WENDY GIVES BIRTH TO LITTLE BUNDLES OF CHOY

Huzzah huzzay! Calloo callay! Hey nonny noodles and all that crap!!!!!

We've broken our duck, we're off the mark, we've scored, we've struck gold we have HARVESTED OUR FIRST CROP from Wendy. But first . . .

American witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, flowers before the leaves fall. This is the species from which oil of witch hazel is extracted. Photographed at Westonbirt Arboretum

I downloaded the Dylan cheezy Christmas album from the iTunes store and inflicted it on the family. I've had to promise the Photographer General never to play it again unless with headphones at the bottom of the garden. One of my daughters was also home, and backed up this threat by confiscating my carob coated Brazils. (Do you know, there are actually times when I prefer carob to real chocolate. Not often, but just now and then.)

And while I think about it, can I just say that Jaffa Cakes are utterly awful? I know certain distinguished and Award Winning Bloggists adore them, but I just want to say that if he wants to bat for the wrong team, well, that's fine by him. I'm with him on most things - orange flowers planted with blue; minimal or zero lawns; the wisdom to chicken out of chewing raw, whole chillies when challenged (see here) - but not the Jaffa Cakes. Those slick, non-crunchy, brown-bottomed jobs, with their faux citric centres, were inspired to corrupt the middle classes. Pretending to be biscuits, when they're really cheap cakes, these absolute Griffins of the confectionary world should be expatriated, extirpated, excommunicated or dumped. Send 'em back to Jaffa, say I!

Phew! Thank you! Yes, much better now.

Now then, now then!

Wendy, my precious and beloved Hartley Botanic greenhouse, has yielded her first fruits. OK, they're only a few Pak Choi, but I gathered the first lot to have with roast chicken for this past Sunday lunch. Mmmmm - delicious! The greenhouse was built on the 19th of August. The young Paks, from Fothergill's seed, were sown in late August and planted in September. Their growth rate has been quite astounding.

Our first little Pak Choi - harvested young, to make room for the prop bench.

Under different circumstances, we'd have left them growing for another two or three weeks, but I had ordered a propagating bench from Two Wests and Elliot and was anxious to get it up and running. The Chinese veg were exactly where the bench was to go.

The box, when it arrived, was full of promise but when we unpacked it, the enormous heap of little aluminium alloy strips was bewildering. My wise daughter, who teaches, sensed the growing panic in my voice and said, 'why don't I get a felt tip and mark all the pieces with their identifying letter?' Under her supervision, and with much grunting and perplexity on my part, we got it all built. It took the whole of Sunday.

My younger daughter helps to unfold the mystery of the flat pack propagation bench.

I've had rather a traumatic time with buying things on line. Our monster shredder, over 20 years old, once had the ability to chomp timber up to 3 inches in diameter and to macerate the toughest, nastiest prunings, weeds and other crap, spewing out a perfectly chipped and kibbled mulch. It was so finely chopped that sometimes I would scatter it about the garden without even bothering to compost it first.

But over the years, as with men, this beast began to lose virility. Its teeth blunted so that hedge clippings came out mangled, but still recognisable. And if I tried to poke a stick up its whatsit, I was confronted by a blank refusal to chop. Its time had come and since the engine was also tired, and burns oil, I decided to replace.

I had forgotten what my old machine was called, or who made it. The engine proudly boasts Briggs and Stratton, but paint and labels on the rest of it are long gone.

So I Googled 'garden shredders.'

In seconds, I'd found out that the identical machine is still being made - though its livery has changed from red to green. It's called a Woodsman Mighty Mac, and having been a Mac computer fanatic for as long as they have been made, the name had a positive and comforting - though totally illogical - resonance. (Unlike the Jaffa Cake which is deeply discomfiting.)

Having compared prices on line - they varied hugely - I placed my order and the machine, in a huge box, arrived at breakfast next morning.

