Perfect weather; it’s about 25-ish.
Some of our trees are still in blossom, the one above is a so-called ‘summer’ apple. Not all the blossom is alike in colour and size. This below is from a Bramley cooking-apple tree, the one the goats split in half last year:
whereas this is from a pear tree:
It’s not unlike the blossom on the crabapple bush near the house:
I’ve cut some of the grass, but I can’t bear to get rid of the forget-me-nots and dandylions, so I stopped. Anyway, I like the contrast between the short and long grass.
Elsewhere, butting was taking place for no particular reason I could think of. Even with shorn coats the goats are staying in the shade most of the time.
A Bad Guide 
We don’t cut the grass in our front garden until high summer: my wife calls it The Glade – it looks a bit like your photo.
Yesterday was our first Summer Day – today lots of new blooms are out – roses, helianthemums, and so on.
Nice, innit? But we lack your mammalian chums.
Helianthemum (play /ˌhiːliˈænθɨməm/),[1] known as rock rose, sunroses, or rushrose, is a genus of about 110 species of evergreen or semi-evergreen subshrubs in the family Cistaceae.
Very pretty. I hadn’t heard of it. I’ll have to enquire – not that there’s much choice at garden centres in this part of the world, just your basic stuff.
Yes, it’s very nice. I spent much of today shoveling old goat shit mixed with compacted, peed-on straw and hay from the floor of the goathouse. Not shoveling really, I was using a pitchfork. Very hard, smelly work. I skipped doing it last year, so by now it was two-feet deep. It’s lucky the goats aren’t very tall.
Next time get the princess to muck out the goathouse!
Or maybe she does such things for horses and the goats are your job.
I can’t bear to get rid of the forget-me-nots and dandylions
Me neither, but with a family of hayfever victims I can’t let the grass grow too high. But I work in circles around whatever is blossoming at the time.
I was using a pitchfork
The perfect pitchfork.
Or maybe she does such things for horses and the goats are your job.
That is indeed her argument.
I work in circles around whatever is blossoming at the time.
I do this too. The hvitveis (wood anemone) & daffodil areas grow bigger every year. I think it’s because I don’t mow them for several weeks after they’ve finished blooming.
I too have dandelions and forget-me-nots on my “lawn”. I am waiting for the forget-me-nots to be gone to have someone mow the lawn (it is too small to work around flower patches). They seem to cover more ground every year, a beautiful sight.
Last week-end a friend and I went on a trip to a part of the province known for its apple trees. They were all in bloom, really wonderful. I really like this time of year, from a visual point of view: not only are the trees in bloom, but while the leaves are still growing each species has its own shade of green, and in a mixed wood you can see all the various species. Later the green gets darker and more uniform across the species.
while the leaves are still growing each species has its own shade of green, and in a mixed wood you can see all the various species. Later the green gets darker and more uniform across the species.
Yes. Thanks for putting it into words, m-l.
I’m wondering if this may be a crazy forget-me-not year. They’re everywhere, even growing in between the cobbles.
It’s so lovely to see your garden like this! The tree, the goats and the high grass, everything looks wonderful.
I just now have realized that I never saw al apple tree in blossom, neither a pear tree. I think I haven’t seen one of these live and “in person” ever… Just from afar, perhaps, when we passed by some regions that grow fruits (there’s a very common word for me to name this kind of work and land “frutihortícola” but I can’t find its equivalent in English).
Yep, it’s an unforgettable year for forget-me-nots. Happily, I loves ’em.
>Julia
The Oxford dictionary translates the adj. “hortofrutícola” as “fruit and vegetable” so it seems there isn’t a word, but “doctores tiene la Iglesia”…
I’m glad you agree, dearie.
Thank you, Julia. I can’t find frutihortícola either. It doesn’t seem to be fruticulture or horticulture. It might be “produce” (n.) – fruit & vegetables.
“Orchard” is a nice English word for what you might have seen in passing.
