Drawn to the Country

Since moving to the country just over a decade ago I have been compelled to record the beauty I find in the every-day, as the seasons come and go, and for a few years now, I have been sharing my thoughts and sketches on rural life through this blog.

I am, however, also a big fan of printed matter, of proper books with paper pages that can you can flick through over morning coffee. Books that will spend an evening with you on the sofa, lodge by your bedside or cheer up a good friend.

With this in mind, I'm really excited to announce the publication of DRAWN TO THE COUNTRY.

Arranged seasonally, over 128 pages, the book takes you through the delights and challenges of a year in the Suffolk countryside... You'll hear about my gardening exploits, be introduced to my chickens, meet some extraordinary Suffolk characters and take some day trips to the coast and beyond!  

"Mary has beautifully captured the unique character of my home county Suffolk in this delightful book." 

Paula Pryke OBE, Florist

For more info, and how to purchase, please visit www.conkerpress.com

Fragments

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

This weekend I barged my way into a lot of borders. I wriggled under prickly raspberry stems to tug out buttercups and squeezed between the black elderflower and a red brick wall, to prise out nettles. I felt cumbersome and clumsy, my giant clodhopping feet pushing plants aside every step. 

But as I became absorbed in my task, and began to piece together the subtle comings and goings of the intricate world I had imposed myself on, I began to feel very humbled and very small.  

Just above my head, the remnants of an old blackbird’s nest were slipping through the vines of the clematis. I remembered last year’s fledglings, beaks relentlessly open. 

Tucked behind the base of the clematis were a heap of empty snail shells, hollow fragments of a passerine feast.

My trowel uncovered a couple of split walnut shells, so that’s where the squirrels hid them.

A broken eggshell, large, pale brown with speckles. A gull's egg?

As if to confirm my suspicions that nature doesn’t depend on a gardener's meddling, even my favourite tulip this year was one that I didn’t plan. A cross-pollination resulted in an exquisite cream and red striped bloom. And in decline, it is still beautiful. 

Happy New Year

I’ve just walked round the garden in the dwindling daylight.
The last fruits of winter have released their grip, making way for the buds of spring.
Bowed heads, sapped of energy, snared by the frost and gloom.
Yet in each shriveled pod and faded petal a shred of beauty lingers.

 

Squirreling away nuts

Walnuts and squirrels are hotly debated topics of conversation in the country. Any advice on how to keep the two apart is gratefully received.

A few years ago we planted two walnut trees but still barely get to enjoy a single nut.

The trees flower and fruit abundantly but I have yet to outwit the squirrels. I could snatch the nuts early on, while they are still green, and pickle them. But what I really want, is the satisfaction of cracking fully fledged, deliciously milky nuts out of their lumpy shells.

This year I tied little net bags around as many nuts as I could reach. But the fluffy tailed thieves merely used the twine as dental floss in preparation for some serious gnawing.

Last year we had one nut, this year I was chuffed to salvage twenty.
By constructing an impassable metal platform under the lower branches of his tree my neighbour, with a competitive glint in his eye, tells me he harvested four hundred and thirty. (Gardeners love to count, I know a man who keeps a tally when deadheading his dahlias!)

Fortunately I can buy as many walnuts as I want for Christmas from Geoffrey who sells his produce at the local farmer’s market. His three trees are forty years old and crop handsomely.

When I ask him about squirrels he simply smiles and says “shoot 'em”.

Salad or soup?

It might be November but on bright days the garden maintains a distinctly summery tempo. The dahlias continue to throw out dazzling blooms and there will be salad for lunch with pickled beetroot.  

 

  

More fitting for November alas, we have bleak days when mist hangs in the air and virtually obliterates the vegetable patch. Out of sight out of mind, I have to make a positive mental note to gather dinner before darkness.

This weekend I pulled up the old beanpoles and prepared the ground for planting garlic. Nothing complicated... just the painstaking removal of a barrow load of buttercups. The ground was well composted in the spring and if my garlic cloves are lucky I’ll remember to add some lime and wood ash.

As a bonus for my efforts, there were a few wizened pods clinging to the beanpoles, from which I rescued perfectly nourishing beans. They’re now squirreled away in the larder for the increasingly frequent days when a hearty soup is really more appropriate than a summer salad.

And what’s more the larder shelf is comfortingly shielded from the elements!