But when I undid the box, the machine was in bits. However, unlike the propagation bench, it looked straightforward to assemble. Or, would have been if the necessary bolts, instruction book and other bits and pieces had been included in the box. They weren't

The extremely helpful and obliging proprietor of the Cheshire firm who supplied it, promised to send the missing bits which arrived speedily. Or, rather, some of them arrived. Other, important ones didn't and we had more embarrassed and apologetic phone calls.

The moral of the this boring tale is this:

Buying on line is brilliant for finding the best prices, and for efficient delivery. BUT, if things do not go quite as they should, you are - not to put too fine a point on it - well and truly buggered!

Wendy's staging is already beginning to fill.

I'm listening to a rather nasal-voiced, but devastatingly attractive and immaculately groomed receptionist girl in the palatial showrooms of my local car dealer. Though surrounded by amazing models - cars, not totty - ranging in price from reasonable to a shattering six figure extreme, I'm not here to buy. No, it's just an MOT while I wait, and to have my brake fluid changed. (They're doing something to my car too. Ha Ha!)

This time last year the PG was shooting pictures of me propagating succulents while pretending it was summer.

This week's film was The Yangtse Incident. I'm old enough to remember being told at school that a brave captain had just smuggled HMS Amethyst out of China, despite being attacked. Some years later, I discovered that the Amethyst was a ship, and that the aforementioned captain had not been some kind of glorified jewel thief. Life can be confusing when you're six. Richard Todd heads a cast of the usual Brit talent including, as in almost every known film of the era, Sam Kydd. A well made, well shot piece.

PS - I've just been told that my car has FAILED its MOT. Nothing wrong with the mechanics, but a front tyre is bald. So that was a waste of time. Isn't life full of little ironies??

Bye for now.

DYLAN'S THE NEW CROSBY?

Autumn cucurbits stir up thoughts of pumpkin pie, trick or treat and other bits of American culture which we seem to have adopted. Can you actually eat these things, or are they just for gathering dust and bulking out harvest festivals?

Never break shocking news to anyone when they're driving. It can have terrible consequences for the car, and for road safety. It was done to me, this week, and I almost caused a multiple pile-up on the A1 just outside Stevenage.

This was not trivial stuff like being sacked. Or a death in the family, or winning the National Lottery. No, this one was a biggy, a head spinner, a pants dampener. And the blow was struck by the BBC! Bastards!! I heard, on Radio Noos, that the God of my youth, the Wunderkind of the hippie era, master of the ironic lyric, the original subterranean, tambourine rattlin', non-looking-back Artist - OK, also a bit Woody Guthrie-ish from time to time, and capable of dreadful harmonica playing - but still the absolute main, main man of the Beatle-infested sixties, Bob Dylan has made a cheeeeeezy Christma album. Look what the Indie said about it.

I know he did it for charity but they played bits of it on the radio - Dean Martin after a partial laryngectomy - and by the time I'd reached Sandy, I was in tears.

I won't say anything more about it, but think I will have to buy the album, just as a reminder that when one grows old, one should don woolly cardy and soft slippers, pour oneself a series of enormous whiskies, and sit in the dark, with the phone off the hook, watching Bette Davis films.

This is by way of a 'holding' post, just to keep in touch while I recover from the Dylan aberration, but a couple of things:

1. I have a question - and I do hope you'll take the trouble to respond:

Have you tried navigating the new RHS Website? I have, but I don't want to say a word until I know how you all find it. If you haven't done so yet, please log on here and if you feel like it, tell me what you think.

2. Tomorrow is the new yesterday. On BBC's Farming Today, all this week - it's on at 5.45 each morning! - they've been discussing organic farming. Apparently, consumption of organic food is falling rapidly and one of the reasons given was that shoppers are more concerned, these days, about whether food is local, rather than organic.

This startling example of consumers behaving exactly like sheep and following fashion, reminded me of a thing they used to have in Private Eye, as a satire on folk saying idiotic things like 'White is the new black.' and so on.

So I turned over in bed and said to the Photographer General, 'Local is the new organic.' She responded by laughing uproariously, leaping up and making me a delectable cup of tea.

So how about a few 'X is the new Y?' Go on, you're bound to think of something!!

Here for starters:

iPhone is the new Blackberry

Ilex crenata is the new box hedging.

