Blog Archives - Slow Life Blog from the Lake District

England’s Hardiest Palms

29/6/2011

I did a double take when I glanced at the magazine photos of our sunken garden as it was in 2003. Surely, I thought, the Chusan palms can’t have grown THAT much. Back then they were stubbly little things, no more than 4ft tall. Now they are at least 12 feet. That’s a foot a year. Some going.

Gardening World Cup 2011

27/6/2011

Not many people know it, but England won the World Cup last year- the Gardening World Cup that is.

This year the competition is even more fierce, with gardeners from all five continents taking part. Last year’s winner, Andy Sturgeon, is taking a rest this year as a competitor, but is returning as a judge. His place as the senior English competitor is taken by Sarah Eberle who won her 8th RHS gold medal at Chelsea this year with her stunning Monaco garden.

I’m very proud to have been chosen as the other English competitor and I’m going to take a slice of the Lake District to Japan with a garden which will feature a Cumbrian Dabbin.
An intrepid reporter Hannah Lomas wrote a piece about last year’s event and took the footballing metaphor to its furthest extreme by calling me “The David Beckham of Gardening”. I hope we have as much fun this year.

Cycad Seeds

24/6/2011

Cycads are sexy trees. Unusually, they are either male or female, with the males producing very phallic-like cones and the females bearing seeds. This photo is of a female Cycad in our orangery, which has just produced seeds, which resemble furry orange eggs. If you shake the seed pods you can hear the seed rattling inside.

Cath’s Garden Plants- “Best in Show”

22/6/2011

After Crug Farm’s triumph at Chelsea, another of our plant suppliers, Cath’s Garden Plants, has won a Gold and “Best in Show”- this time at the RHS “Gardener’s World Live”. Cath’s Garden Plants are just up the road from us, at Sizergh, on the outskirts of Kendal. In the old days they were known as Heaves Nursery and were a specialist wholesale nursery.

The Fruit Harvest Begins

21/6/2011

It’s almost Midsummer’s Day and a time of glut in the garden. Or do I mean gluttony. At last we have an abundance of choice- as much choice as in any supermarket, except that ours is fresh and wholesome.

The fruit harvest has been helped along by the abundant rain, especially the gooseberries, which are bigger and sweeter than we have ever known. The only crop which has disappointed is the cherries, which have split- apparently the splitting is caused by too much rain, but I’m happy to leave them to the birds.

Killing Red Squirrels the Forestry Commission Way

20/6/2011

The fell road along Gummers Howe is one of the loveliest in the Lake District. The fells here are mainly forested, but where there are gaps you can see views to Lake Windermere on one side and Morecambe Bay on the other. The woodland, known as Chapel House Wood, is owned by the Forestry Commission, whose job it is not only to look after the woodland but also to protect the wildlife.

Giant Green Mars Bars

19/6/2011

James Alexander Sinclair, the very entertaining gardening journalist, has achieved quite a coup in getting the Sunday Times to devote a whole page in their gardening section to the sale of his home, Blackpitts.

The reason given for the sale is that he and his wife Celestia want to downsize now that their two older children have left home, but the accompanying photos of the garden give the game away.

A Bat destroys a Bank

17/6/2011

I heard a scream and one of my girls came running out of the computer room. “There’s a massive spider on my keyboard,” she cried. One of the pleasures of being a Dad is being able to deal with crises like this, which I did by grabbing the spider by its legs and flinging it out of the window, alive (just).

Wayne is Elvis

15/6/2011

Tucked away behind the Damson Dene Hotel, underneath the Leisure Club is an old decrepit store room which nobody visits. Walking past earlier today, I was surprised to hear what appeared to be a party going on. I popped my head in and there amongst the old abandoned sofas and mattresses, was the astonishing sight of Wayne sounding very much like Elvis!

Mamihlapinatapai

13/6/2011

Mamihlapinatapai means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to initiate”. It comes from the Yaghan language, which is used by the natives of Tierra del Fuego, or, to be more accurate, one native of Tierra del Fuego, as there is only one speaker of the language still alive.

The Browning Version

11/6/2011

I remember, a long time ago, when Sunday afternoons stretched out interminably, watching the black and white version of Goodbye Mr Chips on TV and enjoying a good cry at the end. Mr Chips gets a mention in another weepy about a retiring schoolmaster, The Browning Version, which was broadcast this afternoon in a new production starring Michael York and produced by Martin Jarvis.

First Catch your Cormorant

10/6/2011

There was a most entertaining discussion on a Radio 4 programme called Terrible Food in which Jonathan McGowan, an amateur taxidermist, described how he fed his (unsuspecting) guests a meal of spaghetti bolognese which he had made from owl meat. The owls were a Tawny and a Barn which he had found as road kill. Unfortunately, he didn’t include a recipe, but he might have enjoyed the following:

How to Cook a Chub:
“There is only one way to cook a chub and that is to lay him on a board and scale and gut him. Then carefully bury the body and cook the board”.
- From “With Rod and Line in and Around Gloucestershire” by ‘Tight Lines’ 1937

or

How to Cook a Cormorant:
“After dousing the bird in petrol and setting it on fire, burying it for a fortnight, then boiling in salt water, applying a paste of methylated spirit and curry powder and roasting in a hot oven for three hours, throw it away and then not even a starving vulture would eat it”
- From “Countryman’s Cooking”, W.M.W. Fowler 1965

Patti Smith- Gloria

8/6/2011

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, not mine”

Is Gloria the best rock song of all time? The original Gloria was written and recorded by Van Morrison in 1964 when he was the lead singer with Them. There is a famous and very dirty cover by The Doors. But Patti Smith’s version, with the opening line, added by herself, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” has to be the best. I can’t find a video of her singing the song when she was in her prime, 30 years before, but if the Jools Holland version is anything to go by it must have been amazing.

This song is crying out for a revival. It needs the power of a Hammond organ backing and two dynamic female lead singers- in other words The Heroes of She.

A Chelsea Gold in a Couple of Hours

4/6/2011

What does it take to get a gold medal at Chelsea? If it’s a show garden the going rate is half a million pounds and a top designer, although that’s no guarantee of success, as several of the sponsors found at this year’s show. My only experience is in the show garden category , where, whatever the budget, the teams (which may comprise 30 workers) toil flat out for three weeks constructing the gardens.

Our Olive Trees are Alive

2/6/2011

A Dead Tree Doesn’t Produce Leaves
My olive trees may not be as old as the hills but they are certainly older than the oldest house in Grange. Unfortunately they haven’t settled down since they moved here from Tuscany and it looked as though two fiercely cold winters on the trot may have put paid to them. There’s not a single leaf to be seen on any of their branches.

The Garden in May 2011- slideshow

1/6/2011

About Slow Life

The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

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