to understanding clients) for the most part I always had my girls with me; and on working-from-home-days, I was lucky to have the opportunity to read books and play games and sing songs, with plenty of hugs along the way. Time though, was always champing at my heels.
Soon my working hours were squished between school drop-off and pick-up, with follow-ups done while homework was completed…and then into the night. But not before a turn on the see-saw or swing on the swing, a swim or chasing around the infant olive and fruit trees in the orchard.
Weekends were spent in the garden…gardening. The making of the garden here at Glenmore accompanied the girls childhoods: they grew in tandem with the garden. And whilst it offered them space to roam, games in which to delight, fired their imaginations, the opportunity for what today I’ve no doubt would be considered a pretty old-fashioned upbringing that also yielded plenty of joint family tasks and fun (neither are afraid of hard work or pitching in, that’s for sure!); I worried too, that the garden was too consuming. I still do. It’s hard to get parenthood right. To get advice right. To get time right. Enough of it…devoted, undistracted time for them.
January has always been a good month for it though! Even back then, when summer school holidays stretched out and my work commitments did too. It’s the same today…communication is a hit and miss waiting game during this first month of the year, as peeps take their time for some time out. January is a month in limbo. So it’s a good time for an adult child to be at home.
In tandem with the weather - I took Sunday afternoon’s cloud-cover as a cue to tackle clearing out the second potting shed…and goodness…ugghhh…..after Saturday’s rain provided the opportunity to clear out the old laundry; the one I'd always intended to use as a fabulous linen cupboard, ‘til everyone else began piling up their own unwanted stuff in there - old school folders being just the tip of the iceberg (bringing me back to parenthood once again!). I think some peeps assume that as a ‘decorator’, one isn’t afflicted by these themes that are common to all families, but I can assure you, we are! And so still I hanker after my beautiful, well-organised linen cupboard, freeing up space in the cloakroom cupboards so I can open them without everything toppling out each time I open the door!
Add to this the need to completely upend the rooms in the old house in preparation for long overdue repair and making good of some hefty cracks in the old walls (which is inevitable some 35 years since completing the original restoration). So it’s been a week of upheaval…of tidying on the one hand and causing sheer and utter chaos on the other, interspersed with long hours of chatter, a few car trips and wildly swinging weather patterns.
Typical January!
All throughout, the intoxicating pinwheel flowers of Gardenia thunbergia that hit their stride in tune with the storms, have flooded the house courtyard with their sensuous perfume.
Do you recall when last year I went off on a madcap Sunday afternoon drive to collect a single Abutilon plant I’d had on order since the Collectors’ Plant Fair? I’d been trying to track down this particular pink version for years, having lost my original which once caught the golden evening rays of sunshine just outside the girls’ bathroom window. It was a bountiful specimen, grown from one I’d discovered on one of Larry’s and my earliest plant-hunting expeditions (and given Clemmie was in peak fairy mode, I declared those flowers to resemble their ball-dresses). I was so disappointed when it curled up its toes, having accompanied many a summer bath-time when the girls were little - all bubbles and squeals of laughter. Anyway, you might recall that when I got it back here I was a bit worried it might not be the same pink as the original and that I had no idea where I was going to put it…I simply wanted to grow it somewhere. Well…I’m delighted to report it’s growing at a rate of knots in the spot I chose, in the corner between the Murraya hedge and the old stables. There had been a sickly Gooseberry bush trying to grow there for years and given it never produced one fruit, I decided its time had come…out it went in the winter months and in went the Abutilon in its place. I can’t wait to show you when it becomes voluminous…which may take a couple of years but it’s off to a good, strong start!
Against the weather-beaten slabs of ironbark that line the walls of the Barn, a smattering of pears have taken shape. I hardly noticed at first but since I did, have been in two minds as to whether to bag them or just admire their mottled form against the timbers. I can never decide when to pick pears! It’s said that it’s best to pick them when hard and to let them ripen off the tree, and past experience tells me I should…I always seem to leave them just that little bit too long! But are they fully developed? I’m thinking to wing it another week and hope for the best…this variety called ‘Sensation’ is meant to be fully red when ready so…fingers crossed!
Down in the Kitchen Garden, an intermittent froth of golden-yellow tansy highlights the paths of fading carrot and fennel flowers which are entering their next stage. I love the pungent aroma of its leaves and it loves the rain, so where it was looking horribly sick and straggly over Christmas, and for a moment I even contemplated cutting it right down in hope of a second chance at regrowth, I’m so glad I was lazy and let it be!