Heucheras are the new Hostas

Pak Choi is the new curly kale

Butternut squash is the new marrow

Monty Don is not the new Alan Titchmarsh

Better examples welcomed, for the good of Mankind.

Cones of Pinus strobus, weeping resinous tears - clearly, they've heard about the Dylan album.

I'm reading. A brilliant translation, by Hussain Haddawy, of the Arabian Nights. It's in two volumes and gives a clear insight into Mediaeval life in the Middle East. It also shows how profoundly changed and degraded are the fairy tales of chaps like Ali Baba, Sindbad and 'Al Al-din, whose name got corrupted to Aladdin. Some bits are jolly rude, too.

I'm not listening to Bob Dylan. There will be forgiveness, but I need time to heal.

This time in 2005 I was in Aldeburgh to see Britten's Opera Albert Herring at Snape Maltings. The day after the performance, we saw a flock of Common Crossbills, between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness.

Bye bye.

PAPILIONACEOUS PEREGRINATIONS

Ivan Hicks's work at Butterfly World and Future Gardens

It's terribly important, don't you think, that a committed and determined journalist should always be ahead of the game. The knack is to be on the spot almost before the balloon goes up so that when all the other hacks are all breathlessly trying to catch up, you can swan along, miles ahead of the opposition and file your story - which will be a scoop - to a grateful and loving editor who showers you with bonus fees, hugs, kisses and, if you're very, very good, a couple of Mars bars.

With such sharp-elbowed competitiveness in mind, I thought I'd avoid the rush and make my first visit to Future Gardens and Butterfly World, yesterday. Naturally, there wasn't a journalist in sight anywhere in the vast acreage, so my fellow visitor and I had the whole place to ourselves. The site has just closed for the winter, so although I wasn't the first garden writer to visit, it's a reasonably safe bet that I will have been the last. Hurrah!

Metal bull rushes in Nature's Artistry, Autumn's Edge.

There has been comment, in the trade press, about disappointing visitor numbers to Future Gardens and Butterfly World, and about payment problems for some of the designers. That's a shame because the concept is impressive and much has been done towards making the place a big attraction.

By the time I finally got there, this year's Future Gardens were run down and, to an extent, in disarray. But it's good to see designs with their curlers in, with cucumber slices over their eyes and mud packs over their visages. They are to be disbanded, we were told, but no doubt everyone involved learnt a lot from this year's experience.

It was raining, too, meaning that to take pictures, keep the camera dry and not fall flat on my face in the mud required a combination of co-ordination and concentration, neither of which I have.

Butterfly World.

A glasswing or clearwing butterfly - I think

it's Greta oto in the family Ithomiinae, from South and Central America.

Some of the features that remained were still lovely. The whippy steel bull rushes by, I think, Fiona Heron waved in the breeze realistically and their starkness, along with the white ground, put me straight into a cold, sleety afternoon in my local Fenland landscape. Andy Sturgeon's monolithic thingies made me wonder where the apes were and I felt positively uplifted in Bruno Marmiroli's H Garden. White wooden trees are a delight against the orange walls.

But these gardens hammered home repeatedly this point: however hard you try not to give them their way, plants are the kings. Always will be. And where the plants don't rule, a garden's design is lessened. Without plants it cannot, no it cannot be a garden. Interesting installation, possibly; an exterior interior, maybe. But garden it isn't. (Rude comments on this heresy welcomed!)

Ivan Hicks has been - is - the Big Design Honcho, in this monster project and I really enjoyed seeing his series of giant drainage pipe moon entrances, looking warm, tempting and terracottary, despite the rain. I love the way weeds have blended with pretties, in the walls and barriers.

The future's orange! The H Garden.

Indeed, I loved massive spread of dead 'wild flowers' all over Butterfly world. Among the brown, the sere and the yellow, startling pink cosmos daisies are still blooming in little clusters. Cornflowers, Phacelia tanacetifolia and other arable weeds are still hanging on, making tiny star-bursts of colour - just enough to prevent it all from looking like the Somme on a bad day.

