Beginning, Again

April 2024

Whatever the erratic weather of late, I know that Spring has finally arrived because when I opened the door this morning, not only did the sunshine pour in, but I also heard a cuckoo.

In England, it’s said that there are few cuckoos left, and the cheery medieval song ‘Sumer Is I’Cumin In, Loud Sing Cuckoo!’ has not reflected reality in living memory. Here in the Galician countryside, the cuckoo is often to be heard, even before -to us - the weather feels warm enough for nesting. The question is: whose nest? Cuckoos are disliked for their habit of introducing an egg of their own into the nests of other birds, where eventually the huge cuckoo fledgling displaces the rightful occupants.  No-one can deny the appeal of the cuckoo’s distinctive call, however, especially at the end of a chilly month. They are true harbingers of better days to come, even if they are also parasites.

So, with the cuckoo making music from a few fields away, it’s time to get out in the garden and begin again. This year I’ll start with the herb bed. Since last autumn was torrentially rainy, much remained to be done when the garden was finally ‘put to bed’ for the winter. Now there’s even more than usual to do - but where to start? How does one manage two square metres of sage, nearly as much oregano, parsley and lemon balm popping up all over the place, and multiple clumps of ‘cebolito’, or spring onion?

A certain amount, of course, can be given away, If this were Italy, the sage would be snapped up in a flash. Since it’s not, I’ve started by dividing some of those clumps of spring onion and potting them up. The first re-potted clump has a destination even before it leaves La Laguna: the already well-stocked herb garden at Refugio Gaucelmo in Rabanal del Camino, which apparently lacks spring onions. There, this pot of them can multiply at will, and will add welcome flavour to many pilgrim suppers.

Happy New Year

As 2023 draws, to a close, I’d like to wish readers a very happy 2024.

This monthly bulletin will resume in the Spring, as the Garden reawakens.

Until then, it is, of course, open to visitors, whether they be neighbours, pilgrims or people just passing through the area who have heard about it somehow.

Should you be one of them, may the time you spend there bring you the quiet joy of being surrounded by nature, and inner peace for your onward journey.

Putting the Garden to Bed

December 2023

I love to potter in the garden, especially on summer evenings when it’s light until nearly 11 o’clock.  Gardening in late autumn is another story. ‘Pottering’ has given way to hasty forays between torrential showers. Everything has to be done quickly, partly because it’s cold, partly because it’s about to rain again, and partly because the daylight ends so abruptly, just after 6.

That means that the big tasks proper to this time of year have to be accomplished in the least favourable conditions. I’m fortunate to have someone to call when they need doing: a splendid gardener whose schedule permits him to dedicate a few days each year to La Laguna. If my strong point is endurance (as in weeding, bent over, hour after hour), his is a breadth of horticultural knowledge, along with the strength to hold a motor-saw steady long enough to prune 180 large hydrangeas, 40 roses, a dozen shrubs, the lavender bed and the birch walk’s unruly growth, in a single November day. In April, he performs another Herculean feat by giving the 23 metre-wide labyrinth its annual trim, then transforming the abundant clippings into mulch.

Last week, on one of the few sunny days we’ve had since mid-October, between us we prepared the garden for winter – or, as the English say, ‘put it to bed’. All the end-of-season vegetables were finally harvested, and anti-weed mats spread over the plot where they had been. The long watering hoses now lie coiled in protective plastic under the terrace’s stone table. Pots of geraniums have been moved to shelter, bulbs planted, marigold and calendula seed collected, herbs hung to dry indoors. I also planted a ‘Camino de Santiago’ rose, bred by pilgrim and rose expert Norman Sinclair, and delivered here a few weeks ago by Norman himself: one of the many examples that he has presented to municipalities, religious communities and individuals along the Camino Francés. I’m delighted and proud that Norman considered this Quiet Garden a worthy recipient. Next year, I’ll hope to post a photo of it. Meanwhile, here is one showing the last roses of the year, in a jug made by my friend Elizabeth Block, of Toronto, many years ago.

Chestnuts

November 2023

Since mid-October, chestnuts have been dropping into the garden from a tree in my neighbours’ field across the lane. In principle, what falls in the field is of course theirs, but what falls in the lane, which is a public right of way, or into my garden, can be happily scavenged. The chestnut windfalls that end up in my kitchen are roasted on the top of the wood-stove (a Spanish-made, cast-iron one that came with the house) or boiled, to be eaten with milk and sugar in the local fashion.

Chestnuts are the mainstay of the vast wild area known as ‘O Courel’ that borders the Camino frances from O Cebreiro to Triacastela, and extends all the way to Quiroga and the river Sil to the south. Since time immemorial, these huge mixed forests have provided human and animal sustenance, but today, when the size and quality of the chestnuts they produce is recognised all over Europe, the careful management of chestnut plantations offers their owners a reliable cash crop. Autumn in the Courel sees whole families, old and young, grandparents and cousins, turn out to gather chestnuts, filling the sacks that are then sold at so-much per kilo to the agents of supermarkets and export companies. Some proprietors have taken to milling chestnut flour on a commercial basis, to supply the artisans whose cakes, breads and other baked goods can now be found in shops all over Galicia.

