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So you have probably gathered by now that I enjoyed my first time in New York. Don't want to bore you too much with details but I was just looking at a few photos. We got the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island and took the majority advice to get straight back on the same boat to Manhattan. The view of the skyline was great, despite the grotty weather:
It wasn't until we got off the ferry and walked up to the former World Trade Center site that I put one and one together. Tonight is the first time I have looked at an image of the skyline with the WTC intact:
Crazy sh!t...
It seems that Gardener's World is following me. They interviewed a previous teacher of mine, Juliet Sargeant, during the Hampton Court Flower Show a few weeks ago. Tonight they had a feature with Bernard Boardman, Floral Department Supervisor at RHS Wisley. Bernard ran a shrub pruning seminar at Wisley last year, that featured in this post, and I am using the knowledge he imparted upon me all the time. Thanks to Bernard's wisdom, my potted Wisteria floribunda flowered well for the first time in four years. As with most things in life, there is little substitute for experience. I work on the cutting edge of technology on a daily basis and still relish spending time with my experienced peers who invariably have some way of enlightening me. Good luck on your retirement Peter!
So it seems that I have many teachers in my life. For that, I consider myself privileged...
Have you ever been to Central Park? The last day of our trip to the Grand Pomme was mostly spent exploring this crazy green expanse. Wikipedia informs me that it has a real estate value of $528bn but I think it is truly priceless. Without this oasis of calm in its centre, the entirety of Manhattan Island would be a busy, noisy, bustling madhouse. The respite from the madness that one attains by lazing under the park's canopy is only matched by that of overlooking the rectangular green expanse from atop one of the many surrounding skyscrapers supping on a champagne cocktail, or an Absinthe Minded Refresher in one of Rande Gerber's luxurious establishments.
Our "day in the park" entailed many a walked mile, we approached from the south, up Fifth Avenue, continuing up to the zoo. Mrs P and I have been to many zoos in our time, often finding them to be cruel, barren places. This little gem was quite different! It was small and simple yet all the animals seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, although the lazy polar bears did their best to betray this belief:
Plenty more wonders and delights to share...
The trip to New York was a present for Mrs P but there was one thing I wanted to get in... a trip to the Sea, Air and Space Museum aboard the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that was built during WWII having been in service through Vietnam before being retired in 1974. She is now moored in Hudson River at the end of West 46th Street (the Intrepid, not Mrs P) and provides a comprehensive education on, predominantly American, military aviation history. On the deck, there is a great collection of aircraft including an F-14, an F-16, a couple of Cobra helicopters and most excitingly, an A-12 which is the prototype for the SR-71 spy plane. Here is a little taster:
We saw many other interesting and exciting things and the weather was occasionally good too! I'll post some more pics soon...
I have returned. I was in New York. It was great. Nice to be back though, NYC is kinda hectic. After catching up on the Ashes highlights, going out for beer and schnitzel and falling asleep on the train home (had to get a taxi back from the depths of Surrey) I made some soup from as many garden ingredients as I could get my hands on:
Good to be back...
I have a hate-hate-love-hate relationship with the local foxes. They are a noisy menace: stealing my shoes; stealing my gloves, leaving them in Richard's garden; "doing it" at 3am; leaving me pungent, disease-ridden "presents" and so on. Every so often, however, I feel they look me in the eyes and remind me that it is not their fault. Not their fault that they have mange. Not their fault that they need to poo. Not their fault that discarded KFC is their most convenient food source.
OK, he may be a mangy little flea bag and the middle photo may be terribly blurry, but tell me this guy isn't in some way adorable...
Mrs P goes out occasionally and when she does, I tend to eat lazily. In my mind, one of the greatest lazy bites is the toasted sandwich. Mrs P and I used to (possibly still do) own a Breville sandwich toaster that was used somewhat infrequently. The end result was always so tasty, but the subsequent cleaning outweighed the gluttonous gratification. So tonight, I thought I would experiment with a low maintenance alternative. Pretty simple really:
- Butter the outside of the bread slices as you would with a traditional sandwich toaster.
- Lay one slice, butter side down, on a piece of kitchen foil large enough to wrap the entire finished article.
- Fill with contents of choice (today I opted for thinly sliced German schinken, spring onion, vine tomato and red pepper topped with mature cheddar and port salut).
- Place the other slice of bread atop the pile, again buttered side out.
- Wrap the foil over the sandwich pressing down quite hard to pack it all together.