I hope this project succeeds. The huge geodesic butterfly dome will house masses of the beautiful insects, when completed. Meanwhile, we had to make do with a polytunnel in which the summer's last, lethargic beauties are still listlessly fluttering. The big, blue morphos and startlingly eyed owl butterflies are impressive, but for ephemeral beauty, I was most taken with the glasswing or clearwing butterflies from the Americas.

Sad things: The frogs seem to have got ranavirus. Two dead ones in my minipond this week. Also, the sparrowhawk has eaten another robin.

Happy things: Wendy, reported on here, is now wired and watered. I can warm her, moisten her and gently coax her into propagation mode. But long before the services were connected, I managed to root a dozen or so pelargonium cuttings with neither bottom heat nor irrigation. What a fecund beauty she is turning out to be already, bless her!

I'm listening to Louis Prima singing Just a Gigolo and I ain't got no body.

This day in 1981, I was working as a part time consultant in animal nutrition, visiting clients in Oxfordshire. I spent the night with friends at an extremely posh address in Holland Park.

This week's film was Sunset Boulevard. The 1950 classic with Gloria Swanson and William Holden in crackling form and a wonderful script, and direction, by Billy Wilder. The claustrophobic, decaying mansion was perfect. Miss Havisham redivivus ain't in it!

Picture: Greta oto feeding on Tithonia.

GRAMINEOUS JUBILATIONS WITH FULL HERBSTSONNE

First the swank: our snowdrops are already looking absolutely lovely, my deah! We have nine in bloom, as of this afternoon, all looking ridiculously out of place among the golden autumn afterdaze. They are Galanthus reginae-olgae (picture left) and come sans leaves, during the closing days of September. They prefer it a bit hotter and drier than most snowdrops and are happy in my searing gravel, where the cats crap and where a fox, last spring, buried an entire rabbit. The leaves follow at more normal snowdrop time in January.

If you've got snowdrops out, tell me! Bet you haven't!!!

Second, the moan. No rain now for weeks and my poor October lovelies are more wilty than ever. Chrysanthemums sulking, lower leaves dying before the buds open; Schizostylis going schizo because they're thirsty; dahlias looking jaded. Clover is the only thing making my lawn green and when I went to plant a few bulbs, I nearly shattered my elbow trying to dig a trowel into the ground.

Now the story - such as it is.

I spent Tuesday at the RHS Garden, Wisley, travelling with a celebrated and respected journalist - no, not the Hat, this time - and what I saw, down in that RHS topknot garden was enough to make me dance with delight, whoop aloud and clap several startled members of the public on the back with heartiness and bonhomie.

Miscanthus sinensis in full fettle uphill from the glasshouse at Wisley.

Among the trials, down on the Portsmouth field, there's a superb collection of garden-worthy dahlias, some with dark leaves, others not. Many of them show terrific promise and it's comforting to know that more new varieties are on the way. However, I won't dwell because this blog has been a dahlia-ed already.

Three things that really excited me, this time, were Tom Stuart Smith's magnificent gardens around the glasshouse. His semi-circular layout has matured in an amazingly short time and although the beech columns need a little maintenance, the overview was not only enchanting, in its own right, but resonates so aptly with the neighbouring parts of the garden.

I wrote about this in A Garden Under Glass and for Gardens Illustrated when it was new, but to an extent, what I wrote then was an act of faith. Now that Tom's gardens have matured, I'm delighted to find that that my original eulogistic prediction was, if anything, understated.

Gaura flowers really were dancing like butterflies in Piet Oudolf's planting.

Uphill from the Glasshouse Garden, I followed the two big borders originally planted by Piet Oudolf and subsequently 'tickled up' by others. With the sun in my face, viewing all those dying grasses and perennials contre jour, was like wandering through a glittery dream where everything is luminously atremble.

Later, coming down hill past the main herbaceous borders was an equally inspiring experience. Here, David Jewel - surely, one of the most interesting creative planters around, these days - has managed to stage a theatrical masterpiece. Even now, after a long, hard summer, there is still plenty to come. Strong colours rule - quite different from the Oudolf 'sere and yellow' - but wherever you examine plant combinations, you are startled by their daring. A vivid purple Salvia leucantha, for instance, near the dark leaved Dahlia 'Twinings After Eight' with a short Cortaderia and red fuchsias. And it worked! They all blended beautifully.

