I was supposed to get started on this a couple of nights ago, but I got hit with a letter from HMRC (the UK tax office) - the sort of letter which says "whatever you were going to do for the next few days, you'd better forget it and start panicking - we think you may owe us money from 5 years ago...".
In fact it is my mother who may owe them money, but the implication is the same. I have managed to write back, scrambling the ball back into their court, offering a polite Fact Check on their calculations. Thus things are peaceful enough again to get on with setting up a battlefield for the end of next week. Ruin can arrive in its own time.
This will be the little-known battle of Münzkirchen, from the early days of 1703, when the Austrians and Bavarians were suddenly on opposite sides of the WSS, and were worried about their common border, in the area around Passau.
All I have on offer this evening is a few photos showing general views of the table - there should be some actual fighting on Thursday.
General view from behind Bavarian left flank
This is Arco's Bavarian cavalry brigade, on their left - two units of cuirassiers and two of dragoons
A look along the Imperial army, from its right
Austrian horse - Niederhammer's brigade, on their right flank
Now a general view from behind the Bavarian right
The Austrian left and centre
Austrian cuirassiers - this lot are the regiment of Jung-Darmstadt
More of the same - these are Lobkowicz's boys
One of the Bavarian cavalry commanders, Weichel, leads his men onto the field
Least unexpected post of the year? Big day here yesterday - long, heavy shift.
I took the opportunity to photograph various areas of improvement since the start of this year. Some of this may not look like much, but it is a massive change after what has basically been more than 2 years of neglect!
The hedge extension is in place and standing firm
It's even lined up nice and straight. Some removal of tree roots from the old juniper was needed to free up the planting trench
This and the remaining photos are of the tidying up and mulching of various beds; this one is where the old leylandii was (the one which blew down in a gale) - discussion is taking place about hedging and maybe some feature shrubs
Backside of the front hedge - a prodigious amount of ivy, brambles and general rubbish has been removed
We have rescued our beloved white lilac, which was smothered in ivy
Tulips and primulas showing signs of life
The stump in the middle of this bed is the remains of a 75-foot eucalyptus, which was removed in about 2008
Some pointing of the patio is needed, but that is currently Priority 2 - if not 3
This bed was a complete wreck, with kerria and bamboo spreading about 6 feet out from the fence. This is more like it - we'll re-seed the bit of the lawn which got discouraged. We also found the rhubarb plant we got from Uncle Louis, years ago - haven't seen it for a while!
This is a quick shot of the notorious Back Vennel - now it can be accessed without special equipment. More work to be done here, but one thing we found was the base of a clematis, which is our plant but grows entirely in our neighbour's garden - we may need to sort something out here
It is now Thursday morning, and all the bits are assembling for our major hedge-planting frenzy on Saturday. Two 1-tonne bags of compost arrived yesterday, and our 12 new beech hedge trees arrived an hour ago.
We have two of these - this one is posing in front of the place were the hedge extension will be planted, the other was unloaded further up the drive, out of the way for the next subproject...
The trees look fine - they must all be about 6-7 years old, and have good-size root-balls in moist soil, wrapped in sacking
Beech hedges are pretty tough - they are an iconic feature of the scenery in the Scottish Borders. These specimens are locally grown, which is a useful reassurance; it is not unknown in these days of online shopping for people to order young plants which grew up in (for example) Kent, and for some species the Scottish weather comes as a big shock
I'm hoping we can get away without staking these - they look pretty robust, but I'll be on stand-by on Saturday morning in case it is decided we need to get some stakes in a hurry!
Obviously, it is nonsensical to speak of "The Garden Project". Gardens, like dependant relatives and tax returns, are with you forever; if at some point you find that you are thinking in terms of a new garden project, then in my experience what you mean is that the garden has got out of control, or something bad has happened, and what is now required is some special effort to get things back on track. It is still the same project really.
To chime with this concept of a continuing, ageless project, here is John Martyn with an echo from my long-gone hippy past.
Having established that what is going on here at Chateau Foy is yet another catching-up session, I'll try to explain what's been happening.
As a background theme we have the small matter of the actual gardeners.
(1) We had the same gardener for about 15 years - the bold George. He was good in the sense that he was reliable, and local, and he did a nice, tidy job of weeding the beds and pruning, but he had very little understanding of actual plants. There were some mistakes - occasionally serious - which became more problematic as the years passed. At one point he managed to weed out our prized edelweiss, which was all the more strange since he had carefully left it alone for the previous 10 years. Perhaps he forgot. Also, as he got older, he became less capable - it took him longer to do the same jobs, and I was often disappointed by what he had done. As the end of each gardening year approached, George would say to me:
"Well, this is all getting a bit much for me now - I'm thinking of retiring this winter - only trouble is that I need the cash, since my wife likes her 3 holidays a year"
And I would hear my own voice saying something like:
"No, no, George - we'd be very pleased to see you back here to help us around March time..."
Eventually, his dwindling effectiveness became a nagging problem. A worse irritant in some ways was his endless banter about keeping the bloody foreigners out - especially the brown ones, since they were just after our jobs and free health care and housing. George may have been the only Daily Mail reader in Dunbar, come to think of it, but I did reach the stage where I was thinking seriously that any foreign immigrant - especially a brown one - would be most welcome to come and replace him in my garden.
So, sometime in late Autumn 2022, the usual mention of George possibly retiring resulted in my wishing him well, and saying he deserved a good rest.
