Thank you and goodbye

It had probably become apparent that I was no longer writing this blog, but I have now also left Mucknell. I had a wonderful year with the community, but like many good things it had to come to an end. Thank you to all who were also interested.

You might want to follow me at my new blog (at the time of writing no posts yet!) and on Twitter.

Weigh-in

In the red corner ...

... and in the other red corner

Home grown

On the menu today: potatoes, beans, courgettes, rhubarb, tomatoes, lettuce. Yum!

It's proving a challenge to integrate the needs of the kitchen with the availability of the veg, but it is VERY good to eat something we sowed, pricked out, potted on, planted out, weeded and watered.

Conic sections of speech

The commentary I'm using alongside the evening readings from Luke is fond of using the word 'parabolic' in the discussion whenever Jesus breaks into a parable, which got me thinking whimsically again... Jesus often responds elliptically to questions, isn't known to use circular arguments, but it is open to question whether he indulges in hyperbole.

Common Darter

Relaxing by the swales on a hot Sunday morning.

Burpees Delicious

10cm and counting. I forgot to turn the irrigation off on Sunday night, so the butt was dry come Monday and the tomatoes bulging.

Making hay

The lines of cuttings on Sunday morning, just before...

... they baled them.

Beautiful green hay for the horses next door.

Sustainability evening

On Thursday, we have a welcome event for some of the local folk involved in sustainability and conservation. I've been busy putting together some factsheets about the various sustainable aspects of Mucknell (and will have to re-read them to stir my memory before Thursday), and an overview (pdf, 153kb). One day, when I get myself together, the factsheets will all go on www.mucknellabbey.org.uk.

Preparations for Thursday also include a good tidy of the kitchen garden by Anthony, and general cosmetic weeding. We'll serve some of the elderflower champagne I made at the beginning of June, but today we thought we ought to try it out first. Verdict: a bit watery, but has a little bit of something and is refreshing.

Nature writing

From "Beechcomings" by Richard Mabey:

I'm still in a state of puzzled excitement about that odd synchrony between scientific description and picturesque sentiment. I know the cynical Gordon is closer to the truth than the romantic Rosemary [in their reactions to Burnham Beeches, in George Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra Flying"], but I don't see that their truths are necessarily contradictory. At school, I was educated as a scientist, and enthralled by the mechanics of life. But I became uneasy about science when I started writing, fearful that in some way it might 'contaminate' my imagination. I kept it in quarantine in a kind of mental biohazard enclosure, taking it out only under the strictest security. But I'm wiser now, and increasingly believe that finding a common ground between respectful, objective views of nature and respectful views of our own visionary images is what 'nature writing' ought to be concerned with. So I dig deep into the biochemistry I once knew, and swat up on what is really happening in the rites of the fall, hoping that it may reveal something about the beauty of trees in autumn, or at least their meaning.

Kitchen garden progress

Rogation procession

We had a Rogation procession after the Eucharist today, staying close to the house rather than beating the bounds. It was almost a howling gale, with the thurible swinging every which way and the holy water blown back in our faces.

And here's the service sheet (pdf, 258kb) for any who are interested.

Estate map

Here's a map I just produced for the Guest Wing. The red and green pencil hasn't scanned terribly clearly, but hopefully you can make it out if you click to embiggen. One day perhaps I'll smarten it up.

A time for...

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven" (Eccles 3:1; NRSV):

• a time to go on holiday, and a time to return to the daily rhythm;
• a time for sunshine, and a time for rain, and hopefully a time for more rain;
• a time for sowing (onions and leaks), a time for planting out (beans and squashes) and a time for harvesting (lettuce);
• a time for building nests, and it seems, sadly, a time for throwing the eggs out of each other's nests;
• a time for being attentive to external things, and a time for being attentive to internal things;

and therefore

• a time for writing a blog, and a time for refraining from writing a blog... at least writing daily.

Mayday Mayday

Greetings for May Day, Beltane, the Feast of SS Philip and James (although this year it is transferred), Low Sunday and the 225th anniversary of the opening night of the Marriage of Figaro at the Vienna Burgtheater!!

It is the last day of the Easter Octave, so things will now be reverting to normal, whatever that is. I have been wondering how much our neighbours have got used to our bell, maybe even using it as an aide memoire. If so, they will have been very confused during the last two weeks, what with the different timetables of the Triduum and Easter Sunday and all the day-by-day variations since. I am looking forward to getting back into a rhythm. But first I am having some time away, so there will be a break of about a couple of weeks in the blog. In the meantime, I am hoping that there will be some proper rain, and that I will return to thriving fruit and veg.

Mangled

At 8am an anguished rusty mangle cried in the distance. Intrigued, I went to my window just in time to catch a couple of geese flying past, but not in time to work out which species.