Orchard is a lovely word for the image it produces in the mind. So for me is ‘walled garden’.
Thank you all. Orchad seems perfect, empty!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchard
Have you saw the film “The Most Exotic Marygold Hotel”?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/
We saw it last night and I like it very much. In fact I believe would have like any other picture with Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson AND Bill Niggy!
sorry, Orchard! And yes, sounds lovely, as Crown says
Oh thank you. India & Bill Nighy all in one package. Though I’ll be calling him Bill Niggy from now on; a great name for a great actor.
jajaja! oh, I’m sorry
Though you’re right Niggy is fine
Julia, you must read The Right Attitude To Rain, I think it may be the one you’re looking for.
Yes?! =)
I have it in my kindle already. But I’m “delayed” with Friends, Lovers & Chocolate. Not because I don’t like, I do, very much, but my pleasure reading time was almost nothing this week. I have to write, write and write my stupid thesis (and off I go again, Word calls me, farewell, internet disconnection in 1…, 2… and … )
Here too, my forget-me-nots are growing among the gravel in the non-lawn part (the parking part) of my backyard. I don’t remember them there before. The dandelions have been growing there too, but that is not new for them.
For this long holiday weekend we are at that place in the country where we go — the one where we can look out the window and watch the tide come and go, where squirrels once came down the chimney and an osprey once got into the screen porch and Tropical Storm Irene raised the waters only halfway to the house.
I went for a walk with Amadi today, taking some little hedge clippers with me to deal with minor cases of the woods encroaching on the pathway. I brought home one of the many little bits that I clipped off, because it had scores of wee rosebuds on it. We’ll see if they open, now that I’ve put it in water.
I don’t know if we have forget-me-nots here. The ground wildflowers that I noticed along the way today were buttercups, blue-eyed grass, wild germanium, and a thing I always forget the name of. There is more than one kind of buttercup in the neighborhood (bulbous buttercup? common buttercup?); I know because years ago I looked in a book and worked it out, but I’ve forgotten the details. The “blue-eyed grass” is a teeny tiny iris. Very tiny. The thing whose name I forget looks a little but, but not very much, like a dandelion. There was also one other. Who knows, maybe it’s forget-me-not. I do like knowing names of things, so why don’t I retain them better? Just don’t use them enough, I guess.
Yesterday Asa took Amadi for a little walk while Tesi and I were working on dinner. When they came back she had a circlet of buttercups on her head. What a brother!
WiPe discusses the genus name of blue-eyed grass. (Scroll down to “etymology”.) There may be a goat connection. Coincidentally I played the word “corm” in Words With Friends yesterday without knowing what it meant. I still don’t know what it means.
On the subject of warmth, our highest on Wednesday was 27.3C at Altnaharra (Sutherland) and on Friday was 28.7C at Kinlochewe (Wester Ross). Repeat after me “The time to visit the Highlands is May and early June”.
The thing whose name I forget looks a little bit, but not very much, like a dandelion…
Coltsfoot? We have tons of it here. You think it might be a dandelion, but then it grows these enormous leaves. It reminds me of a cuckoo in its insouciance.
“The time to visit the Highlands is May and early June”.
No kidding. There’s nothing about that in Alexander McCall Smith (so far). I suppose there aren’t so many midges yet. Our midges have just started appearing.
What is this Words With Friends? Something I would know about if I ever went anywhere, probably.
Just don’t use them enough, I guess.
That may be it. My family discussed plants the whole time during my childhood, but we lived in London and I had very little personal experience of gardening until we moved here. I can’t put a face to very many plant names.
In a few weeks the forget-me-nots will have stopped blooming and we’ll forget about them for another year. Could that be how they got their name?
a little bit, but not very much, like a dandelion… I think it was hawkweed.
Words With Friends is essentially an on-line two-person version of Scrabble. Tesi plays it on her iPad. Asa has shown me how to get it through Facebook. At any given moment I am usually in the middle of one game with her and two games with him.
