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

I knew it! There was a reason I'm doing this now...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2232056/Gardeners-florists-named-UKs-happiest-workers-90-horticulturalists-enjoy-going-work.html

OK, it's from the Daily Mail so perhaps one would doubt the voracity of this story, but yep, I have never been happier at work. Every day brings something new and every day I end up having done something I can see the results of my labours - and it's always appreciated too.

Working at Argos on that brick they call a catalogue, I would flick through it thinking, "18,000 products in here, I don't want one of them..." Whereas, I can look back at my days work in any one of my lovely gardens and think, "Ahhhhh, that's nice!"

I think the following pictures from this year are tantamount to that statement:

I do have such fun you know. Take today for example, on my way to Quainton (see below) I got stuck behind a cab that kept speeding up, slowing down; speeding up, slowing down. I assumed he was looking for somewhere, the home of his next fare for instance. But no. Oh no, this cab driver was in front of me for five, going on 25 miles - that's what it felt like.

We got to the new hideous estate just the other side of Aylesbury (see this link: http://simonmurraygardenservices.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/i-promise-not-to-mention-weather-part.html) where there is a single track road with road works and a set of traffic lights. The lights turned red and said cab driver stopped in such a place as to make it near on impossible for the traffic coming from the opposite end of the road to get passed him. Stand off.

After a couple of minutes two rather large blokes got out of their cars and asked him to back up. Nothing. I got out and tapped on his window. He put his hand up and refused to even look at me. He was Indian, so unfortunately the two blokes got a tad racist.

I said,"He's a fuckwit because he's a fuckwit, not because he's Indian." The two blokes looked like they were going to take out their frustration on me, so I went back to my car. Thankfully the cabbie did back up enough for the on-coming deluge of cars to get passed. 

Of course, after this protracted interlude, the lights had not only changed to green from our way, they had changed to red again, so we couldn't move. I say we, but the cabbie decided he would go anyway, meeting yet another line of on-coming traffic halfway. More stand off; more shouting; more I was thinking that I would never get to Quainton, a mere mile or so from the "beauty" of Kingsfield Park. He backed up, very slowly, after one of the workmen from the building site had "had a word".

To cut a very long story short, we eventually got through the road works, on to the estate and he indicated that he was going to turn left into an unfinished road with about ten unfinished houses. He stopped. I hooted. He waved his hand at me again; my blood pressure started to rise - I mean I can take a joke, but fuck a pantomime!

He moved on at about 6mph and then indicated right, stopped, an on coming car full of kids and an irate looking mother nearly hit him. Then he moved on nearly hitting them. I was now beside myself with something akin to tourettes-a-gogo and would have stopped and let the bugger do whatever he was trying to do , but there were about 20 cars behind now. 

Finally the cabbie turned right at the next road and I put my foot down. The last I saw of him was in the rear view mirror with one of the 20 cars chasing after him flashing his lights and hooting like a walrus on heat.

The legend on the back of the cabbie's car? "Serving Aylesbury for 25 years - exemplary!" Whatever that means...

Quainton, Spring this year

...again Spring, just cut the grass. Below, Quainton today
13th November 2012, a pretty good replica of the Somme...

Anyway, I'm happy, are you?

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.

Blogging eh?

I get this feeling that I'm just not cut out for this blogging mallarkey. I have no continuity about me, basically it's a tad pathetic. However, in my defence, I am a bit of an anarchist, so structured "stuff" like, do this now and then do that, is a bit of an anathema. Seriously, I won't be told.

Witness this, just the other day, a rather ancient lady said, "Here you! What are you doing?" To which I replied, nothing. What happened was, I appeared from an area of garden belonging to my oldest (sorry longest) client that was very apparent to the "general public". Said woman had a walking stick and proffered it in my direction saying,

"I shall hit you with this if you don't explain yourself."

Now, I would quite simply have explained to the said lady that I was in fact the gardener of the house and grounds in front of her very face, BUT, I couldn't be bothered.

"Who do you think you are?"

Again, what a crap question to ask of an anarchist - whether said anarchist  was in that space relevantly or not, is beside the point. At this juncture I should say that I was in fact quite legitimately dumping some debris from said garden in a perfectly legal site.

Once again the old lady touted the aforementioned walking stick in my face.

"Please," I said, "stop that." I could have scripted the reply.

"Oh, I shall hit you if you do not explain yourself."

"I don't think so," I replied. "I am the gardener here and if you even attempted to hit me, I don't think it would have succeeded."

"I am a very successful shot you know," she replied.

I wanted to say, "Fuck off you ancient waste of space; you left over piece of upper middle class Tory trash." But I smiled and said, "Seems we have had a bit of a misunderstanding, peace be with you."

She seemed to be appeased, but walked off swishing the stick in a very Errol Flynn stylee. Real life is so much more weirder than the made-up stuff.

Here some pix, my brethren:

You see this is where i go wrong all the time, I forget to take before
pictures, so trust me, this was very untidy before I weaved my magic.

Wish I knew the name of more shrubs - this is at Rebecca's in
Quainton - and I cut it back quite dramatically last year, don't it look good?
(Picture taken about four weeks ago.)

Newest garden - about four weeks ago - and a freshly cut lawn, mmmm...

The above three pictures are of the Laurel hedge at Quainton. I have
taken off about four foot to allow a bit more sunshine into the garden and,
more importantly, at the front of the house.

Oh, isn't it just soooooo lovely?

Thing is, it bloody damn well is!

I Thannnnnyou... Garden on xxx

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...

Is it really that long since I did this?

Thing is, th'Limpits was actually quite good, especially the bit where we won stuff, but on a serious note, Seb Coe? Boris Johnson - what the freaking hell does he take to get like that and THAT hair, he must have got it from some obscure DIY shop, you know the sort, they sell individual nails and screws and they put things in brown paper bags still. 

BUT, the best moment was Gideon getting the bird from 80,000 in th'Limpit stadium - whose dumb idea was that, "Yes George, good PR, go to th'Limpits and stand out in the open with a gold trinket. That'll sort out all the problems and send us flying high in th'Pinion Polls." And one last thing before th'Limpits gets to Rio (what will they do with the kids on the streets this time?) if Cammo claims the Volunteers as an example of the Big Society one more time, I shall... Well, I shall! 

See, the thing is, people have "volunteered" to help others since time immemorial. From doing a bit of shopping for a sick or elderly, or both, neighbour to helping out on the school PTA to collecting jumble for some obscure cause you believe in or, wait for it, some needy political party that is struggling for support. Here is a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Lickle People Party (that's the Lib-Dems to you, 'cos at the next election that's what they'll be, Lickle... And if they actually call themselves The Lickle People Party they might just get a few sympathy votes.)

Since I was last here I have picked up two more gardens and have a very healthy full few weeks up 'til the end of October, which is good, as I have missed so many days over the summer - what summer? - don't think I've been so wet so frequently. Wetter than a wet thing that's been swimming, forgot their towel and then walked in the rain without a coat or umbrella-ella-ella-ella...

Anyhoo - why do I say that? Anyhoo, here be some pictures from the last six weeks or so:

Our own garden, looking  a tad unloved...

...bit of hedge trimming at home, busman's hols!!!

Some of the trees at Rebecca's in Quainton

Occasional work in Hudnall, just outside Berkhamsted - this
and next two shots

The new "big" house. This place is a beauty, about a mile from home and has so much grass and so many hedges they have one bloke to do the grass, one to do the hedges and me, to do the rest...

I actually trimmed this hedge, the longest single hedge I think
I've ever done. About 80 metres long - that pen houses the
pig, no not Boris or Osbourne, The Pig, see below...

I trained this clematis in the Spring - and it did what it was told

Tom & Vicky's place in Aldbury. I'm going to get rid of most of the gravel and enlarge the lawn area. Lawd knows when, but hopefully before the end of Autumn

A long bed at the new "big" house. Before...

The Pig...

A long bed at the new "big" house. After

New lawn needed methinks. Quainton again

The new "big" house.. Awright for some eh?

Me new bezzie. She's very old and very blind, bless...

So, there you have it, apologies for so many new pix, but I have been most neglectful during these past few weeks and felt the need to catch up.

Oh yeah, Th'Aralimpits, what an inspiration; what a cornucopia of togetherness; what a delight to see Ellie Simmond's smile again. Blind football? Wheelchair rugby? Archery without arms? You couldn't make it up...

Happy whatever!

Si-Botic