SEE if you can reach that one going under the slates.’ This month’s column finds me up a ladder, where I have been each March since we clothed the front of the house with that loveliest and most invasive of climbers, the wisteria. The Chief Horticulturalist stands at the bottom, seemingly unconcerned about the imminent risk of widowhood. I lift my head over the fascia so that my chin rests in the gutter and gingerly reach across the roof to find the offending tendril and give it a yank.
As I do so, I reflect on how the characterisation of Adam and Eve makes the story of Man’s original fall in the Book of Genesis so believable. There is a serpentine quality to Wisteria sinensis, China’s finest botanical export. I love the way it winds itself around drain pipes with subtle wiliness, until I have to free its strands before they’re prised from the masonry.
On my ascent this time, I passed last year’s goldfinch nest in a thicket of branches where the fuchsia, the rose and the wisteria meet in a pleasing composition. Higher still, the muddy outline of an old swallow’s nest reminds me that our colony must soon be leaving their winter hideaway in the South African veldt to come home, if they haven’t already.
Denne historien er fra March 17, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 17, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
