Burn baby burn...

...garden inferno at Quainton today. Perfect for a pyromaniac like me. I've been saving up tons of stuff, built a large bonfire and then set a match to it, woomph!

It looked not unlike this:

...I lied, it looked more like the one below...

...oh dear, lied again...

Yeah, that was it, bit like this one.

Must remember to take my camera to work more often, the one on the new phone is poxy, anyway the fire was splendid, lasted all day and caused no complaints for once, which is nice - not fond of people complaining.

Not long ago I was working on the old compost area at Quainton - which is now the new compost area (see below) - and this old-ish couple leant on the wall and commenced watching what I was doing. It got a bit unnerving after about five minutes, I had smiled but they kind of ignored that, so I said, "Can I help you?" "What you doing?" asked the man. "Clearing the compost area," I replied. "Why?" asked the man - the woman just frowned. "Why not?" I replied. "Just asking," she said. They then moved on. Bizarre some country folk.

I hope to be remember to take the camera tomorrow, Thursday and Friday (yep, working Easter Friday and Monday too, bit hypocritical for an atheist not to really) just so I can update the gardens at Buckland, Hemel, Tring and Pat's in Berkhamsted...

Happy burning baby...

Brain freeze...

Bloody hell, over three months since my last blog, that's shameless that is. It's not like I've been overly busy, just lazy as far as this is concerned. Shocking really.

In the past three weeks I have been mainly up to my ankles in compost, digging it over and loading up wheel barrows full and transporting all round the four main gardens I work on. It's been a delight really, especially this week when it's actually been cold enough to be winter. However, I did give up on Monday afternoon, digging a vegetable plot in a blizzard (sort of), but back there tomorrow to finish it off.

Did I ever mention I like compost? Especially when I have made it - not literally of course, but from rotting leaves, grass cuttings and the like... 

It's been sooooo cold recently, but I have been able to keep up the work on the four major gardens in Berkhamsted (Pat's place), Quainton (Rebecca), Dancer's End Tring and Julie's at Buckland. And, just as a reminder, if only for myself, this is what they look like in nice weather!

Pat's place last Spring - remember Spring? Apparently it was
20 degrees warmer at this time last year

The kitchen view at Quainton. It looks very different this year, I've
managed to move even more plants into this bed and got rid of the arch,
it was intrusive and fell apart when I attempted to take it down! I
have moved 17 rose bushes from the driveway too - as soon as the
weather gets more conducive to nice photography I am going to take
new shots of the garden prior to a major re-vamp, ie getting the lawns back
from the builders!

Dancer's End House in Tring. This garden keeps me very trim (ish...) it's all hills and dales
and enormous. Been tidying all the beds recently after weeks of sorting out the compost and
chopping and trimming and pruning. Burnt a lot of stuff

...same at Buckland. Tidy, tidy, tidy... Dug over
the rockery around the pond in a vain attempt
at getting rid of the mare's tail. Watch this space!

Anyway, I aim to get back into regular blogging again. I think the weather has got to me in such a way as to freeze not only my fingers but also my brain.

Keep warm... Peace and love, Simon x

Automne; Herbst; Autunno; Otoño; Φθινόπωρο

Autumn eh?

Yep truly here and what does that bring? I'll tell you what it brings

LEAVES; Feuilles; Blätter; Congedi; Hojas; पत्ते
Doesn't matter how one dresses it up, bloody leaves are everywhere. I go to sleep dreaming of 'em; I wake up thinking of 'em; my car is covered in 'em and the bloody kitten keeps bringing 'em into the house like she's caught, gutted and filleted a giraffe. So proud of herself...

Fog; mist; mizzly rain and that's just in the car. Oh yeah, the car that just cost £277.01 to get through it's MoT - where the hell do these people get a penny from?

Anyway, the great clear up will continue through to next Spring, so at least I have a job for the Winter. Got lots of trimming and pruning to do too. Odds on it's gonna be a mild Winter after the weird Summer.

Pictures!

The finished laurel hedge at Quainton - that's about four foot off the top

And from the other side - this shows
the continuing dreadful mess from
the building works

A new compost area at Quainton, made
from an old one

Had to cut a path down to it and I really enjoyed it

Pleaching the limes at Dancer's End, slow at first, but I got the knack
of it in the end

Probably said before that heights don't like me. They make me fall off
things, it's never truly my fault...

Last few flowers at Pat's place, delightful - asters I think...

It was on the top of the gantry that Deirdre rang me to tell that our dear comrade from the Non-Stop Picket outside South Africa House, Andy Privett (nee Gardner) had suddenly died on Sunday21st October. He was a big, proud and loud gay guy who helped me through some bleak times in the late 80s, early 90s and I, along with many others, will miss him desperately.

He never stopped making me laugh... And buying
me drinks!

