the bug

I am a collector. It’s a failing, but there you have it. Always collected things, but not always the same things and periodically I purge, travel light for a time, enjoy not collecting. But gradually the collecting bug sneaks up again.

As a child it was Britain’s farm animals, Observer’s Books and stamps, all enabled by my dad who regularly added to all of my collections. I still have most of them.  I’m keeping the animals for the next generation and the books are too precious to part with. Several were childhood birthday presents, inscribed to me in dad’s roundhand writing.

When I started earning there were records, and old plates. I was fond of old Spode and Worcester  plates picked up for a song in junk shops in Devon.

And when there were gardens, plant collections began. Fuchsias, campanulas, violas, mostly now left in gardens around England where I have stayed for a time. That was Dad’s influence again. He liked Chrysanthemums, although I have never been bitten by that particular bug.

A few years passed when I worked long hours and all I collected were school books and stationery and I still have more pens and pencils from that time than I will use in a lifetime, but now I think I can feel the plant collecting bug again. After all, if one is good then more is probably better. Right?

Remember the lovely hellebore that appeared? It has been joined in flower by three others and last week, whilst shopping for bread flour, by this glorious double from Credale nurseries that just happened to be on sale at the shop where we buy the flour. Food for the stomach and food for the soul too. I could hear its siren song calling as we paid for the flour. Such a sweet song. I couldn’t leave it behind……

Walking around the garden I recorded 7 varieties of named David Austin roses and may be more, as not all the plants are labelled. That’s a collection. There are several different heucheras and for the first time in my gardening life I have been looking at them in garden catalogues, thinking about adding to them, because they seem to do well, and if one is good….

So, tell me. What is your guilty collecting passion? Or what would it be if you had the time/space/money?

a last breath of summer

After the cold weather of last weekend  the start of this week was milder and damper, allowing us to plant the cordon apple trees that were delivered by hand on Saturday from Jasper Trees of Leominster. The trees are lovely, sturdy one year old maidens and all are safely planted in their new bed and have been toasted in cider to welcome them. We will celebrate properly on Old Twelfth Night, January 17th, when the baby orchard will be wakened,evil spirits, should any have dared to wander in, driven away and the health of the trees toasted in the custom of wassailing.

In the meantime, we hope they will start to settle in to their new quarters and the final tree for the cordon that Jasper Trees don’t stock will be  delivered soon.

I gathered a last bouquet from the garden yesterday. As well as the white scabious, asters and geum, three different roses are still blooming. I don’t know what the white one is. It grows on long arching stems and looks as if it should be treated as a climber. The pink rose in the centre is Brother Cadfael and the large pink buds belong to Spirit of Freedom,  both of them being David Austin roses and both beautifully scented. There are still Marguerites and gazanias in flower in containers, but generally the summer planting is going to sleep for the winter, while the winter stars are  not yet shining. I can’t wait to see what appears.