Today's outing was to the Malverns, walking most of the length from Hollybush to Worcestershire Beacon, and down via St Ann's Well to Great Malvern. Worcestershire Beacon is the highest point, but at only 425m is no mountain. On the other hand, what with all the ups and downs, I reckon we probably climbed the equivalent of a mountain. So now I feel like an anguished rusty mangle! The weather was good: excellent for walking, but the visibility not quite good enough to see Mucknell. The bluebells were stunning above Hollybush, and there is also a good display above Wynds Point. And the broom is out, to rival the oil seed rape for sheer yellowosity.

Royalty

Any republican tendencies were largely buttoned up as we sat around the TV to watch the Royal Wedding. The trees in the aisle were six field maples and two hornbeams, and all the flowers were seasonal and English, a good example of sustainability! However, Landcare Research of New Zealand did some research on the carbon footprint of the wedding, as requested by the Daily Telegraph. Answer, a lot, but much much less than the horrifying figure for the World Cup 2010.

In the afternoon I potted out some Royalty dwarf french beans. I thought it ironic that there should be a Royalty dwarf french bean, but Thomas suggested that Napoleon I would have qualified.

Journeys

Another outing, this time to Alison's parish near Bath. The church has a square labyrinth in floor tiles, laid in the southwest corner in 1985, and based on the original in the Abbey of St Bertin, Saint-Omer, France. This image is of the angel rolling away the stone, one of a series of Stations of the Resurrection around the edges of the church.

We sang Vespers of Easter with Alison's congregation, and they made us very welcome with tea and large quantities of cake. The hawthorns along the M5 are laden with flowers on their southwest branches and are bare on the northeast.

Stumps

James is here to stake out the specimen trees and spray round the whips that he and the others planted this spring. (Spraying required by the Forestry Commission grant, and I hope with nothing more sinister than glyphosate.) We found him in the morning filling large tanks with water. All the trees are desperately in need of rain, but it's only viable to water the specimens. Looking into the forest of green tubes, most of this year's and last autumn's whips have put effort into some leaves and blossom, and need rain to be able to sustain it. Some have already died, either from lack of rain or the extreme winter cold, or from being gnawed by voles; Anthony has found quite a few vole nests at the base of the tubes.

In Easter week, the timetable becomes a bit fluid. A group of us went down to Oxford for a tour of the Bodleian library (150 miles of shelf space in its new book repository in Swindon, most of which will be taken up with editions of Barbara Cartland), with Exeter College (founded in the same year as Bannockburn) and other sites thrown in. I took the opportunity to go to the Ghost Forest outside the University Museum, at the other end of the spectrum from our whips. Ours are temperate broadleaf forest, as native as possible to the UK. The Ghost Forest comprises ten primary rainforest tree stumps from Ghana. Ours are thin and incipient. The Ghost Forest stumps are fallen trunkless giants. But they are/were all vulnerable, and they are highlighting sustainability.

The Ghost Forest "is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests."

Hoe down

More tomato seedlings are coming up, and it looks as though Moneymaker will be Reasonable-return-on-our-investment after all. I've pricked most of them out, most of the sweet peppers, and all the brassicas. The beans and squashes are doing brilliantly, and I've potted them on ready for hardening off and planting out when the danger of frost is over and IF AND WHEN WE EVER GET SOME RAIN!!! While the tomatoes are getting a bit bigger, I've planted out the Bughatti and Belize lettuces in the greenhouse bed. We have a marvellous irrigation system that produces slow drips every foot, so one of each lettuce has gone in either side of each drip, and they seem to be thriving. The Asparagus lettuces are waiting a bit longer to go outside.

The Great Weevil Slaughter continues, and I've also taken a hoe to the weeds around the rhubarb and fruit bushes. Anthony and Luke have been discomdockerating and discomthistleating (these may be made-up words) all week, with sterling help from our Holy Week and Easter guests. More obviously creatively, I've been sorting out my photos for potential cards, Sue (the nun formerly known as Gabriel formerly known as Sue) has been at her painting desk, and today a mysterious group of stones appeared in the courtyard. Who moved them?

The problem of weevils

I have the blood of a hundred weevils on my hands; they are chomping the plum and pear tree leaves, and must needs be squashed. The lesser of the two weevils are dark grey, and the others shine an iridescent copper. Yet who would have thought the old pests to have had so much blood in them? Green blood at that, from all the chlorophyll they've ingested. What, will these hands ne'er be clean? Here's the smell of the blood still.

I have also been trying to take some close-up photos of plants and flowers, which is not easy in a changeable wind. I took a blurry photo of a dandelion clock, then when I was setting myself again, along came a gust and away went my subject. But here is one I'm quite pleased with.