Although not as tall as in years gone by (which I put down to serious heat and lack of water in those important, developmental weeks) the fine threads of Golden Bantam corn flowers have taken on their crimson blush and are dancing in the breeze now, as they must…
In order to pollinate the waiting individual silks of the developing corn husk below. In order for a full ‘cob’ to develop, each silk must be pollinated from above and if not, ‘gappy’ corn will be the result. It’s why corn is usually planted in blocks (rather than rows) for optimum chance of pollination. And though I do, it doesn’t guarantee I’ll get full cobs! But I try.
I’ve been growing this variety for years, saving its seed from year to year (I just keep one cob aside and let it dry out). At least I think it’s Golden Bantam! It was labelled as such when I first bought it, but one year I had a fail, bought seed of the same name from a different supplier and was so disappointed when the flowers weren’t crimson! That’s a long time ago and now I can’t recall from where this seed originated and although I know I’ve been germinating from saved seed for a good number of years since that fiasco, I’m never completely happy ‘til the crimson hue arrives!
If I can coax the crimson corn flowers and silks to evolve, planted close by to pink zinnias, and encourage a flush of fat, shiny, black aubergines below, then all is well in my summer kitchen gardening world!
Dahlia buds are fit to burst, the very first beans (well…the first two!) have arrived and I’m hopeful now of more to follow with tendrils gathering strength, but gosh I’ve needed patience this year! We had our first zucchini and the aubergines are arriving in a satisfactory trickle. Even the ‘lettuce leaf basil’ Basil Genovese has got a spurt on and thanks to the rain, there are succulent new rocket leaves amongst the leathery ones and even new babies are germinating from seed dropped during the last round.
The hungry gap is slowly filling. Though some days there are slim pickings, their offerings are tantalising…
To the taste buds and the eyes!
So here I’ll leave you, as we head into another weekend. I’m really hoping to get stuck into the Field, if I can. The spring-only flowering roses all need a big cutback and after all the non-gardening jobs over the last couple of weeks, I’m more than ready to wield my secateurs with gusto!
I hope you’re ploughing through January jobs too and send warmest wishes,
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Potatoes, onions, garlic, cucumbers, aubergine, first zucchini and beans, coloured chard. Lettuce and rocket have put on a lovely spurt of growth with the rain and carpets of just germinated amaranth have popped up. Basil, lovage, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, fresh fennel seed, fennel pollen. Another couple of passionfruit!
Going / gone: fennel fronds
Seed saving: a late coriander and land cress…I need to decide where to put stems of ripe seed of the latter directly onto the ground as they would benefit growing as a companion amongst the Brassica family in the next round…(I said this last week…now I really do need to decide!)
Sowing: If you feel inclined to grow your brassica family from seed, then now is the time to sow into punnets. Land cress (see above)
Planting: none
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: Roses, magnolias, frangipani, tansy (lovely to pick bunches to hang at the kitchen door to keep flies at bay)
Perfumes and aromas: the frangipanis are still the most potent, along with fig leaf, magnolia and Gardenia thunbergia. Mid-week I wondered what on earth had eclipsed them all and then realised I’d asked Thalia to clip all the dead undergrowth from the Apple Pelargoniums at the Barn…how I love that intense, smoky apple aroma!
Pruning and other: The big summer prune continues apace. I did remove the spent flower stems of Philadelphus and thinned the Ceanothus of more congested growth than Thalia’s first pass took into account and as suggested, loosely clipped the Pineapple Guava and Saltbush in the Barn Garden. In the Borders, the Lamb’s Ears Stachys byzantia have been clipped to the quik, as has the Achillea, while the magenta pincushion flowers of Knautia macedonia have had a first pass and may need a second. The Salvias are down by half and the Buddleja also. I used to take these back very hard at this time of year but think we get a better second flush by not going in quite so drastically. All the Cardoon stems with their huge thistle heads have been removed (in hope of doing so before they seed everywhere). The Acanthus spikes behind the Dairy simply had to go!
I feel guilty India...though we tend not to get winter rains so now is the only time to really top up - if we're lucky. Despite the fanfare, the creek shows no sign of even trickling so I'm grateful for every drop. Expecting more scorch ahead!
Envious of your downpours. Our mean annual rainfall (mean in every sense!!) is under ⅔ of yours. And it’s one brilliant year to about fifteen ordinary ones. Ah well.