out of focus

The high wall at the rear of the garden had been adorned with a selection of unmemorable graffitti, strangely appropriate tags by SHRUB and a disappointing Quixotic horse and rider announcing the Wild West by Focus. They are gone and something new decorates the wall.

Towering over the garden on a background of primrose yellow are now three simple figures. At a distance I find them cheerful and charming. Closer the paint runs are clear and they are melancholic and tear-stained.

I like them.

why i am a pig

or rather a wild boar.

It is nice to see that this winter a new robin has decided to stake out a territory in the garden. Visitors often tell me about their special relationships with friendly robins in their own gardens. I don't usually dissillude them about this but I am more pragmatic about the birds desire for companionship and am free of any 'mister bluebird on my shoulder' Disney expectations. I know I am simply a blundering beast, just another great hairy wildboar rooting through the forest, turning over leaves, twigs and soil exposing worms and grubs for the bird to dart in and snaffle.

I feel used!

the bench is dead!

The green bench nestling in the arms of the tortured fig has probably been the favourite bench in the garden. In summer the leaves of the fig enclose it and the apparent privacy encourages all sorts of business - it is actually overlooked by the Pendrell ladies who inform me of all the fun in jaded tones (they really have seen it all before).

During its long tenure in the garden it has collapsed and been cleverly re-built time and time again to evolve from traditional park bench to a battered green truncation. It has finally succumbed to the abuses of garden life and is now beyond repair.

The joints have rotted from within and there are concerns that some overly-nourished amorous couple could become injured. Despite my gut feeling that a concealed camera would be the better option, reaping financial rewards with a 'You've Been Framed' payment of £250, I have been advised by the garden management committee that it has to go.

in my cups

Growing up the wall at the front of the garden is a Cobaea scandens, The Cup and Saucer Vine (turn an open flower upside down and the name does make sense). This was grown from seed three years ago and has over-wintered with no added protection ever since. Introduced from Brazil it is tender and rarely survives the winter outside, it is usually grown as an annual when, sown in early May, it will quickly grow to twenty feet and be covered with flowers in a few summer months. Here as the weather warms in spring, despite being cut back by cold and by me, the plant re-grows rampantly to cover the whole wall and send strangely rubbery vines twenty feet up into neighbouring trees. I am glad it is held in check by the winter, it must be an awful weed in the tropics.

It has a long season of flower and continues until the weather is grim enough to damage the buds. The flowers are interesting in all stages of growth, from the first origami buds,

that swell to open,

first soft luminous green

then porcelain shell shades

until the colour deepens

and it finishes dark and dusky.

The funereal shade of the mature flower doesn't really stand out in the garden and, despite being continually in flower, there is never a great mass of them out at any one time. I much prefer the white colour variant 'Alba'. I grew this from seed last year and it was much nicer, its green to white progression of bells stood out from a distance and looked fantastic intermingling with the small flowered white clematis 'Summer Snow' (one of my favourite Clematis). Despite my favour it turned up it's toes in the cold and promptly died. Which is often the way of it.

Sparrers!

For the past few months there has been a flock of house sparrows visiting the garden daily and they are usually seen busy on the feeders. The flock has numbered up to 20 individuals, the most I've seen at once here. The only nesting site locally is, I think, at Odhams Walk, Longacre, and this does make them vulnerable to disturbance - I have written in support of the Odhams residents attempts to encourage these lovely birds and to try and protect the dense ivy growth where they nest (ivy does make building managers nervous). I do hope some decide to cross Shaftesbury Avenue permanently and use the nestboxes at the Phoenix this spring. It seems only fair payment after all the seed they've gone through.

holiness - of a sort

In the 'greenhouse' are a few pots of various succulents and cactus that have languished unwatered on the top shelf in far too much shade and they all look rather unhappy. They are waiting patiently for the new building and prime positions on the brightest windowsills but this will be awhile yet. I am sure they will survive stunted as they are until moved to better growing conditions but in the meantime one of the stockplants, mother to numerous plant sale cuttings, is is definitely making its presence felt in my kitchen.

Stapelia grandiflora is one of the South African carrion flowers and the family is adapted to grow in arid scrubland with seasonal rainfall. I collected the seed for this twenty years ago in Zimbabwe at the top of Victoria Falls, they have extremely rapid germination and were up in 24 hours, and have kept a piece of this same plant growing since then. It grows as low spreading clumps of angular stems and in very well drained compost is easy to grow. It is happy dry from October until late April but when in active growth does like regular watering. Like all succulents it must never sit in water or the roots will rapidly rot. After growing all summer the new stems will slowly develop enormous swollen flower buds. They swell to bursting point and pop open into great hairy starfish flowers over six inches across. These have an aroma of decaying meat, not overpowering but very pervasive, and an antelope-corpse-bumholey-ness that flies cannot resist. The mimicry is so convincing that flies will lay their eggs on the petals. These are doomed to shrivel unhatched as each flower only lasts a couple of days or so before withering.

Strange and stinky but I do rather like them.

clucking leaves

In the churchyard next door there are a lot of leaves - an awful lot of leaves. These are being swept up, bagged up and thrown on the dustcart as they are every year. What a waste! Every year I try to get as many as possible brought into the garden to stack till they break down to leafmould. The only problem with this is that they are all plane tree leaves, tough, leathery, slow to rot down and even the best method needs eighteen months for any success. This takes up a lot of space that we don't have to spare.

I have had fourteen dumpy ton bags stuffed with leaves stacked under the walnut tree while i thought creatively about dead leaves and hibernaculums and with my love of poultry and lacewings the answer was always going to be clucking obvious really.

Now five fat leaf chickens are home to hibernating insects.

So that just leaves ten bags remaining. . .