Off The Edge Gardening

I have been challenged to take some black and white photographs.  Never one to turn down a dare, unless it involves wing walking or baked beans, I thought it might be fun to give it a go.  So I adjusted my faithful “point and shoot” to Monochrome Magic (or some such setting) and ventured forth into my multi-chrome world.  It was then that I realised just how much colour dominates my life, it is the first thing I notice, what draws my eye and holds my attention.  I had to stop thinking about hues and radiance and start thinking about contrast, light and shade, form.  So I am going to make a week of it.  No cerise or burnt orange, no baby pinks, violent violets or lemon yellows.  Just black, white and all the grey stuff in between.  Should be interesting; or incredibly boring.

After weeks of benign, some might say fairy tale, weather today was a one way ticket on the express train to Storm Land.  Thunder and lightning followed in quick succession with lightning and thunder and the rain (not wanting to be left on the sidelines) was apocryphal. The guttering groaned and the girlies screamed and laughed in the potting shed whilst stripping the lavender flowers from dried stems, struggling to stay awake in the Lethe elixir.

This Salvia splendens (giant form) would keep even the most lavender intoxicated person awake with its jolt of retina bursting red!

A good year for the spangle gall wasp.  I love a bit of spangle, not so sure about the gall and the wasp though.

I love to learn a new word, or in this case two new words.  Slime Flux.  How fantastic is that?  Slime Flux.  And I got to see it as well.  Slime Flux.  And I heard grisly tales of how it can spurt out of a tree like the fountain from hell and smells as rank as rank can be.  Slime Flux.  It was a good day.

I suppose I had better reveal all.  The tree surgeons came to town today and spent their time doing things not to be recommended unless your name is Spider Man, or at a push one of the other more accomplished super heroes.  A sycamore seedling which had become a sycamore adult had to be removed from the cliff edge after many years of pruning and growing and pruning and growing.  It was this very same tree that did the spewing of the hadean gunk or as it was eloquently described by one of the super heroes, the tree poo.  Slime flux, or bacterial wetwood (I will spare you the Latin name), is a bacterial disease that enters the victim through a wound of some description, it could be a pruning scar or mechanical damage.  The pressure that builds up inside the tree causes it to weep odorous sap; this pressure also means that if you cut into the tree the noxious substance dramatically shoots out all over the unsuspecting arborist.  So these lads, who spent a large proportion of the day dangling off a cliff, not only had to put up with hail, thunder and lighting and an annoying curious observer, the trees themselves were fighting back!  They said they were returning tomorrow; I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t bother.

Driving down the M5 in the sheeting rain along with what appeared to be the annual juggernaut migration west and their accompanying curtain of impenetrable spray, it crossed my mind that this two hour drive was a lot of trouble just to visit a National Collection of Nerine sarniensis cultivars.  Trust me, it was worth it.

Working in a coastal garden, albeit at the top of a mountain, means there is an almost constant supply of seaweed available on the beach below.  With this free resource you can create valuable and nutritious feeds and composts full of trace elements vital to healthy soil and therefore healthy plants.  A few years ago, when the builders were in residence we persuaded them to take their dumper truck to the beach where we loaded it with the precious weed.  They then chugged it up that darned hill and dumped it at the entrance for us to barrow around the garden.  Having earlier dug out an overgrown bed of mixed iris to make way for the new Pastel Border I decided that this would an ideal place to store the salty treasure.  Here it would be exposed to the good old North Devon rain which would flush away any excess salinity.   Several weeks later, the new border planted up and looking good, I was showing off my achievement to a visitor.   Pointing out the elegant Rosa “Evelyn”, the delicate Potentilla fruticosa “Elizabeth” and …. to my horror I noticed pair of rather manky looking knickers slap bang in the middle of the bed.  Quickly I pointed out something of supreme interest in the far distance and herded her off in that direction.  Later I returned with the pitch fork and disposed of the lost lingerie.  And no, before you ask, they definitely weren’t mine!

Earlier in the week I was, for my sins, a panelist at a “Gardener’s Question Time” event in a local garden centre.  I was joined by two others whose joint CV’s were extensive and involved phrases such as RHS examiner, lifetime in horticulture, university lecturer, supplier of vegetables to supermarkets, explorer and astronaut*.   Luckily neither of them professed cartwheeling expertise so it was just as well that I could fill this gapping hole in the knowledge base.  It was a bizarre event, one might say an out of body experience, but for all that not unpleasant.  On the whole the audience were a jolly crew with an assortment of questions, some of which I even knew the answer to.  Unfortunately none were queries concerning acrobatics of any sort, although I did have the subject covered.  You will be pleased to know that I brought a little class to the proceedings by telling my knickers in the seaweed story.  Not even the astronaut could trump that!

*fib