about JohnH
Sorted, fit. Current activities are photography, hiking, motorbiking, trail biking, music, geology/geoscience, dinner-at-home, travel and more.
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Trimming and shaping my patio garden in West London. The Wisteria dates from the Sixties, before my time but I’ve been looking after here for many, many years. This patio garden was a great solace during the lockdowns. Problem with here is that it’s a canyon so everything is up a ladder. Nonetheless the tree fern is really happy and as the patio garden is a heat trap (31°C today) I get good fruit from the apple trees and the lime, lemon and mandarin trees in the pots. The green plastic box is a nest for a colony of Mason Bees as local pollinators. My face mask isn’t complete protection against dust and pollen but it helps a lot.
Clearing out and shredding dead wood in my cloud forest garden in Keswick to replace with a Hazel bush that has outgrown my patio in London. The PPE and heavy boots are required so as not to get slashed to pieces by the vegetation and protect from the noise of the shredder but the effect is to be working happily in a world apart.
Read more: Heavy-duty gardening - Taming my Cumbrian cloud forest 3
Intense colours in my cloud forest garden in Keswick, on the lower slopes of Latrigg and Skiddaw. There are far more blooms this year than when I took over this garden a year ago, which I am taking as the fruits of my labours pruning and shaping the plantings I inherited. The fruit trees are my introduction and seem to be doing fine.
Goose roasted with fresh fruit stuffing and forcemeat, Austrian stollen, mince pies and Christmas cake with home-made marzipan; all cooked from fresh, basic ingredients in Preston Park, Brighton by Terry for our little Christmas Day gathering.
The Château Pontet-Canet 2001 claret is one of the last from my Father’s cellar and was a great accompaniment to the roast goose.
We’ve had a wonderful time! Thank you Terry.
Wishing a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Active 2022 to all my Friends and Followers
Christmas 2021 is here at last. Time for festive cheer, entertainment, maybe some cautious looking forward, and (again) hoping for a better year ahead.
2021 hasn’t only been about vaccinations, sore noses and reclaiming territory lost to Covid; I’ve very much enjoyed my few short trips to Marseille this year, each snatched in full view of the watchful eyes of the ogre of Travel Restrictions.
But - and this is new for 2021 - I’ve been kept busy setting up the little bungalow I’ve inherited at the foot of the fells that surround the lovely Lake District town of Keswick; its wonderful but ever-so-rapidly-growing garden has kept me particularly busy.
If you have been reading and liking my photography and this blog in 2021, thank you.
- Revealing the Lost Garden - Taming my Cumbrian cloud forest 2
- Le Grand Journal - Col d’Aspres - Roche Courbe (1938 m.)
- Grand Canyon du Verdon - South Rim Road
- Carnoux, Calanques, Crêtes, Canaille & La Ciotat
- Lakeland road passes: Hardknott - Honister - Kirkstone etc
- Spot How Gill copper mine - Lake District National Park
- The Elmore String Quartet at Keswick Music Society
- St. Thomas’ hospital revisited
