poppies – something from seaview

Potted gardening

I have been busy, busy, busy out in the garden over the last month, seizing every available wind-free moment to get out and tidy up. As I’m a fair weather gardener (preferring not to be out when gusting westerlies are blasting around) that limits the available time somewhat.

Part of the drive to get on with the garden has been the need for pots! You see, we garden increasingly in pots, and over the last month the impetus has been to get the summer plants out and the bulbs in.

Let me take you through our gardening year and show you how we are increasingly becoming a (potty?) potted garden …

The first spring flowers – always a great lift – are in the pots on our patio. These are February’s Iris Reticulata from a couple of years back. The plants here flower first because the patio faces south and is the most protected part of our garden, sheltered from all winds except the extreme (and very nasty) easterlies …Hard on their heels are daffodils, tulips, narcissi and forget-me-nots …Then – come April and May – we start serious potting. The bulbs are all turfed out (to be replaced with fresh next year) and we pot up sweet peas (you can see them staked against the wall) and seeds …Seeds, seeds and more seeds …We grow poppies, cosmos, dahlias, nicotiana, nigella etc etc – all in pots. Early in the spring we have to accommodate these seedling pots and they find homes all around the garden. Here they are beside the raised veg beds …Meanwhile the main flower bed is looking just gorgeous with the plants that are growing in these little beds …The trouble is that these flower beds are just crammed with spring goodness, and there’s not much space for later flowering plants …Come mid-June we got an evil vicious blast of easterly wind, and this is what it did to the pot beside our front door! One of the reasons we grow plants in pots is so that we can move them at such times, but alas, this one’s just too big to move …It also caught the bottom of the raspberry plants, but luckily the other pots are protected by the raised beds … Everything recovered of course, and in early July the pots took on a life of their own – bursting with growth, full of promise …The patio beds were really flourishing now – and so were the pots around and about. Hard to tell which is which …The sweet peas we potted up earlier were doing very well in their protected spots beside the bench …There was a feeling of abundance and leisure about the place …The biggest problem with growing so much in pots is told in this picture which I rather think was taken with Ilsa in mind. But it’s the backstory that’s really important here – yes, the hose. All that constant watering! And this year – with hot hot days for so very long – called for more watering than usual …But while all is glorious around the patio, these little beds by the fence look tired and weary. It is now that the pots come into their own. Spread around in the flower beds, they don’t add much yet, but just wait – they will!In the pots round the patio we had some rather stunning black poppies in flower, and they demonstrate so well why we grow so many seeds in pots. These seedlings need nurturing – sown in the flower beds they are often lost, eaten by snails, or just buried by other more dominant plants …Black poppies lose those sultry black petals all too easily, but when the plants are grown in pots we can easily take them in when strong winds are forecast …Come mid-August the pots in the flower beds are beginning to prove their worth with fabulous blasts of colour … This pot of mixed cosmos and poppy plants is my favourite …Look at the light on the sea behind these pots of poppies and nicotiana!This September the landscape was dominated by the rich brown of the ploughed field. The hot hot summer had pushed everything ahead. Normally our view would be of golden fields for some time into September, but this year they are long gone. With this view the pots are only just holding their own …The Dahlias still look striking against the blustery sky …Happy gardening days for our little family! (this was before Ilsa’s attack that I wrote of in my last blog) What were Stephen and Ilsa talking about?!!And on the patio the sweet peas pots are still doing very well though everything else is looking a little lack-lustre …But come October it’s all change again – time to empty pots and plant up veg seedlings to overwinter in the greenhouse! These are spinach, lettuce and salad greens. They won’t produce a great deal, but it’s still nice to be able to pick some fresh salad veg over the winter …And the other pots? Well, they’re all sorted, emptied and tidied away – the glorious summer flowers consigned to the compost heap.

New spring bulbs have been planted, and here are the pots today, 24th November, – still a few lingering calendula and nasturtium flowers, but those pots at the back which look so dormant are – well exactly that!Watch this space come spring!

Goodbye 2016!

So many ups and downs in 2016! It’s been a topsy turvy year – a year of sadness and upsets for my family and a deeply shocking year in global politics. I have travelled through the year with a pervading sense of loss.