Bless you, you big ol' gay mate you!

Happy mincing, wherever you may be.

Oh the end is Bill Nighy...

Hmmmm, seems this year is determined to attempt to piss me right off, what with the rain, rain and more rain. But what the hey, we're all still alive; we're all having the proverbial laugh; Boris Johnson, well, err, just Boris Johnson really (cripes he's a twat isn't he, don't get why people love him so much, oaf); still have a roof over our heads (the windows and doors are a bit of a struggle, but at least we're dry); we have a number of parties to go to in the coming weeks; s'nice.

So, the last few weeks have been very busy, Saturday working to try and catch up on stuff so I can at least leave my regular smaller gardens in a tidy state until next March. It's a desperate race to do this in time for the beginning of November. Did I say desperate? Pah, just do it Murray is all!

Anyway, here are a few picture to show what's been happening:

The view from the roof at Quainton, looking down to the stables. It was very windy that day and I was holding on to the scaffolding for dear life - never been good with heights.

Lots of trimming and shaping of hedges over the weeks, this is Pat's place in Berkhamsted. My new Tanaka hedge trimmer is picture on the left and is a splendid addition to the Murray tool box, I actually love it, bizarre!

...a bit of topiary at Julie and Andrew's place in Buckland. No really enamoured of that sort of thing but I do actually quite like doing it. I think it appeals to my sense of putting things in order - bit fascist...

A newt. This is something I am generally in complete accordance with most Friday nights - and Saturday and possibly Wednesday or Tuesday too. I had disturbed this poor little fella while weeding the rockery at Buckland, she/he was very sleepy, so I made a new nest for him/her and sang, to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it": 
Oh, I wish I was a naughty, little newt.
Oh, I wish I was a naughty, little newt.
Oh, it would be all right,
To stay out every night.
Oh, I wish I was a naughty, little newt.

So onwards to the end of another gardening year, my third and it has gone from strength to strength, even with the rubbish weather. The best thing of all is that I will have more than enough work for the winter too, four lovely big gardens with lots of lovely big trees and shrubs to tend to.

The newt lived by the way...

Happy happying...

Hong Kong Garden

OK, spurious link alert, I made the title of this load of bloggox "Hong Kong Garden" because I've been watching Punk Britannia and Siouxsie and the Banshees were a favourite of mine back in the day. My tenuous link to Punk? I was once at a party and the four original members of the Sex Pistols were there. This was in the winter of 1975/6 I think and John Lydon was sitting all by himself in an armchair nursing a glass of something looking bored to tears.


 I was told who he was and what the band were called and said, "Who?" waddya know, hindsight is a wonderful thing. This was a little while before the Summer of '76 kicked in, you know that drought that didn't have any rain, unlike the recent just ended drought... In that summer I disappeared for 10 days - bit like Agatha Christie, only she was a writer and I'm not - on my famed (in our family) "Lost Weekend".


I went to Liverpool for a long weekend and didn't return for the aforementioned allotted time. I didn't ring work and I didn't ring home. I think it was the first time my dad truly worried about me - we had an awkward teen-year-thing going on. I was 19, the teen-year-thing had started six years before!


Anyhoo, enough of that stuff, gardens, that's what it's all about. Recently I have bloggocksed about the weather and how rather restricting it has been for me on the work front. Suffice to say, not a lot has changed, but I did work on every day this week which is a first for three weeks or so.


Here are some pictures and I think I will add longer captions than usual, just to speed things up a bit.

This is nice... At Pat's place in Berko Robins have decided her
post box is the perfect home. Sweet!

Pat's grass hadn't been cut for a couple of weeks and she gets mildly
paranoid at that fact. I think this Wem-ber-lee look is pretty damn good.
 I usually cut it with curves through it but last week I decided to give it
 a formal look. Standard stripes across and down the length of the lawn.
I, for one, think it looks fine...

The brown at the bottom of this Hebe is from "someone" using the dreaded weed killer without thinking about the plants. Disappointing, it's not my garden but I don't like the use of chemicals for this very reason. You have to be sooooo careful when applying them. A lot of the plants have been affected. Shame.

The following are from Rebecca's place in Bucks and I have to say it was an eventful day there this Tuesday 19th June 2012 (so sue me Locog!) if only for the fact that my trimmer's engine basically fell off mid-trim. It got so hot the plastic melted and the whole back of the trimmer, petrol driven, just fell to the ground all aflame and obviously feeling a bit sorry for itself. A sad demise seeing how it was well less than a year old. On to the warranty then, but in the mean time I had to buy a new one.


Tring garden centre is OK, don't get me wrong, but this Wednesday - obviously the 20th - it was nothing short of, well, inCompRehensibly APpaling. The servers had crashed - perhaps linked to the RBS/NatWest debacle this week, whatever! - and there were no staff to help anyone, anywhere.