The main difference between this game and Scrabble, apart from the placement of the extra-points squares, is that there is no penalty for playing an inadmissible word. The software politely tells you that that word is no good, and you don’t lose a turn. Your opponent doesn’t even have to know what you tried to do. We aren’t sure we like this feature.
Sisyrinchíon is the Greek word for Barbary nut iris (Iris or Moraea sisyrinchium), and refers to the way the corm tunics resemble a shaggy goat’s-hair coat, sisýra. Pliny and Theophrastus give the dubious etymology of Latin sūs “pig” and Greek rhynchos “nose”, referring to pigs grubbing the roots. As Goldblatt and Manning explain, “the reason for applying the name to a genus of New World Iridaceae was apparently arbitrary.
Sisýra appears to be unexplained, though. And so is Sisyphos. Since initial s becomes h (or breathy vowel) in Greek, I guess they’re from something else.
I played Scrabble once: I thought it loathsome. I put down “tuxedoing” and explained that it meant dressing for dinner. Some petty objection about dictionaries was raised. Bollocks: if you’re not to be amusing what’s the ruddy point?
It’s a good way of finding out if you’re playing with people who would object to “tuxedoing”.
In Words With Friends this plays out as follows: you put down “tuxedoing”. The software immediately sends you a message to the effect that “tuxedoing” is not a word, or rather (perhaps trying to spare your feelings) that it “may be misspelled or a proper name”. If your opponent is physically present, you then of course fume about the inadequacy of the list of words that the ruddy thing is using, and moan about the points you have been deprived of, and reveal how amusing you are. If your opponent is not physically present, there is a “chat” feature so that you do this fuming and moaning and revealing in writing.
But, as I say, your opponent has no chance to formally object to “tuxedoing”. The objecting is automated.
so that you can do this fuming
For a while I was playing a kind of Scrabble online with a friend. I think it was called “Lexolous” or something very similar. There was no way of discussing a word, or anything, online with your partner, an unacceptable word was just refused. My friend was a much more careful player than I was, and she always won big, but at one point I realized I could take my time, do some careful planning too and get much better scores. I did improve, but I don’t think I won against her, though.
Surely with these online word games there’s nothing to stop you using an anagram site.
I would not lower myself to that.
Besides, if you are going to play all seven letters at once it will take more than making a word; you have to be able to attach it to what is already there. And most clever plays involve multiple short words and making good use of the squares that double or triple the point values.
Our lawn has been covered with dandelions and clover since last summer; the neighbors all hate us, and we don’t blame them. Especially the ones across the street, who are trying to sell their house. But finally the contractor showed up today (we’ve been waiting for months — he’s the best in town, does totally reliable work, thus is in demand and always has more work than he can handle, thus is always wildly late getting to your problem) and will start power-seeding tomorrow, and we’ve promised to water regularly after he’s done, so hopefully our neighbors can go back to hating the woman whose dog shits on their lawns.
I didn’t know about power-seeding. Are you going to have a lawn like a pool table? It’s going to be very tempting for that dog. I think I see some photoshopped lawns here, but I can’t be sure.
I’m surprised no one has tried using a power seeder to write things in contrasting varieties of grass seed on their lawn (Keep Off The Grass, for example). Or perhaps they have, I’m not sure how to google it.
Is there a machine like that for reseeding hairlines?
the woman whose dog shits on their lawns.
That isn’t me, I don’t have a dog, but I don’t have a fence either and I have had neighbours with poorly controlled dogs. My sister recommended a homemade spray involving mustard in, I think, vinegar, to be sprayed on the edges of the lawn to repel dogs. I haven’t tried it, because by the time I got the recipe the dogs had left with their owners, but I am keeping it just in case. Any of you are welcome to try it!
My sister recommended a homemade spray involving mustard in, I think, vinegar
Sounds delicious – a Dijon mustard, possibly. Only in France.