But, in the last few days I’ve been indulging myself drawing up a #bestofnine2016 for my Instagram feed. I’ve looked through all the pictures I’ve posted online, and selected the nine pictures that most capture 2016 for me. It has taken me quite a time to finally make a selection, but it was a good exercise because after that, I didn’t feel so bad. So many little ordinary happinesses and pleasures that I have taken for granted! Here are my chosen nine:Top left: That’s my dearest husband Stephen and our lovely cat, Poe, who passed away in her 20th year, this August. This photograph was taken on her last night of life, when we knew she was extremely ill and would have to visit the vet next day, probably to be put down. She is curled up asleep, comfy and trusting, next to Stephen, on the sofa, as she regularly did. RIP Poe, faithful friend.Top middle: Lots of little pleasures here. My knitting, my nails – and my travel knitting bag! Those of you who know me well will know I almost always have my nails painted – and doesn’t this colour match the knitting so well! The Solace bag was a generous gift from Rebecca of Needle & Spindle and symbolises to me the constant comfort of knitting, and the friendliness of the wonderful online community of knitters and makers.Top right: This is our lovely local beach, just five minutes away from our home, and my very grown-up children, visiting from London, on a beautiful blustery day. Stephen and I walk here several times a week, and watch the tides and waves and sands move, the holiday visitors with their families come and go. To share this with my own family is the greatest of all pleasures.Middle right: A golden GiveWrap, made with the Japanese and Indian silk scraps I was given for my birthday, and mixed up with some very treasured pieces of old clothing. It’s been another year of GiveWrap making, sharing the ideas with my cousin Polly, and spreading the word about sustainable wraps.Bottom right: I wrote about the poppies that we grow here in a recent blogpost. They are the best of our gardening in this wonderful place, right up on the north Northumbrian border, exposed to all the elements. Lots of plants won’t grow here – it’s too salty, too windy, too cold. But poppies flourish, and best of all, they self-seed. They grow where they will, not just where I choose. Don’t they adorn the view so very well …Bottom middle: In the turmoil of family events earlier this year, two little cats, Eggy and Ilsa, found themselves needing a new home – so they came to Seaview! And look how these little smilers love it here! These little London softies have become Northumbrian toughies. They’re good at mousing, chasing the neighbours’ cats, exploring their territory, and finding the comfiest places in the house to sleep (usually some special fabrics I have carefully laid out).Bottom left: Nothing says Seaview to me as much as the big skies with their endlessly-changing weather stories. Through the winter months, we are privileged to watch the sunrise as it moves over the south-eastern horizon. So often it is explosively dramatic and exciting. Perhaps best of all, the sun doesn’t rise until a decent time (8.38 as I write on 31st December), so I don’t sleep through it … You never tire of these skies.Middle right: On the 23rd June 2016, Great Britain voted in a referendum on their European Union membership – and we all now know the result. In the days leading up to this referendum, those of us who hoped to stay in the European Union became increasingly worried about the result – as indeed there was good cause – and I was inspired to stitch my Love letter to Europe, incorporating some lines from John Donne’s poem No man is an island. Embroidery isn’t really my thing, so this was a textile experiment for me. It wasn’t, of course, an earth-shaking contribution – really rather feeble – but it was very comforting to stitch at the time. Now it hangs up our stairs, and it speaks to me of our continuing membership of Europe, even if we lose the membership of the European Union.Centre: We saw this little 18th century ladies patch box on display at Traquair House – a very happy daytrip to a most interesting place to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. So there are lots of things bound up in this picture for me: my very happy marriage to Stephen, the pleasures we have out and about exploring this beautiful part of the world, and above all else it speaks of hope. More than anything else in these unsettled times, the message of this little box comes back to me, and I find in it great, great comfort. At some time in its history, it must have given hope to another person. Now again, it is holding a hand out to a dodgy future.Goodness knows what I will be writing at the end of 2017. But hope isn’t a bad travelling companion. So thank you for your company on the journey through 2016, and may you all be sustained by hope in whatever comes your way through the next year. Happy New Year!

Poppy paradise

Everybody in the northern hemisphere seems to be talking autumn – and with good reason: the nights are drawing in, the garden looks shaggy, and it now consists mostly of seedheads interspersed with just a few bright sparks of colour.But before we give into autumn gracefully (and yes, it is very tempting – there is so much about autumn that I love), I want to look back on the poppies we have grown at Seaview this summer because they have been – as ever – a delight.