The big double borders at Wisley, David Jewel's triumph of creative planting.

There's no doubt that with a double border, whatever the size, the whole is greater - far greater - than the sum of its parts. Both big double borders at Wisley should be looking a little bit knackered, by now but they don't. They look bloody marvellous. And at home my double border looks bloody awful. Sigh!

Outstanding plants, also at Wisley, included Wisteria frutescens 'Longwood Purple,' - short, stubby racemes - unmistakeably a wist but a late summer one. Worth growing, if you ask me.

Also the nerines in the glasshouse and Wisley's extensive collection of Hydrangea paniculata. They pollard them, to soup up the flower power - and it works. Even in extreme age, these flowers are lovely. Am I the only person who thinks dead hydrangeas are far prettier and more interesting than living ones?

Delightful chaos: Piet Oudolf's borders, augmented, at Wisley.

I'm listening to Brahms String Sextet Number 2 in G Major.

This Week's film was Stagecoach, a greatly acclaimed Western but for me, it has two serious problems: John Wayne. Firstly, the man simply couldn't act and relied on speaking really slowly in the hopes that that would build up some kind of tension. Secondly, when seen in motion, he gave the impression of being a nicotine-addled wreck who would need a week's holiday to recover from shooting a single scene. Action Man he wasn't. The other problem about the DVD I bought is its abysmal print quality. We are warned never to buy pirated copies but the film industry might want to 'keep a slice of all the advice they give so free' and stop fobbing us customers off with crappy videotape recordings, cropped for square televisions and packaged as higher tech DVDs.

This day in 2006 I managed to change the internal battery of my iPod. In those days, that was a scary thing to do. Apple provided you with an odd plastic tool which wasn't strong enough to open the iPod and a tutorial CD-ROM to talk you through the terrifying procedure.

Bye!

A CRASSITUDE OF DAHLIAS

Competition dahlias at Harrogate, shot on my iPhone which, as I've said before, is a fab phone but has an absolutely pants camera. Such big blossoms had me striving to invent an apt collective noun. A 'vulgarity' of dahlias? A blowzitude? If anyone can do better, let me know.

I promised a proper post, this week and have to say that I’ve been itching to mention dahlias. I wrote a piece on them recently in the Mail – here – comparing the brash giants my father loved growing with today's more elegant lovelies.

I thought the outsize wedding hat dahlia was a thing of the past, in these days of hazy, grassy perennial borders and naturalistic planting but I was wrong. They were at the Harrogate Autumn flower show, last week, in vast numbers, practically filling an entire hall. The gigantic flowers, in uncompromising colours, were huge enough to make show visitors look small and drab. (Though some of us show visitors were, indeed, small and drab.)

To avoid arrest by the Fashion Police, I admit that in the past, I’ve often shuddered with disapproval at the huge-flowered monsters so loved by competition growers. But I think it’s time I admitted to harbouring a secret admiration of such floral behemoths. I don’t think I’d grow any at home, because I don’t grow for showing or competing, but when you see these flowers lined up on a show bench, all you can say wow! Gosh! Begorrah! Or, if you’re a Kiwi, Cripes!

At Harrogate, I lurked, by the entrance and heard almost everyone exclaim in surprise and delight as they came into the hall.

The only people with miserable faces were the judges. Why do they – or I should say ‘we’ since I’m also a judge – often look as though we’ve just swallowed a tumbler of vinegar, when judging.

Big white cactus dahlias at Harrogate Autumn Flower Show

At Harrogate I bumped into King of Dahlias Jon Wheatley. His team manages the National Dahlia Collection at Winchester Growers and his Chelsea exhibit, you may recall, won not only a Gold Medal but also the President’s Award this year. We discussed the virtues of new varieties such as D. ‘Knockout’ – dark leaved with luminous yellow, single flowers – and agreed that with such virtues as handsome foliage, manageable flowers and stately growth habits, these made supreme border plants. Furthermore, they flower freely, provided you dead-head them, until November.

