The irrepressible Alan Ward has organised another Artists’ Day for my garden, timed for Sunday 6th July to coincide with our NGS Open Day.  Last year about 15 artists came, including Sam Dalby, who is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Graham Lowe, the potter Diane Fay, Sue Halsam, the weaver Stephanie Halsam, the cartoonist Robin Grenville-Evans, Pat Haskey Knowles, Alison Bradley, Barbara Holt, Chris Rigby, Jane Worthington, Gerry Haddock, Fran Edney and Stephanie Armstrong.  

May last year was taken up with counting my losses.  My collection of cannas was decimated, literally, down from 250 to 25.  This was because I’d had to leave them outside while the new greenhouse was being built and they were killed by the late frosts.  Nearly all my Echiums were gone, but losses amongst the dahlias were less severe.  This year the casualties have been negligible, but I’ve had to contend with a potentially more significant loss, that of Matt, who had gardened for me for ten years. ​

It’s difficult to know how to describe our new B & B; ‘up-market’, ‘luxurious’ ‘beautiful’ are phrases which have been suggested, but one word which undoubtedly applies is ‘photogenic’. Hence this video, which uses some of the images taken by photographer Mark Gillow.  The rooms at Bay Villa are the best in Grange, indeed the whole of “Roganville”, and would be exceptional anywhere.  ​

Everyone knows, because it’s repeated all the time, that the Lakes is impossibly crowded during the holidays.  Except that it isn’t, and it’s only lazy commentators who say so.  All the hotels in the Lakes are full this Bank Holiday weekend (at least, mine are) but the National Park is so vast that you don’t have to try very hard to avoid the crowds.
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​This afternoon I set off on my bike from Grange, through Lindale and along the road to Cartmel Fell. ​

The contrast with last year couldn’t be more striking. In April 2013 I spent most of the month counting my losses. First the Echiums, which had sailed through two winters and were ready for flowering until they were struck down by late frosts. I lost nearly a hundred. And then the cannas, which I had been forced to leave outside while the new greenhouse was being built, and which also succumbed to the unseasonal cold. Another hundred plants gone.​

Is a Slow Life journey to work possible in London? Never, I thought, until the tube workers’ strike proved me wrong. I needed to get to the Excel conference centre, a journey which involved a journey to the City by tube, and then a DLR train to Docklands. DLR stands for Docklands Light Railway. This journey is perhaps the very opposite of the Slow Life ideal, which was epitomised in my description of the journey to Cuckoo Brow.
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The tube strike alerted me to an alternative route, which would avoid the horrors of the underground. I could take the river boat from the Embankment to the O2 stadium and a cable car from there, over the Thames to Excel. On a lovely warm sunny spring day, this journey was next to perfection. A £6 ticket paid for a half hour trip along the river past the London Eye, Big Ben, St Paul’s, Tower Bridge and The Shard. It was worth it, just to hear the oohs and aahs of the German tourists on board. When I disembarked at the O2 to my surprise, I was the only passenger headed for Excel. The trip on the cable car, which I had to myself, was every bit as impressive as a go on the London Eye. The trade show at the Excel was packed – I don’t know how the other delegates got there, but I’m certain that none of them had as enjoyable a journey as mine.

Carl Taylor, who has built more than quarter of a mile of limestone walling in my garden is an artist as well as a craftsman. He likes to add artistic flourishes to his work and I’ve never been able to fathom  whether it’s from his love of the job or to see the look of astonishment on my face when I see it.  A good example is the stone flower which he unexpectedly incorporated into the wall of the boiler house next to the Orangery (below); another is the niche which he built into the wall on my bedroom extension overlooking the garden, complete with an elegant slate base. This was some time ago, and I hadn’t got round to finding a suitable ornament to put in the niche, other than having a vague discussion with Alan Ward, my sculptor, as to what might work.
Fortunately, Alan isn’t as lackadaisical as I am, and got on with the job, turning up one day with the perfect little sculpture shown in the photo above.  He explained that it represents Cornucopia – the horn of plenty which dispenses unlimited quantities of food, drink and other riches.  It is embellished with gold.  Nothing could be more perfect for the little niche overlooking the garden. Carl’s spirit is contagious.