Years ago such luxury products were unknown: chestnut flour was a staple for the families lucky enough to own the trees, but it was the food of last resort for everyone else, especially in years when the rye and wheat harvests were poor.  A former resident of O Cebreiro once told me how, aged twelve, he’d accompanied his father and two other men on an expedition to buy chestnut flour at a time of great scarcity. Mounted on mules and entrusted with the combined funds of their neighbours, the four got as far as Leon before finding anyone who had flour to sell. The return journey was made along lesser-known byways, the theft of the precious commodity being a very real risk in such hard times. Arriving home marked a coming of age, as the flour was divided among the villagers, and appetites, the boy’s included, assuaged by chestnut soup, bread and filloas, or crepes. Everyone is prosperous now, and that ‘boy’ is nearly 80, but still can’t resist picking up any chestnuts he spies on his daily walks around a big city.

Winter sustenance for birds

Trees and Mushrooms

October 2023

Most of the trees in the garden here were planted by the previous owners, and it is they who created the arrangement of saplings that I’ve come to call ‘the Birch Walk’.  Birches grow everywhere in this area, so tiny ones were easy to uproot and replant, but it was the vision of how they would look 30 years later that determined the lovely feature that I’ve inherited. The parallel paths between the three rows of trees remind me of a classical academy, where learning took place in the course of  walking, or an open-air cloister: you stroll down one path, then back along the other, absorbed in the moment. In dappled sunshine, when bars of light slant through the leaves overhead, it’s the perfect space for silent, solitary thought, or companionable conversation.

Copper beech with green companion

At this time of year, I’m grateful too that my predecessors sought out trees that bring fresh colour to the garden just as much of it is fading. The deep garnet foliage of two smoke bushes, modest in size when I arrived 13 years ago, now provides a focal point at the far end. Four red Japanese maples, the silvery undersides of their leaves upturned by every passing breeze, alternate with the autumnal orange of three liquid-ambers. Beeches are common here, but copper beeches are not, so I suspect the ones in this garden were bought and planted strategically to provide contrast. One copper beech, in fact, has a green compatriot growing right in front of it: a particularly happy pairing. Inspiration guided the choice of a linden, a hazel, two laurels and two flowering cherries.

And then there are the mushrooms that pop up unbidden all over the place, but especially along the Birch Walk. The ones that appear in the grass around the labyrinth are Macrolepiota excoriata and are edible, as long as they are big enough (the small ones are best avoided). Those that spring up among the birches tend to be Xerocomus chrysenteron, colloquially called a ‘boletus’ in these parts. These are technically edible but not very appealing, either in appearance or when compared to the true boletus: Boletus edulis, aestivalis, or penicola, commonly found growing under conifers. For visual charm it’s hard to beat Amanita muscaria - red with white spots, like something from a fairytale - but since it is poisonous, I leave it to its own capricious devices. In some years the Birch Walk is home to many of them, while in others, few – or only one.  (Et in arcadia, ego….)

Japanese maples

Differing Views of Nature’s Bounty

September 2023

Our mountain September brings slightly shorter days and cooler nights, mists in the small hours and morning dew. Watering can now be sporadic if I have other things to do, whereas a month ago it was a matter of life or death for anything planted in a free-standing pot or tub. It’s still summer, but the signs of its ending are there, for all that we may choose not to acknowledge them.

One such sign is the appearance in the garden of autumn crocus. Between one day and the next, hundreds of bright pink buds push through the grass and open to the sun. Their stamens are covered with golden powder, and there are people around here who claim to have collected it and used it in cooking, believing it to be proper saffron. Others are adamant that the stuff is deadly. I’ve never bothered about it either way – I just enjoy the sight of the flowers. Besides, I’d have to collect something like 3000 of them to obtain half an ounce of ‘saffron’, if that indeed is what it is, and though there may be hundreds in the garden, there are certainly not thousands.

September also sees my several rowan trees (known in North America as mountain ash) decked with bunches of orange berries, and consequently, full of feasting birds. My neighbour is shocked when I tell her I once made jelly from these ‘poisonous’ berries and gave the jars away (perfectly true: I collected the berries from trees in a London square, and the jelly recipients are still alive and well). Country folk often believe that abundant berries on rowans and hollies herald a hard winter ahead, illogical as it may seem to give trees the power of prediction. Surely, I say, the berries are the fruits of last winter’s severity? But such observations are met with a silent, downward look, and an unspoken ‘you’ll see…’. Similarly, my enthusiasm for including elderberries in jams and desserts goes against the conviction that elder-anything is poisonous. ‘Not the flowers’ I reply (thinking of elderflower cordial), ‘or the berries when cooked’, and joke that attaining my current age has included many apple and elderberry crumbles along the way. Still, the downward glance is eloquent, and though I observe that everyone is out blackberrying on these sunny afternoons, I’ve yet to see anyone else collecting elderberries.