To Jon's list of outstanding performers I'd add 'Twynings After Eight' for its soft white flowers and chocolate foliage, 'Woodbridge' which is worth having, just for the foliage, and a personal choice, 'Bishop of Auckland' whose mid-sized, single, port-coloured flowers go on almost forever.

As far as management is concerned, climate change has resulted in a Hamlet-like dilemma for dahlia growers: ‘To lift, or not to lift?’ Whether ‘tis nobler in the husbandry to suffer the slings and arrows of a possibly outrageous winter – and leave the dahlias in the ground – or to take up the tubers against a sea of troubles with moulds and rots in the storage shed.

Jon says: ‘if you live south of The Wash, leave them in and treat them like hardy perennials – unless your soil is wet and heavy. Elsewhere, lift the tubers. I’m level with The Wash, but my soil is heavy, so I lift.

But here’s Jon’s best gem of advice: Don’t cut them right back. Instead, pot up your dahlias, in autumn – but before they get frosted – and keep them partially in growth in a greenhouse, so that they can subside gently into dormancy. That’s a method I’m definitely going to try, now that I’ve got the lovely Wendy to play in.

You have to admire the quality of the blooms and the skill in getting them up to show pitch.

And if you haven’t a greenhouse and live on clay, north of, say, Leicester? Lift them in the old way, but make sure the tubers are dry before storing. I learnt that the hard way last winter when I lifted them sodden and lost about 60% of my tubers, even though they were stored in airy trays, in a warm shed, and cosseted in bubble wrap.

I’m listening to Traffic outside, since I’m writing this post in the RHS Lindley Library, Vincent Square, London. You can go online for an hour for £1, here, or for 18 hours for £5. I think ALL libraries should provide free wireless internet collections and will tub thump at my next meeting with the RHS Bigwigs.

This week’s film was Dorian Gray seen at the ritzy Odeon, Leicester Square. Lovely cinema, but it should be: my balcony seat cost £19. The film was a re-hash of the Oscar Wilde story and couldn’t make up its mind whether to be a treatise on Victorian morality, a gothic horror story or a ‘taut’ thriller. The gothicality was overdone, much of the film being shot in grim light and set in a bizarre Walt Disney London.

The lead, Ben Barnes – sloe-eyed, reminiscent of Johnny Depp – just didn’t strike me as a Dorian Gray type but Colin Firth provided some convincing acting. I actually burst out laughing at the scene where the forever young Gray returns after a long absence and we see the rest of the cast suddenly, hideously aged and, for some reason, grey all over and looking positively cobwebby, like the Fluck and Law John Major. Oh, and the soundtrack was awful – endless bursts of dirgy, funereal music.

¡Hasta la proxima!

365 SILVERTREE DAYS

Loxodonta africana - he wouldn't forget any birthdays! I spotted him in Kenya, in 2001.

We're one year old today! Huzzah!

If you don't count the rather flaky one, on the 18th September when I still hadn't got a blogging clue, my first proper post, to which some of you very sweetly replied was on 22nd September 2008.

So I thought it was time to thank everyone who has been so incredibly kind and who have contributed such fab comments, over the past 12 months.

Thank you, too, if you voted for me to win Best Newcomer, not to mention Panel Beater, on the Fork 'n' Monkey awards. I'm really touched by it all and, no, there's not one trace of irony in what I've just written. I really do thank you. Very much indeed. Thank you!

I feel that I also owe an explanation. Why does this blog have such a peculiar name?

When I first began to stumble around the blogosphere, led there by an accidental Googling one day which led me to the Simian One, I realised that I simply had to start a blog of my own.

Typically, instead of thinking it all through and planning, I just sort of blundered into the thing and ended up suddenly having to give it a name. I knew the competition out there was tough - I mean, if someone calls their blog a 'sea of immeasurable gravy' and thinks of themselves as a sock, its pretty clear that the competition for weirdness is pretty tough out there.