In 2011 a statue of Leda and the Swan, which had sat in the garden of Aske Hall at Richmond in Yorkshire for four centuries was sold at auction for £12.2 million. This was encouraging news for us because on that very day Alan Ward was hard at work creating our very own garden statue of Leda and the Swan. The Aske Hall version is by an unidentified Roman sculptor of the 2nd century AD and it is not known how long he took to complete the work, but we know from our own experience that it’s a long, intricate process. A five ton block of Portland stone (see the photo below) was delivered to us in June 2009 and Alan has been working on it ever since, outside, in all weathers. Each buttock took three months. It would of course have been completed much sooner if Alan hadn’t had a full time teaching job and other commissions to contend with. Ours is entitled Leda and The Golden Swan, the gold being calculated to bring prosperity to the inhabitants of Yewbarrow House. The finished product is, to my mind, every bit as beautiful as the Aske Hall version, but we’ll have to wait until after I’m gone and my rapacious descendants consign it to the auction house before we discover if it’s worth £12.2 million. In the meantime, it will sit under the stone arch at the end of our drive, providing an intriguing focal point as you enter the garden.

“Hotlips” Houlihan got her nickname when she was having sex with Frank, unaware that a microphone for the public address system had been placed under her bed, so that everyone at the MASH camp heard her say “Kiss my hot lips, Frank”.  Until recently Houlihan was the best known “Hotlips” on the planet, but her place has now been usurped by the variety of Salvia Macrophyllia, which is named, (apparently) after the sexy Mexican maid who introduced it into California.  It only reached my garden this year, courtesy of Cath’s Garden Plants.  A small, inexpensive, plant soon bulked up into the one shown below, and flowered continuously from June to November.  A real star.
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​But the accolade for the best new introduction into my garden goes to the maple shown above.  It’s the Acer palmatum ‘Sango-Kaku’.  I bought two examples in May from Larch Cottages Nursery in Melkinthorpe, (see here) and it looked so spectacular once in the ground that I went back a couple of weeks later and bought two more.  

We have no way of knowing for certain what greenhouses there were in our kitchen garden in Victorian times, but there are some telling clues.  There’s a boiler house for a start, and traces of some substantial iron heating pipes, which seem to have run all the way along the south-east facing wall at the rear of the kitchen garden.  A second wall, about ten feet high runs parallel behind it, and seems to have been used for espalier fruit trees, probably apricots.  ​

‘Catastrophe in the Conservatory’ by Thomas Rowlandson, c. 1816
‘The Horticultural Fate’ dedicated to the Rainer Family by Paul Pry, c. 1829

I have but three creatures in the world over whom I have a right to exercise any government, a foolish dog, a restive horse and a perverse gardener… In this small dominion I meet with as many difficulties as ever an indolent monarch did. The dog uncontrolled is for ever running after sheep, or jumping on me with dirty paws; the horse will by no possible persuasion go over the same ground twice; and the gardener is demolishing my beds of flowers, which I meant to have had enlarged.
         - Catherine Talbot 1747

When I took up gardening, about 12 years ago, I entered a world dominated by women. They looked after the National Gardens Scheme and they were in charge of the RHS shows. 

