Flâneur Gardening

Reminder

2011-08-17T03:11:00.000-07:00

This is just a reminder that this blog has moved to flaneurgardening.wordpress.com.

As you can see from the screen shot, I've also given the blog a general make-over, so please have a look and see what you think. You can click the image to be redirected to the new blog.

-Søren

Moving from Blogspot

2011-07-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

This entry is just to let you all know that I've long been contemplating moving from the Blogspot platform to wordpress.com, and today I've finally done it. Not one bad word about Blogspot; it's been dead simple to set up the blog, but I just feel that Wordpress has more options for me.

I do hope you will all continue reading over at flaneurgardening.wordpress.com.

-Søren, a.k.a. The Flâneur Gardener

Pea Risotto, Rhubarb Jam and Bliss

2011-07-17T02:33:00.000-07:00

I went up to the garden yesterday with a friend who hadn't seen the summer house yet, so I'd scheduled an afternoon and evening of indulgence in order to give him the best possible impression.

Instead of the mediocre (at best) weather forecasted, it turned out to be a sunny and warm afternoon, and we even chose to retreat into the shade of the blood mirabelle tree in order to get out of the heat. That's always a sign that it's a nice day!

Anyway, for dinner I made a pea risotto with Serrano ham wrapped chicken filets, and I thought I'd share this with you.

First, grow your peas!

(I've cheated a little and grown some previously...)

Pea Risotto (2 portions)

2 cups shelled peas (fresh or - if it must be - frozen)
The pods from the peas (or if using frozen, another two cups of peas)
Some chicken or vegetable stock (or a stock cube, or indeed just a roughly chopped onion)
A few herbs - I like to use a tiny sprig of fresh thyme, but 2-3 sage leaves also works a treat. Just don't over-do it, as the herbs can easily over-power the subtle pea taste.
1/2 litre of water
1 cup of risotto rice (arborio or similar)
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion (or a handful of shallots if you have them)
1 lump of butter (for frying the onions, garlic and rice, so you decide how much a "lump" is...)
1/2 glass of white wine for the risotto, and 1 glass of white wine for the cook
1 cup grated hard cheese - I like to use pecorino (a hard Italian goat's cheese), but obviously Parmesan or Grano Padano would be just as suitable
Salt and ground pepper to taste

So we start with the peas :

Shell the peas and put them aside while dumping the shells in half a litre of water along with the thyme, stock (or just chopped onion). Turn up the hob to maximum and let the broth boil for 10 minutes, then turn it down to the lowest heat and simmer for two hours.

And yes, by the time the pea shells have cooked for a few hours they will look disgusting, a sort of brownish green. No worries; you won't be eating those, but the both will have a nice subtle taste of peas, and that's what matters. Strain the broth and pour it back into the saucepan and keep it on a low heat while you cook the risotto. Discard the shells.

Chop the onion/shallots and the garlic as finely as you feel like. No need to be too fuzzy, I think. Put the garlic and onion in another saucepan with the butter and gently turn up the heat to sauté them until clear. Then add the rice and stir until it's evenly coated with the butter. Add half a glass of white wine to the pan and pour yourself a glass as well, as this is the point when you will be stuck at the cooker for the next twenty minutes... You might as well enjoy it, right?

For the next 10-15 minutes you need to stir the rice every few minutes, adding a ladle of broth whenever the risotto starts to thicken.

When the rice is nearly tender, add the peas and continue as above for another 5 minutes until the rice is completely cooked. Add as much cheese as you feel you can do without tainting your conscience (in my case that's a LOT of cheese!) and stir it in. Season to taste with salt and ground black pepper, but remember to be generous with the pepper...

Serve with some grated cheese on top and another grinding of black pepper.

In theory risotto ought to be served on its own as a starter, but I like to serve it as a main, so I normally break the protocol and serve some flesh on the side, in this case chicken filets wrapped in Serrano ham and pan fried. Oh, and if anybody is wondering, the glass at the top contained a lovely crémant de Bourgogne (Paul Delane - not very expensive, and nowhere near the price of Champagne) which went well with the dish, the bubbles undercutting the richness of the risotto rather nicely.

Mrs. Beeton's Rhubarb Jam Recipe:

I mentioned at one time that I'd made some rhubarb-and-ginger jam after a recipe from Mrs. Beeton's Every-day Cookery, and somebody asked for the recipe. Well, in Mrs. Beeton's own words:

INGREDIENTS - To each lb. of rhubarb allow 1lb. of preserving sugar, 1/2 a
teaspoonful of ground ginger, and the finely grated rind of 1/2 a lemon.
METHOD - Remove the outer stringy parts of the rhubarb, cut it into short lengths and weigh it. Put it into a preserving-pan with sugar, ginger, and lemon rind in the above proportions, place the pan by the side of the fire, and let the contents come very slowly to boiling-point, stirring occasionally meanwhile. Boil until the jam sets quickly when tested on a cold plate. Pour it into pots, cover closely, and store.
TIME - From 1 to 1 1/2 hours, according to the age of the rhubarb.

The rhubarb jam is in the tall jar, whereas the shorter jar contains a strawberry-and-lemon jam of my own invention. (If you've made jam once, surely you can then start improvising, right?)