Idyllic rural retreat for mini-breaks or long term let

To Do or not To Do

It’s a real tonic to put aside the ‘to do’ list once in a while, and take the time to enjoy what someone else has ‘done’. 

With this in mind we visited Somerleyton Hall a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful brick boundary walls, tree lined driveway, fat herbaceous borders, drifts of meadow flowers, clipped yew and picture perfect courtyards. 

The air of tranquility belied the phenomenal amount of effort required to sustain such an inspiring garden.
Until I poked my nose into the cordoned-off greenhouse.
Charmingly dilapidated, I had found the heartbeat of the garden in the unravelled hose, the upturned seed trays and bags of compost... 

...it was the palpable birthplace of those magnificent borders.

So what's on my 'to do' list this weekend? 

Get into the greenhouse and sow some biennials.

Garden maths

 I've been busy "adding" to my rose border.

Take an old paintbrush and a pot of black paint

and some old hoe heads that have been waiting for their moment of glory...

Early morning Yoga

Best hour of the day? 

Early morning, the sun just rising and I slip into the greenhouse to see how my seedlings are doing. 

Only today I mistimed it and caught them in the middle of a Yoga class!

Sun salutation

Bridge pose

Half moon pose

Forward fold

Tree pose

Hero pose

Scorpion pose

Riotous naked Yogis drawn by my daughter, Saskia Martindale…. 

art student at large, currently studying in Japan… always up for commissions! saskiamartindale.tumblr.com

I challenge you not to have a chuckle next time you water your own seedlings!

May

“A flower blossoms for its own joy” Oscar Wilde

May, prime time for fussing and fiddling in the greenhouse. 
Maize peeping through, too early to plant out the beans, tomato side shoots need pinching out. 
Not to mention a good deal of primping and propping in the garden, sweet peas need wigwams, peonies.. supports, dahlias.. stakes. 

Regardless of my efforts the wild flowers are just quietly getting on with it. 

'Travels With My Aunt'

"I have never planned anything illegal in my life," Aunt Augusta said.

Graham Greene 1904-1991

Neither of my parents had siblings so as a small child I sometimes used to wonder what it must be like to have ‘real’ aunts and uncles. Having said that, we did manage to accrue an engaging array of substitutes.

We visited ageless Jewish spinsters in lofty north London bedsits, that had the magical allure of squeaky polished floors, colourful cushions lined up on the divan, and carved wooden camels marching across the mantlepiece.

There were soft cheeked Aunties that moved gently in a haze of talcum powder, wore slippers and silky stockings, and gave us embroidered cotton handkerchiefs on our birthday. 

And then there was Aunty Ethel. 

She was a country-woman at heart but lived in the local town. When calling on her unannounced, we knew to circumnavigate the house, wander straight into the back garden and listen for her melodic voice rising from the bushes. Spotting us she would straighten up from her reverie and smile. I remember a spider gently letting itself down from the rim of her straw hat as she excused herself for soliloquising in the rose-bed.

I mention Ethel because whenever we took her out on garden visits she came with a commodious handbag, complete with secateurs. We would invariably lose her as she strayed from the path to scrutinise an unusual plant. With her back covering her actions she would be busy taking cuttings and stuffing them into her handbag. 
If she were ever apprehended we had prepared our retort... she was not related to us!

It was with her in mind, that on a trip to the magnificent Cambridge Botanic Garden last autumn, shhhhh, I snapped off a seed head from a Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’ and popped it into my pocket.
So immaculately tended were the beds, I felt sure that if the gardener had got there before me he would have simply tossed the unsightly straggling stem straight into his wheelbarrow; I was simply doing him a favour. 

Back home I sowed my booty straight away, a couple of weeks later tiny green leaves appeared and now I have nice sturdy little plants ready for the white garden. 

Just think, if I’d slung my jeans in the washing machine without checking the pockets first it could all have been in vain!

P.S. I’ve taken to writing on my pots rather than using labels... too oft’ did one get separated from t’other.

April

What a heady couple of days! 
A real burst of spring sunshine. Perfect conditions for gardening and bread making; which should never go hand in hand of course. I have lost count of the number of times this weekend I have interrupted my weeding, to unlace muddy boots, scrub my nails, then shape a ciabatta or check the plumpness of a hot cross bun. 