So, I rummaged for a half decent title picture and while doing that, tortured my exhausted grey cells for a suitable name.

My computers all have names. Always have had, ever since my first Apple Classic in the early 1980s which had a tiny monochrome screen and storage for, ooh, about 2 megabytes. It was called Rose. (Apple is in Rosaceae and because Malus sounds too like 'bad', and it was a classic - it had to be 'Rose.') My first - and Apple's first - laptop, an unwieldy Powerbook with a battery like a house brick, was called 'Violet' because it was supposed to be small and shrinking.

Later, a Powerbook Duo was 'Orchid.' I won't bore you with Iris - she was a coloured iMac which soon got re-named the Fruitgum, because she resembled e a Rowntrees strawberry gum.

James A-S will recall that my more recent Powerbook was 'Cowslip,' since he was obliged to hijack it for one of our shows when his Powerbook suddenly died of a stroke, ten minutes before curtain-up.

Hang in there - I'm almost done.

My first Apple G5, a shiny metallic monsta, intimidated me. On account of its argentous nature - is there such a word? There is now! - I decided to name it after the South African Leucadendron argenteum, or Silvertree. Silvertreedays was a possible blog name but looked ugly on the page and since I'm, almost constantly in a daze, the name silvertreedaze seemed more apt. Subtle punning, you see.

In two weeks time, I'm taking myself off to Apple's bright shiny store in Regent street, and lining up a replacement for Silvertree - another monsta whose name I have yet to decide upon.

Silvertree, meanwhile, will go to a good home. My younger son is desperate for better computerage for his music composing and will take it over.

Cowslip was replaced by Tillandsia - it was to have been a MacBook Air, you see, until I discovered how hopelessly flimsy they are, and decided on another MacBook Pro. But the airy name stuck.

As long as it's always an Apple/Mac, all shall be well. Sort of.

I'm listening to Beethoven Piano Sonatas, playing with a slideshow on Tillandsia to run the batteries down so I can recharge them properly.

This week's film was Barnacle Bill, a deliciously corny Ealing comedy about a naval captain, played deliciously by Alec Guinness, whose career was blighted by incurable seasickness and who ends up in command of a decrepit seaside pier. It was filmed in Hunstanton and Wells, in Norfolk.

This time last year I was . . . but you already know.

Thank you for reading such utter drivel all the way down to here! Toodle pip!

NAKED BOYS AND THE GOJI CARROT ORGY

This lonely little colchicum popped up today.

A lady wrote to me, the other day, to ask how she should prune her wonderberry. I giggled at first, thinking that only men had those. I suppose I was dredging up recollections of Chuck Berry, until I remembered that his thing was a dingaling and he was the Berry, if you see what I mean.

A-a-a-anyway, this lady had grown a crop of the aforementioned wonderberries (more info in this interesting thread) because, apparently, they are a superfood. Further investigation revealed that they were also a particularly unpleasant fruit, closely related to deadly nightshade. I had grown myself, a century or so ago. That was in the days of Saint Percy Bysshe Thrower and the Blessed Fred Streeter - but at that time these nasty black orbs of bitter-sweet nothingness were called Huckleberries. I have to say, mine was anything but a Finn crop, indeed it was a bumper harvest!!! - Geddit??? - but after harvesting about a teacupful, I tasted one, then another and then binned the lot and dug the plants in as green manure.

Prunus sargentii - the best cherry for autumn colour.

Nothing whatever to do with today's text, but so pretty I had to show you.

Now, apparently, snappy marketeers have named these things 'Wonderberries.' Huzzah! All I can say, though, is that it's a wonder that anyone bothers to grow the horrible things.

An ancient friend of mine, one John Codrington – who, incidentally, was sowing seeds of Douglas fir in his 91st year – also tasted some of my huckleberries and his verdict concurred with mine. He also noticed black nightshade, in full berry, in my disgracefully weedy veg garden and before I could stop him, snatched a few plump fruits and munched them. 'Aren't they poisonous?' I asked, shocked at his rashness. 'Almost certainly,' he agreed, 'but they taste better than those huckleberry things of yours.' He survived another three years.I suppose that when you're in your 90s, you don't mind being a bit reckless.