Trond, I believe they do hair transplants that way. It was on tv, but I couldn’t watch.
Dijon is the mustard capital of France. Many kinds of mustard are made there, not just one. Even ordinary French mustard (not “extra-forte”) is much stronger than North American mustard. You would not slather French mustard all over a sandwich or hot dog.
One of the brands has the motto:
Manger moutarde
Moult me tarde
This is probably (perhaps based on) Middle French. (Moult, pronounced “mou”, means ‘much’).
It means roughly “I can’t wait to eat mustard”.
It’s said that a scattering of tiger dung keeps dogs away. I don’t know whether lion dung works as well.
Bats are protected, variously, in all parts of the kingdom: http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_the_law.html
Squatters ain’t: Scots Law takes a pleasingly robust line with them.
Last year we attended a lovely exhibition about bats for kids at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (a city near Bs.As.),
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.218508114880845.60675.140795172652140&type=1
In La Plata they appointed the bats as “Good neighbours” (Buenos Vecinos), I don’t know how many people agree, they still hate them because they’re ugly, poor things…
And then, in the little novels we’re reading…
Isabel thought for a moment. And then she said, “We don’t know what it’s like to be a bat.”
Richard looked at her in surprise, and she laughed. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that somebody once wrote a paper called ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ A professor of philosophy called Thomas Nagel.” “And did Professor Nagel reach any conclusion?”
“That we don’t know. We can imagine. But we don’t know.”
(A. McCall Smith, The Right Attitude to Rain, chapter 2)
=D
I have posted Part 1 of my bat story here. In fact, Crown, I have edited and expanded it since you read it. But I haven’t written Part 2 yet.
Crown, you’re probably not watching the Diamond Jubilee River Pageant. The Thames full of small craft, the boats flying a great variety of flags, their occupants wearing a corresponding variety of uniforms, the BBC announcers making very British conversation about the weather and about the choreographing of the boats and about the engineering marvel of the bascules of the Tower Bridge, … now a reporter is interviewing some proud old naval veterans … one of them once used a dead shark as a life-preserver …
Of course I’m watching! I need short rests in between some strenuous gardening.
The queen isn’t a necessary part of this event, and I like all the other stuff except for the royal family in military outfits. In fact if we’d had a tortoise as head of state, we might well be way beyond a diamond jubilee by now (I’m not sure what comes next after diamond).
I’m looking forward to Bats II.
I don’t have a TV, but I have heard of this pageant. I don’t care one way or the other about the royal family, but would love to see all the boats. A few years ago we had the Tall Ships (large sailboats used as training vessels) here in Halifax (Nova Scotia) (where there is a very deep harbour and the ships can come right next to the piers) and the view of all those ships with their sails was wonderful.
Right now there is a lot about the queen in the American press (at least on the internet), including an article I haven’t read: “What if America had a Queen?” I think they would love having a queen, especially an elderly one unlikely to cause scandals (as with Queen Victoria past her childbearing years), but the problem with queens is that they are usually mothers of future kings as well as (still as second best) potential queens, and kings don’t seem so popular. I have a book on England (now somewhat out of date) written by a French author who makes the point that English queens are remembered much more fondly than kings (Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Anne, Queen Victoria). He thinks that this has to do with the Protestant religion which suppressed the cult of the Virgin Mary. According to this view, the unconscious yearning for worship of a powerful Mother figure is filled by devotion to a Queen. When the Queen Mother was still alive, there was a de facto double queenship, with many people utterly devoted to the Queen Mother (or their idea of what she was like – her public and private personas were apparently quite different). Now the role of elderly, almost saintly matriarch has devolved entirely on the present queen, who fills the part to perfection. It will be a letdown, if not a real crisis, if and when Prince Charles becomes king.
I think Mary, queen of Scots (Roman Catholic) was a very popular queen too. I like her, anyway.
