Autumn / Big Bee

I couldn't resist popping up a short post - Nature is shouting very loudly in Garden 65 - Autumn is frantically waving her jazz hands at me - so here is a big bee greedily slurping the last of the nectar.

She might be the dark form of the Buff-tailed bumble bee, which apparently is commercially bred to pollinate plants, particularly tomato plants. Interesting - I thought the only domestic bee was that skinny little honey bee. Poor things, when one visits the garden it always look stressed out and in need of a holiday. It's good to know you can be as voluptuous and laid back as this buff-tailed lady and still be of some use.

Hope you are enjoying this lovely weather xxx

Sewing In The Sunshine

Did a bit of sewing in that brief afternoon of sunshine we had the other day, and very pleasant it was too.

Sat next to the horse chestnut that's in a pot. It's been growing in there for at least 15 years, maybe even 20. In my last post I mentioned the teeny tiny flowers that give me the willies. My feelings for this tree are the complete opposite. It's one of the things in my life, like my children, my teddy bear, and the memory of the dear departed guinea pig, Multi, that are in my heart. 

Apparently the sticky buds of horse chestnut can be used as a herbal remedy to cure "mental chatter, repetitive thoughts or worrisome behaviours”.  I must get myself some.

Mimpish Sulky Ladies



Before I type another word can I just say how lovely it is to be bare foot on a Sunday afternoon.  There, I've said it ... onwards ...


Dear Monty claims one of the many names for snakeshead fritillaries is Sulky Ladies, and the equally dear Richard Mabey lists one of their names as Leper's Bells. For a little delicate flower they have attracted some censorious names. I've even come across 'Drooping Bells of Sodom', though, like a Wikipedia editor, I'd like that verified before I believe it.

A couple of early 20th garden writers had similarly negative views on the innocent plants. In her poem The Land, Vita Sackville-West saw them as sinister and just not one of us,

And then I came to a field where the springing grass

Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries

Sullen and foreign looking, the snaky flower

Scarfed in dull purple, like Egyptian girls

Camping among the furze, staining the waste

With foreign colour, sulky-dark and quaint

from 'The Land' by Vita Sackville-West (1927)

And an Edwardian plant collector, Reginald Farrer called them 'very miffy or very mimpish, or both'.

Reginald Farrer

I'm not sure what 'mimpish' means, so I couldn't say for certain if I agree or not with Reggie, but it is true fritillaries have an air of witchery about them. I find them unnerving, with their inescapably snake-like flower buds:

unnaturally geometric patterning:

Rennie Mackintosh

and their seed heads of shark sharp teeth:

Which is of course all the more reason to have them in this dull suburban garden.

It's good to be scared of your plants.



Snakes heads from Janet Walsh on Vimeo

Dear Richard Mabey talks beautifully about our Sulky Ladies in this Radio 4 programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b012f7mn/

If Your Cat Is Getting Fatter

If it is a mystery to you why your cat has recently become fatter, despite being on a strictly controlled Iams diet, then it may be a worthwhile exercise to follow her out on her daily travels, where you may find she is secretly slurping local frogspawn:

This certainly seems a yearly indulgence for That Cat. I blogged about this a couple of years ago here

On Not Going Out In The Rain

I was going to venture into the sodden Garden65 and report on that soddenness, but it's raining and I have my slippers on, so I'll stay here indoors and just poke the camera of the ipad at the window so that you have some evidence of the green sponge that is the garden.

By chance I came across this poem today. I think it acts as both an interesting thought piece and an admonishment to me and my increasing reliance on 'less difficult media'.

            To Posterity

When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading and even speaking have been replaced
By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste
They held for us for whom they were framed in words,
And will your grass be green, your sky be blue,
Or will your birds be always wingless birds?

Louis MacNeice, Visitations (Faber and Faber 1957).

A Flash of Sunshine