Christmas Nearly Over

I think its been a good Christmas! The Musa family have had 3 days of entertaining (and probably drinking far too much!) and today are relaxing and recovering before going back to work tomorrow.

The picture on the left is a rare photograph of me, taken yesterday whilst I was out surveying the acres. And yes! I can now get out in the garden because we have had the new back door / window fitted!

Today, the ice on the pond has started to thaw and I’m pleased to see that Wattle, my goldfish, looks well, as does the herd of minnows.

For Christmas I got a new weather station as my current one is beginning to lose its LED display. I also got a new Manfrotto tripod for my camera and it really looks professional (unlike my photos).

I employed a theme of environmental conscience and recycling for my presents to Mrs Musa. They included a necklace made from electrical resistors, a necklace made from recycled magazines, earrings cut from the backs of old tea-spoons and a bracelet made from a dinning fork. These may seem strange but, in fact, look fabulous. I could tell that Mrs Musa was impressed!

 

The cold weather has meant that we have been able to keep bottles chilled by putting them outside. This relieves the pressure on our over-stocked fridge. The photo on the right shows a bottle of bubbly being kept chilled on an outside table. I added some snow around its base to ensure coolness. (I also added a glass for effect!)

It is too early to know what damage the exceptionally low temperatures have caused to plants in the garden. I’m keeping positive though.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally . . . . Happy New Year to all the mad people who read this blog!

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S

Merry Christmas to all the readers of The Musa Blog!

Also . . . . . .  Merry Christmas to Wendy and Kevin - Hope you have a good one!

Rob

Festive Pineapple

As promised, here is a photo of my decorated pineapple, pictured as the centrepiece of a festive table decoration:

I’ve decorated the pineapple in traditional manner with baubles and lights – I’ve not used tinsel as this is perhaps a tad OTT. The pineapple is set within a discreet and tasteful tableau of 2 Father Christmases (is there a collective noun?),  2 festive clockwork gnomes, 2 festive clockwork snails and a festive glass reindeer candle holder. I think you will agree that this decoration will give a certain air of sophistication to any Christmas table without being too garish. If one’s guests prefer a livelier table decoration then both Father Christmases can, at a flick of their switches, dance and sing, one of them is even sound activated! Of course, the gnomes and snails could, once wound, roam about the table to the delight of all. But – it is the pineapple that really steals the festive show!

Give someone you love a pineapple this year

Christmas Gift Ideas

 

It’s getting very close to Christmas and for all Musa Blog readers here are the Top 2 Musa Gift Suggestions:

1) An Electronic Weather Station

I’ve owned one of these for the past 10 years and I look at it every single day of the year. These ‘Weather Stations’ show the barometric pressure, humidity and temperature and usually indicate if each measure is rising or falling. The really cool thing is that they have a wireless temperature sensor for outdoors, this means that you can check the outside temperature from the comfort of your kitchen (or wherever you place the main unit). A ‘Weather Station’ is a particularly good gift for anyone vaguely interested in gardening. They can be bought from most electrical retailers and prices typically range from £20 to £45.

2) A Pineapple

This is a great gift idea! A pineapple is cheap; available in all supermarkets; it’s weight makes it an impressive gift when wrapped.

Did you know? . . . . . Pineapple is the only edible bromeliad!

A pineapple is multi-functional and has 3 main uses:

• It makes a really good Christmas decoration and is a good substitute for a tree. (I’ll post a photo of my pineapple when I’ve decorated it!)
• You can eat it.
• And . . .  after eating the pineapple, it is possible to plant the topknot and grow a pineapple plant! Another great gift for the gardener! Of course, it needs to grow indoors but can be put outside in the warmest summer months. The following are details of how to grow a pineapple plant, I must admit that I got these details from the web and now can’t remember from which site, so apologies if I am breaching copyright. Also, I’ve never tried this myself.

 

1 Pick a pineapple with a healthy green topknot. Cut this off about 2cm from the top of the fruit.

2 Trim off all the fleshy fruit and cut around the base to leave the clean central core surrounded by leaves.

 
 3 Carefully peel away leaf after leaf to reveal a length of stem. This is where the roots will develop from.

 

4 Finally, trim the base of the stem neatly, just below the leaf scars, removing all the white stem tissue

5 Fill a pot with gritty compost, then position the topknot in the centre, firming more compost around it.

6 Place it in a warm, bright position to root. New leaves will soon form in the centre of the topknot.

Christmas is coming . . .