The truth is m-l, I don’t really care very much about the royal family. I just enjoy speculating on the alternatives. There are much bigger problems.
I saw most of The King’s Speech on TV the other night, and realized that the young Princess Margaret is played by the girl who more famously played the charmingly precocious and inquisitive daughter in Outnumbered.
I finished Bats — Part 2. (Also I keep making minor edits to Bats — Part 1.) Didn’t I mention that?
Thanks, I’ll take a look in the morning. I don’t know about Outnumbered, we’re very backward here.
Julia, about the bats in The Right Attitude to Rain, I looked up Thomas Nagel on Wikipedia, but in the brief section about “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”, I couldn’t really see where bats came into it. He might as well have been talking about weasels or hamsters. Bats can seem frightening at times, but I’m on their side and I’m trying to overcome it.
I’m going to get the next book in the series from the library tomorrow, if they have it.
I think that Noetica, at LH, has mentioned “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”
Here.
“A Warm Afternoon In The Garden”: pah! The day is so dreich we’ve turned the Aga back on.
The word dreich ranks high on the list of Scotland’s many gifts to the world.
Is it pronounced like German reich? Yes, it’s very good word. Up there with shortbread.
So I’ve come across “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” twice, without investigating or even remembering the name. Too bad Noetica’s link doesn’t work any longer.
No. Apparently it’s pronounced more like German drich or driech (if there were such a word).
AJP, I never meant to suggest that you were a huge fan of the British royal family. I am not either, but the queen is in the news everywhere right now.
dearieme, you have an Aga! I once lived in a house with an Aga. It was just wonderful. It warmed the house silently, and whatever we cooked or baked with it came out beautifully. Unfortunately, after two years it became impossible to obtain the right coal, as the mine said they were not selling enough of it to make it worth their while to ship it. We were sold a really foul substitute coal, and had to give up the Aga.
I saw an ad for a more modern kind of Aga (perhaps gas-fired) in a catalogue and was shocked at the price. It would be worth buying if you intended to be in the house for at least several decades.
Ours is gas-fired and was in the house when we bought it. It made scones yesterday. So we toasted Her Majesty with strawberry jam.
Agas are very popular in Britain. For every teenager who wants an iphone for Christmas there is a parent dreaming of an Aga to cook the turkey and roast potatoes in. I’ve never had one, but I know people love them. My family in Australia bought a wood-burning one in the 1950s; I don’t understand why they didn’t die from the heat. My mother still uses recipes from the Aga cookbook from the 1940s or 50s. I think there are coal, oil, wood and gas fired models.
I was going to ask “Do the British eat turkey at Christmas?”, but then I remembered Scrooge and Tiny Tim.
I saw a wild turkey a few weeks ago. It was standing by the side of the road in Waltham, Massachusetts, displaying its fine feathers–to whom, I’m not sure–like a peacock.
We’ve taken to eating goose at Christmas; we’ve found we much prefer it.
Not all that is fowl is really grouse.
But pheasants are revolting.
They don’t call them galliforms for nothing.
I wonder why nobody is Anserine you, Trond.
Gans besondres.
Goose is greasier than anything galliform. This might explain its appeal to some.
Although Greece is next door to Turkey.
Hello. I’m back. I’m sorry about the long silence. There will be more posts soon.
Glad to have you back. Meanwhile we were all enjoying the warm afternoon in your garden.
About goats.
It’s hard to see how our ancestors cleared the wildwood from Britain without massive use of goats.
Thank you, m-l.
I don’t know how they’ve trained their goats to eat what they want them to eat. Our goats only eat what they feel like eating. They aren’t really thinking that they’re providing a service.
I think they put up a temporary fence with no plants inside it except the target weeds and maybe some trees.
These goat girls are from the same part of central Massachusetts where LanguageHat lives, and where Asa will be going to college in the fall. More proof that it’s a very cool part of the world!
It is. I’ve got an old friend (an artist) who lives there too.