In 2003 Matt and Magda Wilczynski had good jobs in their home town of Cracow, Matt working as a paint sprayer in a garage, Magda as a biochemist in a lab. But they read that the minimum wage in England was due to rise to £4.20 a hour and that was enough incentive for them to throw up their jobs and make the move to England. They applied to work for me at the Damson Dene hotel, Matt as a handyman/gardener and Magda as a waitress. ​

One of the taboos drummed into every visitor to Japan is that you mustn’t blow your nose in public.  The Japanese find it disgusting.  They overcome the problem by sniffing, which is merely irritating.  It comes as a surprise to Westerners who are attuned to the heightened sensibilities of the Japanese to discover that they find nothing wrong about slurping their food, in fact they positively relish it, the noisier the better.  There’s a technique to it, which I’ve never mastered, but the place to practice is in a noodle restaurant.  ​

When I spotted the restaurant sign saying “Slow Food Slow Life” I just had to eat there. Peeking inside, I could see that it was packed with young Japanese and no tables were free. But I went back the following evening, nice and early and grabbed a table. This was Okayama, off the beaten track, and none of the waiting-on staff spoke English. But a friendly crowd at the next table told me that the set menu consisted of a selection of Okayama specialities, so of course I ordered that. The photo below shows the first course. I’ve no idea what it was, and I can’t say it was delicious, but it was good to try it. Several more courses followed, including diced ham, and noodles with sliced pork, all of it good. The menu, for anyone who can read Japanese, is reproduced below. The cost of 3,500 yen equates to £21.
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The idea of Slow Food/Slow Life is very appealing to the Japanese. The Slow Food movement is more popular in Japan than anywhere in the world outside Italy, and it’s easy to see why, because, like Italy, Japan is dominated by small organic farms. 

Cafe Bientot in Okayama is a cosmopolitan place.  It has a French name, with an English-language menu, sells German beers and Italian food.  They have a set lunch of soup, salad and a small calzone pizza for 600 yen (£3.65) but when I eat Italian in Japan I always go for the spaghetti vongole.  In Japan, you can eat Italian, French or Chinese, just as in any other country, with one crucial difference – in Japan, the food is very rarely prepared by a native of the respective country – the chef will almost always be Japanese. ​

At posh restaurants (but not in Japan) the waiter will sometimes come round with a tray of live lobsters asking you to choose one.  I’ve always suspected that this is a con, as you’ve no way of knowing whether the lobster which they bring you cooked is the one which you chose. There are no suspicions of this kind at the boat restaurant in Fukuoka, where you catch the fish yourself and you can watch it being cut up for you before being served raw to your table.  It’s a favourite restaurant for children.  The picture shows Max and his sister Maia, the children of my friends Phil and Yoko, gleefully celebrating a good catch which we later ate.  The children were asked if they wanted the fish cooked, but insisted that we had it raw.
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This restaurant is more expensive than most – it cost £44 each, including booze, but for that you get a good deal of entertainment.  The video below shows one of the chefs demonstrating how to take a largish fish and slice it into sashimi, without killing the fish first. It needs a firm hand to turn a fish into fillets while it’s squirming beneath the knife.

Yakitori are the Japanese version of kebabs, but much smaller than the kebabs we are used to.  Four or five pieces of meat are skewered onto a bamboo stick and are then grilled over a charcoal fire.  English language menus in a Yakitori restaurant can be entertaining because of the strangeness of some of the meats, but for anyone who’s squeamish, it might be best not to look at the menu if a Japanese is doing the ordering for you.  Gizzard, heart, tripe and giblets will normally feature. ​

If I were a student or on a tight budget, I’d eat every day in one of the Japanese chain restaurants such as the Yayioken chain.  Japan has all the usual American suspects, such as McDonalds and KFC, but the food there is as trashy as it is everywhere else and, for the price of a hamburger, you can eat very well in a Yayioken.  The method is that you select your meal in the restaurant lobby using a machine like the one shown in the photo below. The machines are easy to navigate, even for a westerner, as the selections are illustrated with photos. If there is any doubt, the restaurant window has plastic models (a little garish for some tastes) of all the dishes on offer.  In exchange for your money you get a ticket, which you hand to a waitress, who will take your drinks order (alcohol is served) and bring your food.  There’s no queuing.  A meal of grilled mackerel, with a bowl of rice and miso soup (pictured above) is 590 yen (£3.58). A large bowl of chips as another pound. The Yayioken chain is as good an illustration as any of the choice and value available to Japanese who want to eat out.