When we came here in late 2010, there was no garden so we had to dig all the flowerbeds (you can read about our gardening travails here). And that first summer, we filled the newly-dug flowerbeds with poppy and cornflower seeds.An explosive riot of colour!Complemented with heady nights …And strange days of misty beauty …So those are the parent plants of the seedlings we have had all over our garden this summer. Seedlings spilling out into the lane …Some brave little souls here …In the compost heap …Growing beside the garden benches …And through them …They’ve tried to take over the vegetable patch …There were so many poppy seedlings in the veg patch earlier this year that I dug them up and moved them to a communal part of our Seaview holdings. There they have really blossomed.Each year, we add a couple of new packets of poppies. Last year we sowed Ladybird poppy seeds, and they have seeded new generations.This year we added Papaver rhoeas “Mother of Pearl – not a lot of them grew, but those that did were a delight (for us as well as the hover flies).There’s this gorgeous red version too.However, it was definitely Papaver somniferum “Black Single” that stole the show this year.What pleased me particularly was the spectrum of colours these seeds produced. Not just that heady purple-black, but softer dark pinks too.Some frilled white centres, and some frilled black.And when their petals fell into the cat water, it turned a deep dark brown – perhaps worth doing some dye tests with this next year …I love the mix of colours, of varieties as the self-seeding takes over …Rosy pinks here …Candyfloss whites, edged with delicate pink …You never know how each poppy bud is going to develop … will it be fancy frilled …Or just plain very frilly indeed …A glorious mix of colours here!And just as we come to the end of the season, the poppies’ demise hastened by hot feisty winds …A last few Californian poppies start to bloom.Time now to draw in, to make lists, and study seed catalogues: to make plans for next year!

Our Seaview garden story

I have been much in the garden lately, enjoying some fine warm days. And I have been reflecting on how our garden has grown with us – and what solace it has given. But it has been hard work.

As I have written elsewhere, we inherited a garden that had been unloved, and grown wild. The grass was long; some of the fencing had come apart round the oil tank; and in the corner you might just glimpse the sad remains of the plastic shed that had been blown apart in storms.

The first chore was to mow the lawn. The garden was well-fenced in. This was useful while our cat Poe made her preliminary expeditions in her new territory, but meant we couldn’t see the view from the house.So the next task was to reduce the height of the fence. Then we could see the sea! After that we replaced the shed. This sounds an easy task, but was complicated by the fact that we were experiencing very strong winds at the time, and there was no way we could hold the large wood panels correctly in place with the wind blowing as it was. Everyday we checked the Met Office forecasts. A week later our opportunity came and we got the shed up.Sitting in those pots on the patio were the plants and seedlings we’d brought from our old Devon home. We now needed to make some flower beds in our new garden so we could give our much-travelled plants a new home.We started with a large bed in the corner of the garden….. and that’s when we realised how hard it was to dig this ground. Eventually we acquired a pick-axe.We learned that digging flower beds here involved removing all the earth, clay and stones and rubble from the proposed spot, sieving it, putting back a little bit of good earth and buying a lot of expensive compost and top soil to refill the hole!This is why it was such hard work.

One of our neighbours kindly showed us some pictures of the old farm steading when it was being converted into homes. This is our kitchen. That pile of rubble behind the kitchen is our garden. We further learned that our garden was where the tractor was usually parked. To keep the mud under control, the farmer regularly tipped hardcore and rubble on this spot. Aaaaagh!

Despite the hard work, we did finish the little beds beside the fence in time for our little seedlings to be transplanted there in the early spring.It felt such a triumph to sit out in early summer as we came to the end of our first year here.These little beds under the fence were still very empty, so we bought poppy and cornflower seeds. This was the result in high summer – just amazing. We added a conservatory. This has been a huge bonus for us in windy, colder Northumberland, meaning we can shelter ourselves and our more delicate plants.Stephen put a lot of care into making raised beds to grow our vegetables inIn a few years we had transformed the garden with the addition of water butts and three raised beds. And, of course, a greenhouse.This is the last garden bed Stephen dug. Judging by his expression, I think it is the last he is ever planning to dig.Suddenly it looked like a proper garden!And we got produce from the raised beds. Our first year carrots were a little curious.But last year we had these beautiful courgettes …and tomatoes …and chilli peppers too.I cannot believe that we now have what looks like a proper garden! There is still often work to do.The garden is now showing us that it has a mind of its own. How silly of me to think it is our garden. Of course, it isn’t! It belongs to the place itself …

Self-sown poppy seedlings are growing round and through our bench …and in our raised veg beds …and in the lane …Never mind, Poe can still do the fence walk …and she can still find the bird water when she’s thirsty.As for Stephen and me, – well, we’re happy so long as we can still see the view.What we have tried to do, is build a garden where the plants we grow merge into the natural grasses of the fields around us.

The essayist, Francis Bacon, was surely right when he wrote that “…[a garden] is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks.”How lucky we are to have a garden for solace, beauty, abundance – and hopefully a lot less hard work!