(2) We did some research and some trawling online, and we came up with a highly recommended local lady - ex local authority - who had set up in business as a gardener. She had a brand new van and posh tools and everything, and her background seemed very promising - she was a horticulturalist - in her youth she had trained at Kew, no less. So Spring 2023 we set off on a new journey, with our prestigious new garden maintenance lady. She seemed very promising, said a lot of the right things, but very quickly revealed herself as someone who liked to tinker with someone else's herbs and potted alpines, but was what I might privately refer to as a lazy bastard. On average she would turn up for about 2 scheduled visits in 5 - she was very unlucky with her health, and she seemed extraordinarily prone to freak accidents.
It transpired that she actually needed to take a lot of time off to do child minding for her son's family, so eventually we agreed that this wasn't a lot of help, and I wished her well too.
Thus from July 2023 we have done most of the gardening ourselves - not very well, and I have been getting more oppressed by my own lack of ability and the things which weren't getting done.
(3) I'll jump ahead now to the end of last year, when I made contact with an excellent young gardener who is actually the son of a good friend of mine. He has a lot of excellent experience, and is very knowledgeable. He works for a contract garden-maintenance firm in Edinburgh, but is happy to work for his own customers at weekends to earn extra cash to get him started in business on his own. It's all working very nicely at the moment, though we are in a period of working hard to get things into shape after the lengthy slide into ruin.
Changes to the garden have been running for a few years - usually because something had outgrown its space or because Nature interrupted the flow with some calamity or other. I now have a regular account with a local tree-surgeon firm, who shift trees and do maintenance on big hedges. So they do big fixes and emergencies, and they do a good job. Keeping the garden sensible and comfortable around these enforced changes is a challenge in itself.
I published some posts at the end of 2020, when we had some landscaping done - re-profiling our driveway and removing two old juniper trees which were out of control.
Since then we had a non-routine situation in October 2023 when our huge (and much-hated) leylandii hedge was partly flattened by Storm Babet, and we had to get the wreckage removed and disposed of by the tree surgeons.
By the end of last year, we had a developing problem with the last surviving juniper, which was becoming an obstruction in the lane past our house and which was starting to push over an ancient stone wall. On 12th December the tree surgeons appeared yet again, gave our big beech hedge its regular haircut and removed the last juniper. Gone.
Next stage is to rebuild the garden around all this strategic clearance. The new gardener (Matty) is a great help with this, and next weekend he will plant a 6-metre extension to the beech hedge to plug the gap in our defences left by the missing juniper. I am expecting delivery of 2 tons of soil-improver and twelve 8-foot beech plants in rootballs during next week. On the 15th March it will all happen. If all goes well, I'll record progress here.
After that the next priority is to get some new shrubs planted where the leylandii used to be, but we'll get to that. There are other jobs getting done, but the big targets are the ones I am concentrating on. Once again, much of my evening reading matter is about hedge management, or lawn restoration, or flowering shrubs. You may think this is a little sad - that's OK - it is a little sad, but I'm enjoying the sense of momentum!
Righto - a couple of photos from the morning of 12th December. Here you can see the last juniper waiting for the executioners. Its two brothers (which had "gone before" in 2020) used to be on the grass area to the right of the remaining tree
Here you can see how the juniper tree had to be cut back to avoid blocking the lane, and how mis-shapen it had become
Since 12th December we have a big gap in the line of the front hedge
The stump grinder did a good job of chasing the roots down into the ground. This is where the new hedge plants will go in next week; you can also see the extent to which the stone wall has been bent and cracked by the old tree - I am assured that it is strong enough to stand!
The beech hedge is about 10 feet high, so the new 8-foot plants will take a while to merge in, but it should all be OK if the wind and the deer leave them in peace!
Today's developments in Washington have caused a change of heart here.
There is nothing I wish to discuss further about that unbelievable kindergarten show, and - reluctantly - I now feel that my previous post was both ill-considered and inappropriate. With apologies, and my thanks to everyone who contributed, I've decided to pull it. My personal boycott will quietly continue, but I do not wish to dignify what is going on over there by paying attention.
Something a little different this morning. I like to make small collections of music appropriate to the historic periods which I wargame - nothing overly serious, just mood-setting stuff.
This started about 10 years ago, when I put together a couple of CDs of Napoleonic marches (a stirring addition to tabletop warfare, though you have to stand ready with the off switch when it begins to do your head in). This is an interesting way to unnerve an opponent...
I tried to extend the idea to the War of the Spanish Succession, but was immediately challenged by the fact that bands didn't actually march in step at this period, so any formal "military" music is mostly music containing sound effects which parody warfare - typically composed by Lully and Delalande and similar, for the entertainment of Louis XIV and his guests at gala dinners. There were regimental bands, but their main duties involved playing concerts or festive music.
Thus it is no surprise that the ECW presents the same problem. There is contemporary "soldier" music available on record, much of which consists of ribald drinking songs. I was pleased to come across the work of William Lawes, a native of Salisbury, in Wiltshire, who spent most of his adult life in the service of Charles I. William was a composer, lutenist and viol player who produced an impressive portfolio of sacred and courtly works.
William Lawes
William survived the Siege of York, and seems to have spent his time with the Royalist army. Charles had him seconded to the King's Lifeguards (possibly to keep him close to the monarch, and out of harm's way); Lawes was killed at the Siege of Chester, in the rout following the Battle of Rowton Heath.
Here is a sample of his music for small groups - if you are interested, there is a fair amount online, much of which is very pleasing. This has been one of this week's better surprises.