Speaking of which, I had a delightful Esther Rantzen moment when pulling my carrot - whoops, pardon missis! - as I was saying, when pulling up my carrots for today's lunch. A whole cluster came together - oooh, not again, missis, perlease!!! - from part of the row where, earlier, my hand had slipped while sowing the seeds and where I couldn't be arsed, subsequently, to thin the seedlings. There had been more than a little promiscuity in the overcrowded row and I ended up with what looked like a rather naughty orgy. I show them here exactly as lifted.

Not sure what these carrots are doing, but it looks jolly rude!

The dear Wonderberry lady, as an afterthought, asked me for advice on pruning Goji berries. Now that really did make me laugh. If Wonderberries - do they still make Wonderbras, I wonder? . . . but I'm digressing horribly, and revealing the mental age as hovering between 11 and 13. Stop it at once!

This lady, like hundreds, nay, thousands, of happy gardeners are growing what I've always known as the Duke of Argyll's Tea Trea Lycium barbarum and eating its nasty, tart little berries. Why? Because, my dear Watson, it is a Superfood like some of these.

Eat goji nasties and the years will simply fall away, leaving your skin alabaster clear and your heart going pit-a-pat with all that new-found health and vigour. Stuff your face with goji berries - an ancient Chinese medical miracle - and your body will scoot all those nasty age-causing free radicals and you will extend your life dramatically.

Or will you? If goji berries are so bloody marvellous at making you live longer, how come the Ancient Chinese who discovered the things are all dead?

I went blackberrying yesterday. Not a leisurely ramble, basket in hand while the sun beamed down and the late swallows zoomed over the stubbles, but a frantic dash on my bike, to grab enough fruit for the Photographer General to put a crumble on top of - if you'll pardon the clumsy sentence construction - for our Sunday lunch.

They were absolutely, utterly yummily delicious - or 'yummalicious' as the PG's brother will say - and what amazed me was that no one, not a soul, not a sausage not a single person - villager or foreigner - was there, in the lane where the hedges are hung with a heavy, ripe, lusciously glistening and twinkling blackberry crop. Such a waste! And then it dawned on me that they are all at home, tending to their goji berry bushes. Blackberries, you see, aren't superfoods like brocolli and goji berries. Or if they are, their 'superness' is done-for when they become fattening blackberry and apple crumble with clotted cream. MMMMmmmm! That won't extend your life one iota. Also, the seeds might give you diverticulitis - now that's painful.

Hydrangea 'Preziosa' - a faded tart of flushed beauty.

On another tack, I'm bitterly, bitterly betrayed, saddened and disappointed. Every year, since moving here, I've tried my damnedest to make colchicums bulk up and make an autumn show. Each year, I put several bulbs, always in different bits of the garden, always with a sense of optimism and joy. And what happens? They flower in Year One, and then decline and eventually die. I'm mortified, because I do love them. Those pallid, delicate flowers rising from the stale grasses so freshly and in such delicate lavender tones!

The Victorians called them Naked Ladies or sometimes, Naked Boys, and you can see why, when those delicate flesh tones make such a startling contrast with the tired autumn foliage that surrounds them. My mother despises colchicums for their own rank foliage which follows in spring. Beth Chatto, on the other hand, uses them specifically as foliage plants in her dry garden. Go figure!

Hydrangea 'Preziosa' again. Still pretty when dead.

I'm listening to Schubert's song cycle Der Winterreise, a remastered recording of Peter Pears accompanied by Benjamin Britten.

This time in 1984 I was loading plants into our Transit van to exhibit at the RHS Great Autumn Show.

This week's film was High Noon - Fred Zinneman's timeless (ha ha) classic with Gary Cooper old enough to be his bride, Grace Kelly's grandpa. I believe, along with Shane and The Big Country this is one of the greatest Westerns ever. Eastwood's Unforgiven is pretty fantastic, too. Miss Kelly looked lovely but was acted off the screen by the smoulderingly wonderful Mexican, Katy Jurado.

Byeeeee!