Temperatures have been down to –12 in my garden. I fear I may have lost my Tree Ferns, palms and lots of other stuff. Getting to work has been challenging in the snow. I’m on leave today as I had arranged for the patio doors to be replaced today and I’ve just learnt that the fitting company’s vans are stuck in the snow! So – I still can’t easily get out into the garden. I just hope that the plumber that is also due to come today will get here and fix our downstairs loo.

BUT . . . . .  Christmas is coming and I’m quite excited! I also love the snow! I went to the pub last night and on the way took a photo of the snowy scene in our town (below). I also took some photos on the way home from the pub when the snow was deeper but these turned out rather blurred?!

Snow, snow and more snow

Temperatures here in Musaland have been so low that the night-before-last the water pipes to the house froze. Luckily I managed to thaw them and restore the water supply without the pipes bursting.

This blog has been rather quiet for the past 2 weeks, the major reason for this is that the sliding doors to the back-garden have broken – that is the sliding mechanism has broken. I can only get access to the garden by going out the front, down the drive, opening the garage and then going through the side-door of the garage. One has to really have a major desire to get to the garden to go through this process and in this weather, it all seems too much! Never mind, on Tuesday we have new doors being fitted at a cost of over £1,000!

Yesterday’s snow was of the sticky variety and it stuck well to the branches of trees. I thought it worthwhile to take a photo of the snowy trees and a forlorn looking pigeon Of course, the photo was taken from indoors as I can’t get out into the garden.

Fighting the University Tuition Fee Increases

 

This is not about gardening.

The ConDem Coalition Government decision to increase university tuition fees will have the effect of denying thousands of young people access to a university education. Of course, the rich will be alright, they already have the greatest access to the top universities via the public school system. The role of the Liberal Democrats in this is shameful and I’m afraid just confirms that they have no real policies or principles of their own.

I suppose I have more cause to be concerned by the rise in tuition fees than some. I have one daughter just graduated (and got a job) with a debt of £20,000 and another daughter aspiring to go to university in 2 years time. I feel sad that despite my efforts to help them financially, they start their adult lives with such debts even before the word ‘mortgage’ is mentioned..

It is no surprise that students and young people want to exercise their right to protest against the tuition fee increases. What is unacceptable are the police tactics!! It is horrific that in our so-called free society that the police are being used as an arm of the government to brutally attack young people on our streets. Charges by mounted police into the crowd of demonstrators, use of batons and ‘kettling’. All this against a crowd that contains many schoolchildren as young as 15.

The Metropolitan Police use of the media is also unacceptable. Their press releases are misleading and seek to cover the truth of their brutality whilst putting all the blame on the protestors. It is also disturbing that police riot officers cover their I.D. numbers and thus take away any opportunity for people to take legal action against individual officers.

I hope the students and young people will have the courage to continue the protest. I will be putting my gardening gloves to one side and joining them!

Am I angry? Darn right I am!

Snowy Gargoyle

On the wall of the garage, I have a sort of gargoyle thing made of some sort of cement.  The face is about 12” in circumference and he usually peers out through a mixture of ivy leaves and fig branches. The recent snow has given him a fine crop of white hair! I think it suits him!

Snowy Night

Temperature down to –7! However, I braved the sub-zero temperature in order to capture some images for this blog. It helps that I have some low-voltage lighting in the garden but still it is a long wait for the exposure time the camera needs in low light. The exposure times were approximately 30 seconds but that seems a very long time when it is so cold outside.

The first image shows the olive tree, Miscanthus and Tree Fern. The tree fern’s snow-covered fronds have produced almost an igloo (see previous post):

The next photo shows the Fascicularia bicolor covered in snow and lit by one of the garden spotlights. I thought it looked very strange but now I think it just looks like a clump of snow-covered grass! Oh well!

Finally, you may have read in this blog about my small, temporary plastic greenhouse – Well, I keep a small frost-guard electric heater going in it (probably costs me a fortune in electric bills), the effect of this is that the snow on its roof gradually melts and forms icicles around the edge of the greenhouse roof. I tried to take a photo of these last night:

Snow on the Dicksonia

 

It’s been very cold for the past week or so and now we’ve got snow. So much snow that I can’t get to work and have to work from home. Although working, I can’t resist the temptation of a wander around the garden. The Tree Ferns fronds are weighed down by snow and have created a sort of white parasol:

I tried taking a photo from inside the Tree Fern parasol: