Round heads

Hydrangea is a bit of an odd fellow. Blousy, chameleon-like, blue or pink, easy to grow yet wilts at the drop of a hat….its a bit of a mixed up kid. 

Its folklore is equally diverse -  having a hydrangea too close to her home can doom a single woman to remain unmarried and stands for frigidity and heartlessness in the Language of Flowers.  The hydrangea also stands for boastfulness - probably due to the inflated size of its roundheaded flowerheads. It's also capable of breaking curses placed on some unlucky person by a witch. At the same time it's a nice character really as it stands for friendship, devotion and understanding.

Native Americans and settlers used it as a medicinal herb to remove 'gravel' from the bladder, to stimulate saliva, and as a diuretic, laxative or tonic.  

The Japanese brew a sweet tea from the lacecap type, and some foolhardy types have even been known to smoke it even though hydrangeas are mildly toxic containing small amounts of cyanide. I'd give that a miss then….. And yet its used as a tonic in alternative medicine.

HHmmmm let's just say it's a great shrub for a sunny yet moist border and what gorgeous, perfectly round flowers.

High Viz fruits

Pumpkins. Can there be any other fruit (yes, a fruit) that can be more satisfying to grow? Pop a few seeds into a forgotten area in the garden and wander back a couple of months later and wow…..where did they come from? Beautiful bright coloured pumpkins like jewels in the ground….(hhmm going a bit poetic here..pull back a bit girl)

 Anyway, what glorious things they are and if you were a Pilgrim in the 16th century you would be more than thankful to see them as this would be your staple diet in the hard winters of colonial America.


'Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for  pumpkins we should be undoon.'

Even better for the colonists, the shells were used for haircuts ensuring a lovely, stylish rounded uniform cut. Good grief what a look…..Pumpkinheads.

At least the early colonists had an easy job at Halloween, carving their Jack-O-Lanterns from the easy to carve pumpkin shells. Growing up in Scotland we had to struggle with rock hard turnips to make our lanterns…soft, we were not.

Click below to see a video showing how and when to harvest your crop.

How to harvest and store your pumpkins

Disney Film

As our blog covers all things landscape and other things that catch our fancy, (oddly at first sight) todays entry describes a mundane dog walk. However, it soon felt like we were in a Disney film with chirruping bluebirds flying around our heads and landing on our shoulders. Chipmunks gambolling around our feet and raccoons dancing. (Not really but it adds to the story) The walk took only 40 minutes but in this time we walked past a clucky chicken scuttling into a hedge closely followed by 10 adorable chicks. Further up the lane we passed a very vocal cockerel cock-a-doodle-dooing for all he was worth. Apparently he has been displaced through age to a younger fellow and now spends his time in the hedge shouting his angst and rage to anyone who listens. (There's a film in there somewhere)

Ten minutes later and the dog was shocked to find two huge hares having a chat on the path. They soon took off but not until we were nearly upon them, closely followed by Norma (the dog) who had recovered enough to give chase. As if she stood any chance! They soon disappeared into a field of corn on the cob which now towers over us in a magical garden kind of way. It has grown so fast that I swear you could watch it grow if you set up a chair in the field and had an afternoon to spare.

Our next encounter was truly from Disney. In a nesting box on an old oak tree sat a beautiful barn owl - head just peeking out and staring at us with a slow blink and a wise nodding head. He soon took off and then out popped another one! Both flew off with slow and deliberate wing strokes into the woods and out of sight.

The three dead mice laid out on the path untouched with no visible signs of injury was probably not very Disneyesque but all in all the walk was 'enchanting' and thats all we can say!

Amazeballs

Imagine our surprise when picking up the daily newspaper to see 'amazeballs' was trending. What's this we asked ourselves - have we finally made headline news for our wonderful product? And if so why now? What has occurred in the relatively sleepy world of Stoneballs?

On further reading we realised it has nothing to do with Stoneballs Company and we feel obliged to disclaim any link with this ghastly expression that has made the pages of our august reading material  because the word has now been included in the Oxford English Dictionary Online! Not, however I hasten to add, the main OED. 

The meaning apparently is 'Extremely good or impressive; amazing'. 
The word has also also been included in the Dictionary of the Most  Annoying Words in the English Language where it was defined as an 'exclamation inviting someone to hit you'. Brilliant definition. 

However, on further thought, as all entries must be in common usage to qualify for insertion maybe we are just being intellectually snobbish (priggish - now that is a ghastly word) and we should embrace any new words to our wondereful lexicon of English - that's why the OED is so vast anyway, because language is constantly evolving and never stands still.

Call us 'cray' but we think our stone balls are 'adorbs' and of course 'amazeballs'……

Hhhhhhmmm…erk....maybe not……it's probably an age thing anyway.

Amazeballs or just a lovely thing?

Harvest

                             

                                                              

          Add to the ambience: Click here

               It's great our farmers are managing to make hay while the sun shines.

                  

Square bales are for people who believe in feeding their cows 3 square meals a day - personally we prefer round  bales - all things spherical.

                                                                  

More spherical lore...

It was Isaac Newton who first proposed that Earth was not perfectly round. Instead, he suggested it was an oblate spheroid—a sphere that is squashed at its poles and swollen at the equator and, because of this bulge, the distance from Earth's centre to sea level is roughly 21 kilometres (13 miles) greater at the equator than at the poles.

Just as fascinating and probably a tad more entertaining is this optical illusion: 

click on the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbislrtfrgs

Ne'er cast a clout till May be out

Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.

Time to get stripping.

Chelsea Flower Show 2014

Its that time of year again when all the hard, heavy spring work in the garden is beginning to pay off and those that have made a very real effort can now visit / watch the Chelsea Flower Show with a slightly smug look on their weather beaten faces. Those that haven't yet tackled their own big spring garden clean up, now have to face the beautifully primped and preened show gardens at Chelsea and will inevitably have to compare and contrast their own plot. Sometimes the contrast can be just too overwhelming and despair and dark gloom sets in. This year I'm glad too say we're happily smug. Can hardly stand up straight, but still smug.

Looking at the list of this year's exhibitors, our attention was caught by the entry designed by Pattaya City & Nong Nooch Botanical Garden celebrating “Thailand: Our Pride, Our Monarch & Our Cultural Heritage”. 

Having spent many years living in Thailand, Stoneballs Company is all too aware of the magnificent range of plants that are easily available there - be it large glossy, dark foliage shrubs and trees or magnificently  scented, wildly floriferous plants that appeal. Even in the polluted and often yellow hazy air of Bangkok trees, shrubs and flowers all thrive happily alongside motorways, public parks, back yards or on tiny balconies with little, or seemingly, no attention. There are numerous 'garden centres' to be found alongside multi lane highways or along small and narrow urban streets, all selling a huge range of potted palms, Bougainvillaea and exotic orchids to name but a few. And all for a tiny price. 

Nong Nooch Gardens Pattaya

A popular style of garden often favoured in Thailand, is a neat and manicured look and often with fantastic topiary. Bushes and hedges are clipped within an inch of their lives into weird and wonderful shapes. We have seen a herd of elephants clipped and roaming across a lush lawn. These manicured gardens also have swathes of bright, garish flowers such as Bromeliad, Ginger and Gardenias in swooping, spectacular borders. Such a spectacle.

Sofitel Hotel Hua Hin

In contrast another type of popular landscaping in Thailand is (not surprisingly due to the tropical location) a lush and free jungle effect. An amazing place to see this style is at Jim Thompson's house in the middle of Bangkok - a collection of traditional Thai teak houses with soaring roofs set within a glorious tropical jungle garden. (The house and garden were created by an American, Jim Thompson, who having reinvigorated the Thai silk trade in Thailand by developing new techniques  designs and colours, disappeared without trace whilst walking in the Cameron Highlands in 1968.)

The garden here is a perfectly controlled jungle (contrary, I know) Brimful of old, huge trees which shade the garden and house.There are also many tall palms including slender betel nut palms and Fan palms. The tall canopy and large space below the tree canopies gives a welcome respite from the tropical sun. The bright semi-shade supports a lush and richly varied understorey of mainly foliage plants and these contribute to the distinctive character of the garden. It's a haven to visit particularly as its set in the middle of soaring skyscrapers, wide roads and the ever present roaring traffic of Bangkok. Well worth a visit.

Jim Thompson garden Bangkok

Stoneballs Company is certainly looking forward to seeing the Pattaya City and Nong Nooch garden at Chelsea and I'm sure it will bring back many fond memories of time spent in Thailand. Good luck to all at Chelsea, may the weather be bright and dry!

Baader Meinhof Phenomenon………Baader Meinhof Phenomenon……..

This is an interesting tidbit of information we are dispensing today - that of the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon also known as frequency illusion.

A Stanford linguistics professor coined the term in 2006 to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s caused, he wrote, by two psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when you’re struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight omnipresence.

Now this explains why Stoneballs Company continually comes across spherical shapes all over the place and at unexpected times. Thinking the world was perhaps being taken over by the aforementioned geometric objects it is now easily explained - our brains are selectively picking them out from an ocean of shapes.  Our brains are fantastic pattern recognition engines, a characteristic which is highly useful for learning. Considering how many words, names, and ideas a person is exposed to in any given day, it is unsurprising that we sometimes encounter the same information again within a short time. When that occasional intersection occurs, the brain promotes the information because the two instances make up the beginnings of a sequence. 

On a recent trip to Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire (wonderful house, gardens and shops. See below for further information) we were subjected to yet another link in our particular sequence. No sooner had we tumbled out of the car when we were met by a lawn full of rattan balls on sticks - quite a surreal moment and no real explanation other than sculpture in the garden.

Rattan balls Doddington Hall

The next day found Stoneballs Company visiting clients near Sunningdale, Berkshire. After parking and (again) tumbling from the car our attention was taken by the sound of a chain saw coming from a nearby tree. Yes, you guessed it - or maybe you hadn't if you haven't paid full attention to this blog entry - there high up in the tree receiving noisy attention from a tree surgeon and his blade, was a series of balls - not dissimilar to the Doddington Hall balls but this time high up in the branches of a tree! The balls were Mistletoe balls and what an amazing sight to add to our brain-led sequence. 

Misteltoe balls

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon / Frequency illusion - It's a fascinating psychological theory and we expect, having read this entry, you will now follow our experiences and begin to witness similar sequences and acknowledge the omnipresence of balls. 

www.stoneballs.co.uk anyone?!

ps

The building of Doddington Hall began in about 1593 and the Hall was finished in 1600. It was built by Robert Smythson who also built Wollaton Hall in Nottingham and Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. In the mid 1700s the building was inherited by John Delaval who redesigned much of the Hall quite drastically into a more Georgian style although he kept the outside of the Hall the same as it was when it was originally built.

The Hall has never been sold for the last 400 years amd today it is the family home of the Birches who inherited the house through the generations, (the family name having changed several times because of women inheriting the building). The Birches devote their work to the upkeep of the house and gardens, preserving as much as possible the original features of the house, as well as encouraging visitors to the house and gardens

pps

The common name of Mistletoe is derived from the Anglo-Saxon mistel, meaning dung, and tan, meaning twig. So, literally, it's the dung-on-a-twig plant. Evocative.  After a bird, usually a mistle thrush, eats the sticky berries, they're excreted with much of their sticky coating still attached. So, as soon as they land on a branch they stick and are ready to germinate in February and March in exactly the right place. Mistletoe is a partial parasite, which means that although its small green leaves provide the host plant with energy through photosynthesis, it also sends a root under the bark into its host and gathers nutrients there and after some time large balls of the plant develop, which probably doesn't do the host tree much good but does look good.

Wellies and Gaia

We all have great sympathy with the population currently suffering from the current flooding and watch with dismay people being injured and even killed, trees uprooted and property damaged.We empathise at the huge efforts that homeowners are having to go to in order to keep their houses safe and dry.
Livestock has been displaced, wildlife has sustained heavy losses and habitats and many SSSI destroyed.
We watch with fascination the "News Specials' on the current weather anomalies and many theories abound as to the causes and the blame game has begun. 

Politicians are derided as they jostle to take centre stage in what may prove to be their 'Hurricane Katrina moment'. 
Sales of Hunter wellies, North Face and Berghaus jackets and waders so beloved of news reporters tv presenters have gone through the roof. Every cloud etc.

Whatever the causes or indeed if it's just a natural weather/climate phenomenon, it's always a good time to consider our role in the earth and adopt an earth based religion as well as a spiritual one. Gaia is always a good starting point.

 Below is part of an essay written by James Lovelock.

We now see that the air, the ocean and the soil are much more than a mere environment for life; they are a part of life itself. Thus the air is to life just as is the fur to a cat or the nest for a bird. Not living but something made by living things to protect against an otherwise hostile world. For life on Earth the air is our protection against the cold depths and fierce radiations of space.

There is nothing unusual in the idea of life on Earth interacting with the air, sea and rocks, but it took a view from outside to glimpse the possibility that this combination might consist of a single giant living system and one with the capacity to keep the Earth always at a state most favorable for the life upon it.

An entity comprising a whole planet and with a powerful capacity to regulate the climate needs a name to match. It was the novelist William Golding who proposed the name Gaia. Gladly we accepted his suggestion and Gaia is also the name of the hypothesis of science which postulates that the climate and the composition of the Earth always are close to an optimum for whatever life inhabits it.

The evidence gathered in support of Gaia is now considerable but as is often the way of science, this is less important than is its use as a kind of looking glass for seeing the world differently, and which makes us ask new questions about the nature of Earth.

If we are "all creatures great and small," from bacteria to whales, part of Gaia then we are all of us potentially important to her well being. We knew in our hearts that the destruction of a whole range of other species was wrong but now we know why. No longer can we merely regret the passing of one of the great whales, or the blue butterfly, nor even the smallpox virus. When we eliminate one of these from Earth, we may have destroyed a part of ourselves, for we also are a part of Gaia.

There are many possibilities for comfort as there are for dismay in contemplating the consequences of our membership in this great commonwealth of living things. It may be that one role we play is as the senses and nervous system for Gaia. Through our eyes she has for the first time seen her very fair face and in our minds become aware of herself. We do indeed belong here. The earth is more than just a home, it's a living system and we are part of it.

Valentines Day 2

It's that time of year again.
A snowdrop walk really does work.

http://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/snowdrops.htm

Urban Exploring

We must profess a slightly guilty secret – nothing terribly exciting in the scheme of things but it does tick one or two boxes.

It’s the slightly edgy ‘sport’ of Urban Exploring.

This is the exploration and photography of abandoned buildings and ruins. The images are then uploaded by the ‘explorers’ for people (like me) who can easily get some degree of thrill even from armchair urban exploring. This is possibly due to being slightly woosy when it comes to any form of danger and of course there is always danger (in various degrees) in exploring abandoned buildings. So with this disclaimer we will continue.

SB recently chanced upon an amazing case of ‘UE’ from the Yonkers, New York State that satisfies several interests – botany, historic architecture…oh, and of course stone balls.

The building of interest is the ex Boyce Thompson Institute building which was built to further botanical research in 1924 by Boyce Thompson and was dedicated ‘to the study of plants and associated organisms for the betterment of society’.

To quote the man himself ‘the dependence of man upon plants is intimate and many sided.  No science is more fundamental to life and more immediately and multifariously practical than plant science.  We have here around us enough unsolved riddles to tax the best scientific genius for centuries to come.’

Architect Frank Arnold Colby designed the Georgian Revival building. It was constructed of reinforced concrete with a Flemish Bond brick veneer and is attached to a series of greenhouses on the south end, which were part of the original construction. Teams of botanists, entomologists and chemists worked at the well-equipped laboratories focusing on cures for plant diseases and methods to increase crop yields using eight greenhouses and indoor facilities for “nature faking”—growing plants in artificial conditions with precise control over light, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels.

By 1974, the Institute had gained an international reputation for its contributions to plant research. However, although soaring air pollution in Yonkers enabled several important experiments at the institute it also hindered many more. Exacerbated by dwindling finances, the BTI moved to a new site at Cornell University and continues to dedicate itself to much needed research in plant science.

Sadly since then, the building, greenhouses and grounds have been left to decay. Wild, uncontrolled vegetation has taken over and ubiquitous vandalism has contributed to the decay. However, the bones of the once glorious building still survive and (thankfully) ‘explorers’ have provided armchair explorers with fascinating images of the interiors and grounds.

Vandalised interior

Wrecked exterior

Decaying glasshouses

Looking at the images and reading about the botany experiments that once took place there was satisfying enough but imagine SB’s surprise when it saw what must be considered the cherry on the cake – i.e. a hulking big stone ball inside the building! It does looks incongruous and simply sad as vandals had dislodged and pushed it inwards from its prominent and venerable position from the grand entrance pediment and down the elegant interior stairway. No doubt smashing several treads on the way. SB’s is acutely aware of the weight of these spherical adornments so it must have been no small task to dislodge.

Rightful place

Final resting place?

Such misguided energy.