And let me tell you... The ginger packs a punch! To my taste buds, the rhubarb jam is not for breakfast use, but much more suited for afternoon tea. TEA, not coffee... Coffee clashes with the ginger in quite a bad way, I can tell you, whereas a cup of Earl Grey tea becomes even more perfect with a slice of toast with rhubarb-and-ginger jam. If you have rhubarb in your garden, give this a go! You will not (I hope and believe) regret it...

Getting down on my knees

2011-07-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

The garden is a bit neglected these days while I spend weekend painting our new apartment, but never mind. The beauty of plants is that they will grow without any attendance from their supposed "owner".

The hedgerow is filling out nicely. It's still too low, of course, but it will get up there eventually. And the lawn is too high, but:

There are advantages to not getting around to mowing the lawn too often. The insects love it, and especially the bees are a treat to watch as they flutter about in the clover. And no, our lawn is not very regulated... We have clover, violets, bellis and loads of other small flowers dotting the lawn when it hasn't been moved for a while.

I love how close they let you get to them; all pictures on this blog are taken with my cell phone camera, so my hand was literally inches from this bumble bee... Hence the title of this entry; I was crawling around on hands and knees, trying to get the best possible picture of this little bee that refused to sit still and pose for me.

Just look at the pollen bags on it's hind legs! Fascinating little critters, really...

The regular honey bees are perhaps less cute, but they're still very welcome guests in our garden!

The thyme from seed is doing well in the courtyard. I guess I should have thinned it, but that will come this weekend when I plan to use some of it for a dressing.

And just because... This is the black dahlia Arabian Night at its blackest; when the sun hits the flower you get the full, deep red velvet sheen of the petals, but in the shade the colour recedes into black and especially against a bright background.

And that's it for now. Off to work I go.

What a Garden Makes

2011-07-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

The snap peas are getting ready to go... They're 4 ft high, and with a row of sweet peas at the back to attract pollinators. And they're MINE! And they started as SEEDS and are now almost at the point where I can start harvesting them.

The white radishes are almost past their prime, really, and I need to start eating them and re-sowing where I've pulled up the plants.

The pears have a long way to go yet, but they're there! Last year our pear tree gave not a single pear, but this year we have perhaps 10 pears... Grand! (The apple tree that gave around three dozens last year has not produced a single apple this year, though, and it seems the flower buds were frozen off before the pollinators had a chance to get to them.)

Like the pear, the plum tree didn't produce any fruit last year, but this year it seems to be doing fine, producing some 40 plums. I look forward to seeing what type of plums they are and whether they're any good or - like our mirabelles - somewhat dull.

In other news, the past Saturday gave Copenhagen approximately 150mm of rain in just two hours... Streets flooded, basements (including the one where we store a large part of the furniture for the new flat) filled with water and disruption to public and private transport, television signals, cell phone reception, and even the national weather forecasting service... Fortunately our furniture seems to have survived relatively unscathed, so all is well for us.

Oh, but I have more pictures... And I need to show them to you!

The red rose that I tore from the courtyard outside my flat last autumn...

And the white rose that came with the house...

And one of the lilies in the courtyard, almost ready to bloom.

And a day lily in bloom...

And the (almost) black dahlia "Arabian Night" that I bought last year.

Oh, and the clematis... This one is the most spectacular, its dark puple flowers hover like exotic butterflies around the white post of the patio, adding a dash of dark, rich colour to the greenery of the lawn and the post-bloom rhododendrons towards the road.

After all, while I love the utilitarian plants in the garden, a garden is essentially - the way I use it - a frivolous pursuit and in some way a luxury. Just like a blooming flower that serves no practical purpose, other than to be pretty and to make people happy. The garden does that for me.

The peas, the day lilies, the pears; all serve the common purpose of creating one happy Flâneur Gardener. In spite of torrential downpours, basement flooding and whatever.

St. John's Eve Revelry/Flânerie

2011-06-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here are a few images from St. John's Eve in Frederiksberg Gardens:

Estimated attendance was 30-40,000 people, and for Denmark this is quite a lot - about 0.5% of the population of Denmark... And this was just one bonfire of thousands and thousands up and down the country.

And here's your's truly, raising a glass to a lovely summer evening:

Happy Solstice to all

2011-06-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

I wish you all a very happy solstice! At least here in the Northern hemisphere it's the longest day today, with the sun rising at 4:26am and setting at 21:59 in the garden, making the day 10 hours and 44 minutes longer than the shortest day this past winter...

This is the wonder of living in the North, even if it's not even the far North; we might have dismally long, dark winter nights, but we also have these white nights where even in the middle of the night we only get a sort of murky twilight but never darkness.

In Denmark we celebrate the solstice a few days late, on the Eve of St. john. On this night bonfires are light throughout the country but especially along the beaches, and to me that is a very special tradition. When I lived in London I once celebrated St. John's Eve by flying to Denmark on the 23rd to go to a bonfire by the beach and then back again the next day.

There are all sorts of ancient superstitions connected with the bonfires; they're supposed to scare away the forces of evil and should in this way help secure the harvest later on, but they also have a sinister echo of barbaric executions, as it is tradition to place a doll representing a witch on top of the bonfire. I've never really been keen on that, really... I much prefer the more recent tradition where this year's high school graduates throw their notes from the past three years into the bonfire; seems less morbid, somehow, than re-enacting an execution by burning.

The bonfire, however, is a wonderful celebration of light, which is of course also at the origin of Christmas celebrations, and as I won't have time to go up to the garden on Thursday evening to attend the community bonfire on the beach there, instead I shall go tonight and have my own little solstice celebration, though perhaps without a bonfire but with lots of sunshine according to the local forecast. I can then go to one of the many bonfires in Copenhagen on Thursday if the weather is nice.

So once again, a very happy solstice to all, whether it is the summer or winter solstice where you are.

Flâneur sans Gardening

2011-06-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

I came back from a 4-day weekend in Paris last night, and it's been an amazing trip.

We did absolutely nothing. We haven't been inside a single museum, church or such sights, and we have had no plans for what to do each day when we left the small studio apartment we'd rented. Flânerie, in other words.

That's what I love about visiting a city that one knows so well; there's no real need to do anything in particular except enjoy life and our time together.

The picture is one of only two that I took during our trip; a facade in the Rue de Montmorency that is covered in plants, from ivy to bamboo. I figured that would make a sort of link between the flânerie and the gardening...

Parents and New Plants

2011-06-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just as a follow-up to my last post, here's a picture of what the kayak looked like on top of my parents' tiny car...

A list of the plants my parents brought comes towards the end of this post...

And this is the recently acquired spare spare bedroom... We only have one bedroom in the main house and a small spare bedroom in the annex, so in order for me to have some sort of privacy while my grandmother inhabited the main bedroom and my parents occupied the spare bedroom I went out and bought a small tent. I love sleeping outdoors, and even in a tent you get a much more immediate connection to the nature around you.

My parents are fussy people. They need to be constantly entertained, it seems, and I some times struggle with that constant need to "do something together". I like lying back with a book and relax, so how does one reconcile these two modes of enjoying oneself?

Easy, once I found the answer...

My dad mowed the entire lawn, together with him I sawed up a pile of wood into foot-long pieces and then he played around with the electric wood cleaver and turned it all into suitable logs for the fireplace. He's looking old and tired, mainly because he really needs to gain weight, but there's still work in the old man, and he really seemed to enjoy being able to do something for me that helps me and makes him feel he still has a "value".

Meanwhile my mother volunteered to weed the Ambitious Border, and then she went on to extend it with the perennials they'd brought, which basically meant digging up another 2 meters of lawn... Then she weeded the Evening border, and finally she sowed annuals between all the perennials to fill out the borders this year.

And every series of works needs an overseer. In this case Freja, my parents' dog who is named after the Norse goddess of love and fertility. What better overseer for a garden, eh?

It was a good visit, and I'm so pleased they seemed to really enjoy the house and the garden. And I'm so pleased with all the work they did, leaving me free to cut back the "cemetary" by 50%:

We have a low yew by the entrance to the garden, and while it does provide some seclusion from the drive it is also just ugly and straggly and not very nice... We refer to it as The Cemetery because it looks kind of depressing and had a completely unbecoming shape. But now half of it has been cut away, keeping only the upright parts that shelters the garden from the drive. This leaves a couple of square meters of mainly bare soil (with a few privet plants that can be transplanted to provide more coverage towards the road) that might eventually be turned into a perennial bed or be planted with a sun-loving shrub or bush. And you know what? Now that I've cut it in half it has the chance to show off it's beautiful branches and I'm sort of falling in love with the plant that I used to want to get completely rid of!

The most important plant my parents brought up to the garden this past weekend was a small kolkwitzia amabilis that is a root shoot off their large kolkwitzia. It's tiny still, about half a meter in height and roughly the same diameter, but it will soon grow and begin to seem like more than a small shrub in the lawn just to the right of the "cemetery" in the picture above. I planted it in the lawn, because it's overhanging branches and fountain-like shape will probably shade out everything growing next to it, and besides I quite like solitaire bushes.

They also brought a few groups of goldenrod, which we already have a fair amount of, but it's a nice staple perennial and adds height to any bed, so it's fine by me.

Then there is a single acanthus (which I wrongly called agapanthus in my last post). It's unassuming at present but does have the potential to be a stunner in a year or two.

There were 5-6 small globe thistle plants as well. The husband has previously been less-than-enthusiastic about intentionally planting thistles in the garden, but I suspect he will be won over when he sees their stunning lilac flowers that seamlessly transforms into the round blue seed heads. (Also, it's one of the few perennials that happily end up growing to 2 meters in height in Denmark, and that alone is, surely, a reason to have it.)

They also brought a very leggy root shoot off a variegated evergreen shrub that loves full sun. It's roots were quite small, though, so we chopped it down and set the cut-offs as cuttings in some pots in a shady corner, leaving only 30cm of the 2-meter shoot on the root and planting that in the hedgerow as a temporary measure. It will not get enough sun there, but while it establishes its roots it will be in a shaded and moist position that should suit it.

A small cotoneaster is confusing me... I don't know quite where it will look "right", so for now it has been "dumped" behind the annex. Perhaps it should go into a large pot in the courtyard, but I can't really make up my mind.

There were some other perennials as well that I can't recall at the moment, but then there is the emotional star piece; a blue anemone - anemone hepatica - that my grandmother brought. A tiny, easily missed plant, but pretty as you like and with a stunning shade of blue that few other flowers can produce.

My Newest Garden Ornament

2011-06-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've just tidied away the last gardening tools and sat down with a cup of coffee, and now I can hear the rain begin to fall on the roof over the terrace. If that's not timing, what is?

This weekend my parents came bearing gifts of kolkwitzia amabilis, cottoneaster, agapanthus, globe thistles, (more) goldenrods and an unidentified evergreen shrub with variegated foliage, and then my grandmother - who is 88 and can't travel with vast numbers of plants came with a small pot of pennywort (Anemone hepatica or Hepatica nobilis, depending on which taxonomists you listen to) from her garden.

However... My parents also brought something that was not a present from them: My wedding present from my husband! Our garden is now equipped with a 5.5 meter sailing vessel:

All right, I know it's upside-down in the picture, but it's a kayak. A real, honest-to-God kayak! I've known about it since the wedding, but because the kayak used to belong to my older brother it had to be transported over here and that didn't happen 'till my parents brought it on the roof of their car.

It's beautiful! Sleek, slender, gracious and absolutely marvelous. And right now the only water it will see for a while is rain, sadly. I still have to buy a pagaj, which is the real term for the double-sided paddle used in a kayak.

I know this is VERY tangential on a gardening blog, but never mind...

I've been rowing kayaks since I was 11, but it's been at least 4 years since I was last in a kayak comparable to this; it's a proper racing kayak, so balance is gained mainly through speed just like on a bicycle. Most people will be able to go less than 2ft in it before falling over and landing in the water; I've tested it with a bunch of rowers who were used to rowing single scullers, and none of them even made it a foot after I let go of the kayak...

What has this, then, to do with the garden? A lot, of course, since location is key to a garden, and given that we're so close to the fjord that I can pick up the kayak in one hand, the pagaj (once bought) in the other and walk down for a morning outing on the water. Roskilde Fjord is quite narrow, so the water tends to be calm and perfect for this type of kayak. (Were I to take this to Greenland, home of the kayak, I'd be a fool to even go near the sea with it, since it's only suited for calm waters and only for rowing close to the shore.

Anyway, this is the most beautiful, romantic present anybody has ever given me. He's given me the calm and quiet of being all by myself out on the fjord, and that really is something. I've married well! For more reasons than one.

Just HOW ambitious is The Ambitious border?

2011-06-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

Well, today during my lunch break I went for a walk as I normally do, and now the borders at the garden of the Royal Library are finally beginning to fill out and bloom, though they will get better as summer continues...

THAT'S what I want for the Ambitious border... Except it will be the Ambitious border on one side, the Sunny border on the other side and then about 4 meters of lawn between so there's room to set up a table for lunch.

Is it ambitious enough? Hard to tell without showing what I've got so far...

I'd say it'll be another 10 years before the Ambitious border will be as stunning as the first picture, but in a few years it should already be well on its way, and perhaps even next summer it will look a bit less bare.

The rather sparse planting is actually a deliberate choice, since the plants are mainly vigorous growers and will spread out over time, but it does make it look a bit forlorn this first year. Still, the plants are surviving nicely and a lot of them look set to bloom, even. The aqualegias are just past their bloom, the daylilies are budding up nicely and even the sickly hosta is doing it's bit. And then there are the goldenrods, astilbes and Joe Pye weeds that will take any rough-handed treatment you give them. (And I've got plenty more goldenrods, irises and other perennials in other parts of the garden, waiting to be transplanted whenever I get around to digging them a permanent home.)

Eventually the Ambitious Border will be at least 15 - perhaps 20 - meters long and 3 meters wide, which is a meter wider than at present, but that will take time that I'm not sure I will have this year. The Sunny Border opposite it will stretch the width of the house including the covered terrace, so some 10 meters in length and perhaps just 1.5 meters wide, but that will happen after the bulk of the Ambitious Border has been set up.

Does this sound ambitious enough for you?

What will Santa - I mean Mum - bring?

2011-06-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Back in November I visited my parents because my dad was in hospital (it was pretty serious, but he's much better now), and I spent a lot of time with my mum, some of it digging things up in her garden so I could bring it back with me to our garden. I got around 40kg/90lb of perennials that I schlepped on trains and buses across the country in a suitcase and a sports bag and eventually planted in our garden.

Well, my parents are coming over this weekend, and my mother has said she'll bring as many plants as she has time to dig up... Basically a mixed car trunk of perennials. FREE perennials from my childhood garden. Awr...

I'm so excited to see what they will bring. I know my mother has had a small kolkwitzia amabilis sitting in a pot over the winter that she wants to give me, but apart from that I don't know what else she'll bring.

It feels a bit like Christmas approaching, really... The only problem is I don't really know where to put the plants, since I don't have any free space, but I guess we can make space somewhere. After all, we have plenty of lawn that can be turned into flower beds, and as long as I do the hardest work myself I'm sure my parents would love to help.

Anyway... Free plants? Delivered to the doorstep? That makes for a happy Soren, I can tell you!

What have I done?

2011-06-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

I could write a to-do list, but these can so easily make gardening - or indeed any other task - seem like a chore, so here comes a list of what I have done in the garden this year so far:

Vegetable Garden:

Created three raised beds
Sown peas, beans, radishes and marigolds
Erected trellis for the climbing beans
Planted tomatoes in a capillary box
Kept the beds weed-free

Ambitious Border:

Carved a 7-8 meter stretch of flower bed out of the lawn
Edged the rear of the border with paving slabs to create a clear limit towards the hedge
Planted the bed with Perennials and a few annuals
Kept the border more or less weed-free

Roses:

Removed stray plants and grass around the two roses by the South-West of the house
Planted a new not-red rose in a huge pot in the courtyard
Successfully fought off aphids by the hundreds (thousands?) with a non-toxic home-made spray
Tried to reign in the climbing rose by the North-East side of the house, but not been quite ruthless enough with it...

The Hedgerow:

Torn down most of the Ugly Fence (with the help of a couple of winter storms)
Created a low retaining wall of turf and filled in with soil
Moved poplars, forsythia and various other plants from all over the garden to the hedgerow

The Sunny Border:
(South-West of the covered terrace)

Not so much...
Torn out long grass around the few plants that already grew there
Trained the honeysuckle along the low wall of the terrace
Dug up (most of) the hops that intermingled with the honeysuckle
Strung up twine for the clematis to climb
Supported the perennial sweet peas with twigs from the compost pile

The Evening Border:

Kept it weed-free
Planted alium (that are failing dismally, probably due to too little sun)
Planted a fourth clematis and strung up twine for it to climb

The Courtyard:

Planted up 30 pots with a variety of plants
Built brick planter out of bricks found behind the annex
(Almost finished) painting table and chairs
Sown a few herbs

The Lawn:

(Somebody else) installed drainage through the lawn all around the house
Mowed the entire lawn only once (last week...)

See? I could have written a to-do list just as long, but that would make me feel like I'd done nothing so far, when in fact I think I've done at least a fair bit. Sometimes it pays off to focus on the past, rather than the future.

Lots of things have actually been tidied up since this picture was taken a week ago

Ah... I feel good now! And I look forward to slowly adding more to the list as the year progresses. The borders all look a bit bare, since the plants have not really settled in yet, but they will over the year and next year it will look entirely different and much nicer. And within a few months I will be able to lunch (partly) on veg from the garden while I sit in the shade of the oak and enjoy the view.

Summer Time and the living is easy...

2011-06-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I left work early and made my way up to the summer house for a long weekend. Thursday was Ascension Day, and in the finance industry we also get the Friday off for free, so I had planned to spend a day or two up there with my mother-in-law before she would then have visitors from Friday to Sunday.

Volunteering for a couple of days alone with your mother-in-law? Indeed! We seem to get along just fine, and we had a great couple of days together in the wonderful sunshine. I was literally outside from 5am to 11pm each day, and in the end I extended my stay with another day, which meant that since the mother-in-laws friends would be allotted the main bedroom and I didn't feel like sharing a room with my MiL I ended up sleeping outside in the hammock.

Imagine waking up to the rising sun, the chirping of little birds and the freshness of the open air! Sounds rather like a peaceful awakening, no? No! I woke up because I could feel a strange weight on my belly, and when I opened my eyes there was a huge crow sitting on top of me... Now, the crow got as startled as I did when I woke up, so it immediately took off, meaning that my Saturday morning started with a vision of large flapping black and gray wings... I like nature, but all things in moderation, especially first thing in the morning!

Also we have a few blooming roses, and more on their way. This one above is one that was already there when we bought the place last year, but the little red rose next to it (that I pulled from the ground outside my apartment before the bulldozers arrive to re-do the landscaping) seems to be preparing at least a few buds and the large white climbing rose outside the bedroom window will probably start blooming within the next week. And then there's a rose I forgot to take a picture of; a red rose that I bought for my husband because he likes red roses. It has one flower and one bud , but the red colour of the petals? Stunning, but not very red. At all. in fact, it's a slightly darker shade of peach than the centre of the white rose pictured above... Ah, well; that's what you get for buying a rose in a supermarket, but it's pretty all the same.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

2011-05-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

"I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is, you'll agree, a certain je ne sais quoi oh so very special about a firm young carrot"

(Quote from the movie "Withnail and I")

Now, I do realise that the small plants above are peas and not carrots, but I think the dear old Uncle Monty in the movie did have a point that there is something alluring about growing vegetables and seeing them sprout with the knowledge that one day in a not so very distant future, these plants will be supplying your dinner table.

It's very satisfying in a way that is not superior, but different to growing purely ornamental plants. I also feel great satisfaction upon watching a budding rose (rose petals are lovely in salads or marmalades, of course, but I doubt most people grow them for this reason), but the vegetable garden will always have a special place in my heart.

And it's so EASY! That's almost the best part; it really just takes a plot of bare soil and then you pop in the seeds and watch them shoot and grow.

The vegetable garden

2011-05-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind on the vegetable garden, but fortunately my main goal for this year was just to have plenty of beans and peas, and these should do all right, even if I've come up to a late start due to the drainage project.

This picture is actually a couple of weeks old, so the little pea shoots in this row are already much larger. This bed is an old cold frame where the glass has broken, so I decided I would use it as a bed anyway. Beside the row of peas at the back there will be a row of low yellow beans (haricots) at the front of the bed, and that's it for this bed.

And in this picture you can see the two raised bed frames that I made out of pallet wood from a fire wood delivery last autumn. The rear bed was sown with low peas in early May, whereas the front one was only sown with beans last weekend. These beans are climbers, so I've made a trellis to support them and when they grow up they will also help block a view into a neighbour's back garden. The row towards the neighbour is standard green haricots, whereas the row towards our garden is purple/black haricots.

(Oh, and between the two rows of peas I've sown some white radish seeds that came as a bonus with a seed order, and between the beans I've sown pot marigolds because my mother and grandmother always had them in their vegetable gardens.)

I love beans... And by choosing varieties in different colours I'm hoping that the vegetable garden will actually be rather pretty to look at, especially since it's bordering the part of the lawn that gets the most sun and is consequently used the most.

And peas are a must for me. I have fond childhood memories of both the peas in my parents' vegetable garden AND of roaming through the pea fields on summer holidays at my grandparents'. I've only sown snap peas, since they're mainly intended to be eaten fresh, rather than to provide a stockpile for the winter to be stored in the freezer.

I'm going up to the garden again tonight for the weekend. The weather forecast is for plenty of rain, but hopefully also a bit of dry weather tomorrow before lunch, so I might get a little done in the garden and then I guess I can spend the rainy afternoon painting garden furniture. Looking forward to it!

Free flowers are the best!

2011-05-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

This is the large blue/purple iris that I tore out of the ground by hand back when I rescued a load of plants from bulldozers before they began the landscaping around my apartment last autumn. Only one of the tubers is blooming this year, but the rest look healthy and I have full confidence that next year they will be joining in.

Same flower, different view. I love how the flower is different from every angle; the shapes and colours somehow shifting dramatically as you walk around it. Also, notice the nearly black bud on the stem where the next flower will appear once the top flower withers away.

All right, all right... That's the last picture of this iris, but i just thought I'd show you yet another side and yet another range of colours. This is probably the most dramatic plant in our garden, and I'm so glad i ran out and tore it from the ground that evening before the bulldozers started the next morning.

This iris has a special place in my heart. It was one of the presents from mum, and I've loved it since I was a kid. This wasn't a few solitary tubers torn from the ground, but two large (1ft diamenter) clumps that I dug up from my mother's garden and transported by train and bus across the country to the place where it now is preparing to bloom. I love the yellow patterns on the petals, especially when it's like this; recently emerged from its sheath, but not yet unfurled in it's full glory.

And this yellow iris? I cannot take credit for this one, at least not fully. It is from my husband's grandparents' allotment where we went at Easter and were given free reign on the allotment with a spade and two large cardboard boxes that ended up full of perennials. (I might have had more opinions about which plants we HAD to have than my husband, but I don't think he minded.)

And then the last iris; a yellow iris that was in the garden when we bought the summer house. Perched on the edge of the small stream behind the house it's very much out-of-sight, but I love going back there and enjoying this little secret beauty. In time, though, I suspect it will join its family in the garden proper, perhaps in a dedicated patch of iris in part of the Ambitious Border. It won't be until autumn at the earliest, though, and maybe not even this year.

So there it is. A few examples of free flowers, and some are even heirlooms from two gardens that meant a lot to my husband and myself when we grew up. I like this mix of his and my family history, thrown in with something "new" - at least to us. And I love that some of the most spectacular blooms in the garden have come with no price tags attached.

Where did they go?

2011-05-10T22:43:00.001-07:00

The noxious garlic potion that Fer recommended is certainly doing exactly what it was meant to. Last weekend the aphids were neck-a-neck on this rose, and last night I could only find 3-4 of them!

Definitely a success!

I'm not sharing my roses!

2011-05-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

As you can see, one of our roses is severely infested with aphids... The spider in the web next to this rose seems to get a lot of them (at least it's cobweb is full of dried-up aphids!) but that's nowhere near enough.

Fortunately, Fer over at My Little Garden in Japan recently posted a recipe for an aphid repellent. Basically it's water with washing-up liquid like my mother used to use, but with added garlic. And let me tell you, it reeks...

And spraying it on in slightly breezy weather? Not the smartest thing I've ever done...

Now i just have to continue to re-apply it every now and then and see if it works!

What Norwegians can do...

2011-05-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I've been in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, from Thursday to Sunday with work, and though I found it rather inspiring and marvellous, that's not what this entry is going to be about.

On Thursday afternoon I managed to find half an hour between meetings and work socialising to do some sightseeing, and though I've been to Oslo numerous times with work I've never before found the time - or energy - to go see the new-ish opera house.

The architects behind this stunning building are Snøhetta, one of the most interesting contemporary architecture firms - in my book.

The building is overlooking the Bjørvika, a small bay in the Oslo Fjord, and it really makes the most of the connection with the water, with it's white marble terraces sloping down into the bay.