- Chuck in a preheated hot oven. I used 230C for about 10 minutes and the results were wonderful.
Better than the original without the mess...
I planted my potatoes in pots this year. I planted them in pots the last two year too, but you didn't know that! Some of my pots are ample for a crop o' tats, others are a little restrictive. Not a surprise that the tops of the plants in the smaller pots wilted first, thus they were the plants first to be harvested.
My first spuds of the season:
I thought I'd add a little bit of the garden to our dinner this evening. Couple of leaves of chard, few baby carrots, few baby yellow carrots and various beans. Here's a pic of a few:
Garden to table, does it get any better...?
And by that I mostly refer to the resolute batting of Mr Collingwood. Of course I am talking about the first Ashes test (cricket, if you hadn't already figured it out). Punter's boys gave a batting masterclass and didn't do too bad with the ball either but, despite some top order inadequacy, England held on for a stunning draw. Strange term "stunning draw" but stunning it was!
Collingwood for King, Monty for Prime Minister!
Looking fwd to Lord's...
Mr and Mrs P. Senior kindly bought me tickets to Hampton Court Flower Show for my birthday a few months ago. Today was the day! The show was great for many reasons, not least because it meant I wasn't listening to the stupid cricket on the stupid radio.
A few highlights:
The UK Horticulture stand, sponsored by Garsons Farm was inspired. A beautiful display of ornate floral arrangements dressed with examples of the delightful vegetables from their "pick your own" farm in Esher.
Wisley's 5-a-day stand was a particularly attractive collection of vegetables all grown at Surrey's RHS garden.
Eryngium, one of my favourite plants, was a consistent theme throughout the show. Several interesting varieties including Eryngium bourgatii 'Picos Blue Group' were on show.
The allotment garden was something to be envied. Not a seven deadly sins sort of envy, rather a desire for more sun and less tree cover sort of envy. They, too had purple kohl rabi on the go (see 48 hours) and these beasts would put even Mr P senior's worthy effort to shame. Nearly the size of footballs!
Other things that I didn't photograph... Well, I saw Juliet Sargeant's garden but, alas, Juliet wasn't there. It was a typically colourful yet tranquil place. I had my customary hog roast, picked up some Debbie and Andrew's sausages and had a 99 flake. Lots of other good things that are filed away in the alcoholic mush that is my brain...
Haven't really noticed the new British coinage but it has been brought to my attention lately. I think it is quite attractive. For those who haven't seen it, a collection can be seen here. My personal collection only stretches to a solitary coin:
Is it not strange how things work out?
Everything has a price...
Well, if you watched the BBC 2 coverage of Hampton Court Flower Show tonight you will have seen my former teacher and amazingly talented garden designer Juliet Sargeant. Juliet has been and remains an inspiration to me. She taught me how to design a garden from first principles and a huge amount more about horticulture in general. Juliet is great!
I have five courgette plants in my veg plot. They're looking quite healthy but the fruit are not setting properly. They get to a few inches long then start to rot at the end. One possible cause for this is incomplete pollination so I have tried the old technique of giving nature a helping hand. Removing a male flower, taking off its petals and rubbing the stamen against the inside of the female flower. The female flowers are the ones with the stubby little fruit behind them, the male flowers are on longer, thinner stems. So, I've impregnated my first vegetable! I feel dirty...
http://plutusjourney.blogspot.com/2009/05/never-thought-it.htmlI was watching the BBC Three coverage of Glastonbury and caught the Pendulum set. Their drummer is a crazy and unbelievably talented guy. Now is not the time to be publicising respect for our friends down under, however. The greatest gladiatorial contest of the modern sporting calendar starts on Wednesday and a healthy rivalry shall remain in place until the end of August.
Can't remember, nor can I be bothered to search through my previous posts to find out, whether or not I have mentioned that we have a hedgehog frequenting our garden. He usually spends his evenings snuffling around my compost bin, which he seems to have broken into, but we saw him for the first time rather close to our back door, some 130 feet from his usual chomping-ground. I haven't verified whether or not this is him but I love this video too much not to link to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw-IAYxu5uo
However, the purpose of this post is not to inform you of yet another creature that will be leaving little presents around my garden. The purpose of this post is to inform you that I have named this little guy Horace. This is not the first thing in my garden I have named, very far from it. And I have no idea why I do it. All parakeets eating from my feeder are called Percy, all the damn tree rats are called Terry, my Mahonia is called Mahendra, my Agapanthus is called Agamemnon, even the houseplants have names. And it doesn't stop with names, they have personalities and characteristics too - well the animals do, not the plants, that would be stupid! I have started to wonder if there was some strange childhood influence that makes my first thought to anthropomorphise each new creature I encounter. Any psychologists out there...?