I have sown seeds, grubbed out brambles and divided perennials to the repetitive warble, whoop and twitter of happy bird song. Fat bumble bees have been flying loop the loop in the sunlight. Fingers crossed they found the broad beans that have been in flower since February and the plum blossom in the orchard.
My son tackled the jobs I have been trembling at for years. Those requiring a pickaxe, a drill and the energy of a teenager. 

For all the ebullience of spring, however, I am going to miss the criss-cross outlines of winter which have become so familiar. The generous outstretched arms of the oak, the clatter of poplar branches in the wind, and the matronly willow stripped down to her crinoline. 

My new toy, or how not to plan a rose bed

This weekend I have done the work of a small mechanical digger.
And now I have a new rose border.

My husband ‘bought’ me some rose bushes for my birthday in November.
Winter is the perfect time for planting bare root roses. 
Bingo, this could have been a text book enterprise.

Way back last June our good intentions were firmly intact. 
We visited some gardens with splendid roses. We inhaled their unrivalled perfume, made notes, took photos. 
We searched the internet when we got home... and were overwhelmed by a thousand choices.

But first things first, there was the ground to prepare. Perennials to move, weeds to eradicate, mulch to spread. 
Well, that’s a breeze to postpone!
My birthday came and went and still we looked out on a tangle of seed heads and choking tendrils.   

Fast forward to March and I’m in a spin.
Not wanting to let the year pass without my roses materialising I contacted a lovely garden designer friend Kate.

“Please tell us we’re not too late to order some bare root roses?”

Her supplier had a limited choice in our preferred colours and types. Perfect. That made choosing so much easier. 

And the border?

I ripped through it in a weekend with ‘my’ amazing new toy, a long handled grubbing hoe, or azada that I bought my husband for ‘his’ birthday. 
With the correct relaxed arm swing, the blade slices deftly into the soil. So much easier than the back bending, wrist jarring action of a conventional fork or spade. 
I might have tackled the job much sooner if I’d known about such things. 
Go on, put one on your birthday wish list.

Oh, the banana skins? 

Sloppy couldn’t-care-less labourer?

Kate’s tip of the week... pop one in the planting hole of each rose, they’ll love the potassium.

To every thing there is a season

Last summer’s berry harvest was perfectly timed for illustrating a series of juice labels with the highly creative team at Stromme Throndsen Design.

And that was when I resolved to take better care of our fruit bushes. 

A few years ago we planted black and red currants, gooseberries and raspberries. They always bear fruit but somehow their maintenance had slipped out of focus. I thought they came under my husband’s domain and my husband thought I had commandeered their upkeep!

I chose a mild day in January to do some restorative pruning. It was a joy to lavish attention on the bushes, cutting out old stems and trimming side shoots. This year’s buds were already pink and swollen, bearing promise.

And I promise I'll have my paintbrushes at the ready, come the summer.

Winter woollens

"The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools. " Henry Beston 1888-1968

I discovered some allotments the other day. 

Fine drizzle blurred the patchwork of frost damaged leaves, listing beanpoles, sagging netting and spent stalks. 

The season was gently unravelling.

Bright red chard, leeks and brassicas stood proud of the roughly tilled ground. 

Great cheer to the gardener.

Oh to be a biennial!

I spent a large part of Saturday outside on my hands and knees. 

Weeds, trowel, barrow.

Wisened sunflower heads swayed overhead, meting out the pendulous tick of autumn. 

Badly behaved dahlias tapped me on the shoulder, stems snapped awkwardly and flower heads awry.

It was warm in the sunny kaleidoscope of the undergrowth. And as I tugged, there hidden beneath the weeds, 

I found a thousand tiny foxglove seedlings chuckling at the surrounding decay. 

Darsham Nurseries… good things come in threes... Nursery, Cafe, Shop

Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.

Rudyard Kipling

Last Saturday I pulled a shameful amount of weeds from my vegetable patch.

So the following day I felt perfectly justified in wandering around Darsham Nurseries trilling ‘Oh how beautiful’.

Forget the shade bit, I enjoyed coffee and incredible pastries in the autumn sunshine and discovered the most enchanting potager.

There were cosmos bobbing among the cabbages and onions sauntering through garlands of amaranthus. Chives elbowed their way past purple ageratum while haughty zinnias commanded over regiments of salad.

In my exuberance I stopped the gardener in his tracks. I detained him with questions about lettuce seeds and climbing beans, annuals and artistry, then departed, inspired to exchange weeds for flowers in my own patch next year.

And the gardener? He got straight back to work of course… there's no sitting in the shade for him!