The vast, sloping roof of the building has been clad in white marble like the walls, and on sunny days it is crowded with people lounging about on the slopes or jogging laps around the main stage tower. I love how inhabited the place is; it has become one of the most popular outdoors hang-outs in the city, taking on functions that we normally associate with parks and greenery.

Everywhere the slopes are broken up by seemingly random grooves and changes in the level so the great expanse of the roof does not become a monotone slab of marble, but rather references the irregularities of a sloping fell side. It somehow feels organic, though the exterior is composed exclusively of straight lines and hard materials.

Inside, though... The main auditorium - as in so many other opera houses - pushes out into the foyer, but while this is hardly a novel or innovative move, the handling of the surface is exquisite. Narrow strips of wood, creating a mosaic effects by their random depths that easily adapts to the curve of the wall whilst adding texture.

The next picture shows a part of the foyer that I find almost baroque, in the best possible sense. The alternation of convex and concave curves, the play with light and shadow, the sense of extravagant ornamentation through the simple material of the wood; it seems to repeat some of the main features of the Italian baroque, but in a clearly Scandinavian form language.

Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Oslo I can strongly recommend that you drop by this wonderful building. If nothing else, it's the perfect place to relax with a cup of take-away coffee while enjoying the view out through the fjord!

New Homes For Plants And Gardeners

2011-05-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

Part of the garden still looks a bit like a battlefield after the drain has been put in. (They've completed everything except the finishing of the wells, so we now have a working drain!) Once they clear out for good I'll start tidying up; raking soil off the lawn will instantly make it look much less messy and leave only the lines of bare soil over the drain.

Anyway, the most important plan for the weekend was to create the first part of the Ambitious border. Since the completed border will be some 20-25 meters long I'll have to tackle it one section at a time, and this weekend I hoped to create at least 6 meters of it.

I put some old ugly cement paving stones to create a clean line at the back, simply so it will be easier to see where to weed and where to just let grow. Up against the hedge we will just let the buttercups do their thing, and I will also plant out a few saplings of trees and bushes there to widen the hedge. The border itself, though, will have to be weeded ruthlessly for the next couple of years until the border is established, and then the weeding regime can hopefully be reduced a bit.

This was one of the easier plant to move, though it didn't actually go into the border. I discovered that a few of the annual lupins from last year had self-sown in the small holding bed, so I lifted those into pots to ensure that they're given pride of place eventually when the border is larger.

Also, I like the idea of holding this tiny piece of garden in my hand; it's this sort of thing that gives me a deep satisfaction, seeing things grow and develop by themselves, but giving them a helping and guiding hand...

This is what the 6-meter stretch I completed looks like. There's an awful lot of bare soil, but I hope the plants will fill out over the next month or two, as this stretch has been used for the plants that we already had in pots and stored in one of the beds for the vegetable garden. I made the stretch slightly narrower than I want it to be eventually, but for starters I think it's important to get the hole length of the border created, and then we can always expand the width over time. (I'd like it to be at least a meter wider...)

Plants:
At the back:

Joe Pye weed
Gypsophila
Astilbe
Goldenrod

At the front:

Unknown orange-flowering bulb from my mother's garden
White, red and purple peonies
Dicentra spectabilis / bleeding heart
Orange hemerocallis / Day lilies
Hosta
Aqualegias / columbines
Centaurea montana / perennial cornflower

When you see the border from the other side, you can see how much longer it needs to be. But if I can do 6 meters on one day Saturday, then surely it will be possible... Though my back will be aching and my knees challenged!

And this? Well, I also found time to make some rhubarb jam with ginger and lemon, which is actually the first time I've ever made a recipe from Mrs. Beeton. The book also includes a recipe for roast black swan, but I'm guessing I'll never get to try that one out.

And finally to MY new home... This is a picture from our new apartment. I got the keys yesterday, and it truly is a beautiful place. It's not nearly as stately as the picture suggests, but it will make a lovely home for two eccentric gentlement of a certain persuasion. The picture is taken from the future sitting room, looking into the dining room and with the library at the far end. French double doors between the sitting room and dining room, solid double doors between the dining room and the library, where one should be able to sequester oneself...

Planning the weekend...

2011-04-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Create at least part of the Ambitious Border and plant out plants, seedlings and bulbs.
Position raised beds for vegetable garden, fill with soil/compost and sow peas and radishes.
Remove all pots from the Courtyard and one by one move them back in when they've been planted/sown.
Enjoy the garden!
Go back to Copenhagen for the handover of the keys to the new apartment...

This was the view from the new apartment when we stopped by during Easter to check up on what we will need to do when we start redecorating, so as you can see we won't be starved for green views when we move in.

It's in a central part of Copenhagen, but overlooking one of the largest cemeteries in the city, so our neighbours across the road will include people like Niels Bohr and Hans Christian Andersen. And the apartment itself is beautiful; three rooms en suite - sitting room, dining room and library - with the view above and double doors between each room, and then bedroom, bathroom and kitchen towards the back. It needs a lot of love and attention, but then it will surely reward us with a beautiful home.

I can't wait to be in the garden, and I can't wait to be in our new apartment. Life is good!