As many of you know, I built my own shavehorse last year after spending a couple of days on a course with Robin Fawcett. It was an excellent course, by the way. I read Robin's blog quite frequently and he has recently needed to make a few repairs to his trusty steed. The problem from which my "shavedonkey" was suffering seemed superficial in comparison - he was slightly lame in the rear leg until... well... it fell off:
I managed to get him on the operating table and perform the necessary surgery - a shortening of the body, a reattachment of the rear leg and a general strengthening of the joints. However, I fear his days are numbered. He is stronger than he was before, but is never going to achieve his original rigidity. I'll have to consider my options for replacing the old fella. Could be a good excuse to go on another course...
No, not the Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy film, the weekend!
Weekend was good. Got to see the niece today. She is adorable in a different way every time we see her. Also saw the folks. Gave my dad some of my purple kohl rabi (modrava) seeds earlier in the year. We started them going at roughly the same time and while mine are pushing golf ball size, his are larger than tennis balls. I know, I know, you're going to tell me it's all about the conditions. I accept that. No, really I do. But I am a competitive chap and the feeling of inadequacy is difficult to quash.
Very exciting - the folks salvaged some freshly felled cherry wood from mum's tennis club. Only been down a week or two and I'm looking fwd to getting started on it soon. Learnt an interesting lesson with the birch I'm currently working. First log I used was from some way up the trunk. All went swimmingly, cut like butter. The second log, however, was from much nearer the base of the tree and has been tearing when cut in either direction. I only have a little knowledge about this sort of thing, I'm mostly learning from experience. I am making an educated guess that higher up the tree the grain runs pretty straight. Lower down, however, the trunk is not so linear. The log I used was three feet long, over which the diameter reduced by a couple of inches. I am assuming that the tearing out, from which I am suffering, is because the grain is running at an angle and I am cutting straight. Opinions to the contrary very welcome.
Yet again it is Sunday evening. Sunday night actually. Always comes around too quickly.
Looking forward to a good harvest of French beans, potatoes, onions, garlic and peas this week. We'll see...
Despite my lack of belief in June, it turned out to be a pretty good 30 days in the life of Plutus. Perhaps I should reconsider my beliefs!? Here's a few things I did for the first time in June:
- visited Israel
- presented to an audience of over 500 people
- chilled with the CEO of my company
- received a perfect rating for my annual performance from my boss
- visited many wonderful, hidden gardens in London (http://www.opensquares.org/)
- visited Nymans Garden
- visited Wakehurst Place
- visited Sissinghurst
- visited Yalding organic garden
- lunched in Wisley's Conservatory Dining Room
- had a stay in the wonderfully opulent Cliveden House
Garden-wise, the place is looking great. I've had a good crop of mange tout and peas. The French beans have started producing and the borlotti beans are exhibiting admirable aspirations. The kohl rabi are starting to swell, courgettes are starting to form, aubergines are flowering, peppers are getting taller by the day, the swiss chard are looking amazing, the parsnips are bulking up, the onions and garlic are nearly ready, the carrots are romping and the new purple radishes are two inches tall one week after sowing. A few beans and peas:
All in all, a rewarding return on the investment!
Wood-wise, things have been slower going. I don't think I entered the workshop for nearly three weeks. Two weeks in California followed by busy weekends and other business trips. However, the last couple of weeks have enabled me to get cracking on the birch logs I picked up in May. I've been keeping them as cool as possible so they are still pretty green inside. Birch is a lovely wood to work, this is my first time! What I have learned thus far is that birch hates being cut against the grain. Some woods are somewhat forgiving of such amateur mistakes, but birch is rather more intolerant of such novice errors. However, items carved from birch show little resistance to being cut after pieces have been aired for a few days. This makes it a great wood for a sporadic carver. Here's a pot scraper I made for a friend recently:
Got a bunch more wood projects on the go. Will throw up some pics soon...
...and many other names. He is our neighbour's cat. He's called Baloo. He spends a lot of time in our garden. A considerable amount of time in our house too. We love him, despite the random acts of "stipa-destruction".
Welcome back to the world. I know June was dull without Plutus musings but I'm back now so kick back, relax and prepare yourself for... some posts... hopefully...