I asked for a Ryobi In-line trimmer, petrol driven. Firstly, no one was available to see if they had one in stock, "We never keep that many in stock sir." 15 minutes later the member of staff cajoled into "helping me" came back with a Flymo hover mower and electric trimmer. Another member of staff said, as I sent the first one back to get what I asked for, "Sorry, he's the Plantarian Manager." What's that got to do with me, I thought. It was like a line from Fawlty Towers. "He's from, Bar-cell-owner."


Next the Plantarian - a Dr Who character if ever there was one - returned with a Ryobi Brushcutter. Twice the price and NOT the item I asked for. Problem was I only spotted it when the Plantarian asked for more money. "If I didn't need it urgently, I work as a gardener, I would be walking away from here mate! I want a Ryobi In-line trimmer," as he walked away with the brushcutter I added, "Petrol driven."


At this point the original assistant, a woman who looks like Sonia from Eastenders, caught my eye - thankfully she didn't drop it - and, I kid you not, tutted. "I know," I said, "he's a Plantarian."


He came back with the correct product. I paid and took a double pack of gardening gloves for my trouble - this episode took 40 minutes. 


Oh yeah, the original Flymo hover mower (returned to the stock room) was actually wanted by another customer who had wandered off and "...lost all sense of time..." I kid you not, she said that after being away from the till for over 30 minutes.


Likesay, pix from Rebecca's:

A lovely Delphinium

I love a pond... And I love lily pads

The driveway - I so should take "before" pictures, this is a truly remarkable transformation!

Oh dear! Work in progress I believe. Each week seems to bring more problems with the drains - bit like the Coalition Government.

So, there you have it, that was the week that was. More rain than you can shake a stick at (sic) and the thought that I should have at least shaken said stick at the Plantarian.


Happy Shaking...

Post 118 part de deux - that'll be 119 then...

Here are then, this week at work. There was rain, hail, sunshine, freezing winds and lots of tea, nice...

One of the jobs I do is at two blocks of flats in Berkhamsted. Don't really like it but the plus is that I grab a cheeky pint at The Rising Sun pub, which is undoubtedly the best pub in Berkhamsted and probably the best in Hertfordshire too. Problem is, with a job like this you have loads of people with opinions on what you should be doing, which is OK, but - and it's a big BUT - when someone, just one, has an opposing opinion to the majority that opinion gets irritating. It's the old one bad apple in the barrel innit?

Also, when you take over a poorly kept lawn, full of moss and rubbish, it takes twice as long to cut. The first picture below shows it, it's horrible, creates dust and loads of particles of moss fly about getting on your chest, which is a bit rubbish if you're an asthmatic. Don't get me wrong, the money is fine and I do like the work, it's just it's too much like work. Y'know what I mean? It's almost corporate in context. All my other work is for individual families and they like what I do, ALL of them like what I do. Again, don't get me wrong, if things don't work out with people you just move on, that's fine, but corporate stuff means you just have to put up with the nonsense. Shame, why should you have put up with nonsense?

That's that off my chest and I promise it won't happen again in the foreseeable. The pictures below are all from the last 7/8 days.

The aforementioned rubbish bit of grass. It takes at
least 3 goes to collect all the cuttings too, horrible

Call me an old hippy, but I love the "LOVE & PEACE" graffiti. South Bank last Saturday...

Had to take this asa the Fabs are along the bottom of this pillar

One of the atriums at the Tate Modern, love big balloons

Cumulonimbus... The only cloud worth looking at

The above three pictures are from the big lawn at Rebecca's place in Quainton. They are getting a sit Husqvarna mower later in the year but I just couldn't leave it any longer and put in an ever decreasing circle. It was really good fun and I never noticed the 4 hours it took to do it - doesn't time fly when you're having a gooooood time?

Hellebores and Daffs at Julie's in Buckland

More Daffs at Julie's

The three above pix are the long lawn at Julie's place. I don't cut the grass here, which is good really as I would need to work there for at least 2 days a week, which would mean giving up one of my other gardens, which I couldn't do, no now. That's a Medlar tree on the right, beautiful gnarly old branches and a lovely little den for Julie's kids.

Tom & Vicky's place in Aldbury. Alison has been looking after this for me
recently. It looks great and the little lawn I put in last year, top of pic, is
looking really nice 

Yet another newly cut lawn. Again, first cut of the year, so it took very
nearly four hours to do. Lots of moss again, but far more manageable
and I really like the way it looks with the cross-cutting. Not sure about the
"installation" though... This house is in Chesham Bois by the way.

So there you have it, only four days of work, but loads done and Sophie was 13 on Monday, blimey, our little girl a teenager...


Happy happy!!!