It's not sakkura, but...

2011-04-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

On Monday evening I went up to the garden again to enjoy the last evening of the Easter break. The "normal" mirabelle started blooming on Friday, and the purple mirabelles seem to be a bit behind, but now they're beginning their show:

The flowers on the purple mirabelles are less profuse than on the normal mirabelle, but I quite like that. These pink blossoms dotted throughout the branches are quite delicate and charming, whereas that shade of pink might look a touch, well, like Barbie's Dream Tree if the tree was entirely covered in flowers...

White flowers en masse, though, is always a touch more subtle to look at, and the normal mirabelle is now at full bloom, attracting hoards of bumble bees, honey bees and other insects, so there is a constant - and LOUD - humming when you stand under the tree.

I was especially thrilled to see so many bumble bees; we often see them one by one, but seeing literally dozens of them, hovering around the flowers on the tree, was incredible! Getting a shot of even one of them, though, was rather difficult due to the delay on my phone's camera and their constant movement. Still, considering that all pictures on this blog are taken with a phone, I think I'm managing to get some decent shots every now and then, even if the bumble bees defeated my camera.

Last night I spent doing laundry in my flat and - more interestingly - making plans for the weekend. The drainage work should be completed by then, so first of all I need to set up the raised beds for the vegetable garden and quickly get some peas in the ground. Then comes the daunting task of getting the Ambitious Border started... I'm a little bit scared, but I need to finalise at least a rough sketch of the planting for the border so I won't have to make everything up as I go along. (Especially since some of the flowers are still just seeds in packets or trays, and I need to make sure they will be allotted space to be features in their own right once they get going.)

Our Garden Gnome

2011-04-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

From Monday to Wednesday this week we've had our very own garden gnome. Short, a touch on the "rotund" side, shape-wise and not prone to excessive talking.

But he was efficient! Work started on our drainage project (finally!) this week, and it's now just over half-done, with the rest set to be completed within the coming week.

The shot above shows why we need to help nature lead water away from our garden; at the bottom of this 16-inch trench you can see the gray clay that lies under the top soil of our garden, and this is what makes it impossible for large quantities of rain to seep into the ground and what gave us the flooded lawn last summer and autumn.

Even after a series of dry and sunny days, the water seeps readily into the trench, so even with the drain in place there's no way we will ever have a very dry garden, but we can eliminate the flooding and generally make the garden a safer place for plants.

We will have two main pipes running through the garden either side of the house, both originating in the same well at the lowest part of the garden and ending in a pumping well at the back of the annex where surplus water can be pumped out into the little stream during excessive periods of rain. Also, the downspouts from the house and the annex will be connected to the drain, ensuring that we bring the water away from the house.

I can't wait to have it completely done, since only then will I be able to start planting the Ambitious Border down one side of the garden. I've been hoarding plants for this border since autumn and have started several annuals from seed to be planted out once the earth works are done and there's no risk of a digger dumping a pile of soil on top of the plants or running over them.

April? Definitely not the cruelest month in my book...

My Garden Is My castle...

2011-04-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

The weekend before Easter I finally got my act together and got started on my long-planned turf wall that will form the back of the raised hedgerow towards the road.

Cutting turf

I started out by cutting the outline of the strips with the spade and then undercutting them by sliding the spade under each strip about two inches down, and the turf behaved exactly as I had hoped for; the grass roots had a dense fibrous texture that held the strips nicely together even when handled in a rather rough manner.

Carting turf

I started out by cutting a barrow-full of strips and then carting them down to the hedgerow, but after a while I realised it was probably as quick to just carry each strip down there and putting it in place at once, so that was a pretty good work-out, considering that each strip probably weighed in at around 30-40 pounds.

Stacking turf

Building the retaining wall was easy, considering that I come from the country that invented the Lego bricks... Sure, my little wall wasn't perfectly level or straight, but it was fairly sturdy, especially once i had staked it with bamboo for every foot or so and added some horizontal lengths of bamboo canes between the top layers to keep it from being too wobbly in the middle of the straight sections.

The result

The wall came up to about 16 inches, and then I started pouring in soil and stuck in "weeds" from around the garden. Poplar shoots from the lawn, forsythia off-shoots and whatever else I had at hand. I felt rather accomplished (and aching) once it began taking shape, though the photo above only shows the half-finished result.

I went up to the garden with my husband and my mother-in-law for the beginning of the Easter days, so on Maundy Thursday my husband and I created one more section of raised hedgerow to the right of this picture, meaning we have now made a good attempt at creating a living replacement for the missing sections of fence. Also, we poured on more soil in front of the raised bed I'd made and planted his birthday presents (two viburnums and a white lilac), so the entire hedgerow is now 5 meters by 1.5 meter.

This sort of planting is where our heavy clay soil really comes into its own; first of all it is formidably heavy to move about, and secondly it holds moisture very well, so even after 5 days of sunny weather with temperatures up to 20C / 70F the soil was still moist just under the surface. This means that even without watering, these plants should have a pretty good chance of being happy here.

It does, though, seem a bit like we've created our own little version of the Dannevirke... This earthen rampart will, surely, keep the German emperor from invading our little plot of land, should he ever wish to.