Hydrangeas

August 2023      

Back in the 90s, when I was living in London, a guest brought me a potted white hydrangea. When it outgrew the pot, I planted it in the garden, where it promptly died. This was my sole experience of hydrangeas before I moved to La Laguna in 2010.

The hydrangea beds here were the pride of the previous owners, whose buying expeditions had taken them all over northern Spain. Since the earth in much of the garden is so shallow, they’d also had to truck in tons of soil to create the beds in the first place. After fifteen years they had a collection of some 180 waist-high shrubs that produced a sea of blossom in a dozen colours. On the summer day when I first saw them, they were at their peak, a mix of flower-heads the size of cabbages, interspersed with delicate flat lacy ones and leaves that ranged from bright green to deep burgundy.

Captivated, I ransacked the internet for guidance on fertilising, pruning and dead-heading, spraying, watering and propagating. Much of what I read focussed on  ways of getting the hydrangeas to change colour, but since I liked their existing colours, I just concentrated on keeping them vigorous and pest-free. This proved to be less of a challenge than I’d feared: indeed, now that we are so used to one another, I can honestly say that for much of the year they almost take care of themselves. They seem to have no predators, since the spiders that create enormous, intricate webs among their leaves do them no harm.  There’s a drip-feed watering system in place, but the hydrangeas seldom need it, since their leaf canopies conserve water admirably. Most importantly, they can resist almost anything our unpredictable mountain weather throws at them.

Everything, that is, except a late spring freeze. Two of these, in 2017 and 2019, wrought terrible damage, requiring wholesale cutting-back to about 20” above the ground. Even the pandemic, which prevented me from employing any help for two years, was less devastating. In 2022 the hydrangeas began their sporadic recovery and are now taller than ever, but this year is really the first that rivals the splendid floral displays of the years before 2017. One new development (in contradiction to all the lore about giving them copper or aluminium or some other mineral) is that a long line of formerly pink hydrangeas has turned intensely blue without any interference from anyone. Perhaps they’ll turn back again? It wouldn’t surprise me.

Roses

July 2023

What else does it make sense to write about in the month of June, when I have something like 40 roses in full bloom? Each has its own particular beauty, whether of form, colour or scent – while some ‘have it all’, and leave the viewer – usually me, but sometimes friends as well – temporarily speechless.

They’re a fleeting joy, though. This spring’s abundant rain battered the flowers when they first opened, so that they aren’t lasting as long as I recall them doing in previous years. There’s also another, more positive, change: they remain free of the dreaded ‘black spot’, which usually begins to blight them around now. I put this down to having used the box clippings from the labyrinth’s annual trim as a fairly dense layer of mulch. The aim was to deter weeds, but perhaps in addition we have buried the black spot spores. If so, it’s all to the good.

The previous owners planted most of these roses, buying them bare-root from the David Austin nursery in England. Alas, they didn’t leave a list of what they planted, and I’ve been able to identify only about half of them with any confidence. Even I, with the aid of the Austin catalogue, can put a name to ‘Summer Song’, ‘The Lark Ascending’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘The Times Rose’, and ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, but others, especially in the mid-pink range so clearly loved by my predecessors, are too alike on the printed page to be identifiable in situ.

A few I recall from childhood, such as ‘Margaret Merrill’, and the vigorous example of ‘Peace’ that links the memory of my parents’ garden to the reality of this one and millions of others around the world. If you don’t know the stirring tale of how ‘Peace’ came to be the most popular rose ever grown, do look it up. Rose-growing is not usually thought of as adventurous, but the saga of ‘Peace’  may change your mind. How it got its name is uplifting, too. It would have been named for Field-Marshall Alanbrooke, had he not declined the honour, suggesting that ‘Peace’ was the message the world most needed, and would continue to need, long after his own name had been forgotten.

Never Give Up!

June 2023

Last autumn, a friend ordered a bare-root shrub rose from a leading English grower and had it sent to me as a surprise gift. As weeks went by and she heard nothing from me, she rang to ask whether it had arrived, and on learning that it hadn’t, passed on the order number so that I could investigate. The grower was as mystified as I was, since the item was registered as having been delivered.

A month went by, making it nearly two since the original order. Not until Christmas was on the horizon did a somewhat battered box appear outside my door, the bare-root rose inside as dry as the proverbial bone. On reading the instructions that came with it, I saw that the time it had been without water, heaven knew where, far exceeded the recommended limit. None the less, wanting to give it the benefit of the doubt, I planted it in a big pot, found a sheltered corner for it, and crossed my fingers.

At intervals during the winter, I ventured out to look at the reproachful little bundle of dry twigs. February, March and April came and went, the rest of the garden came into exuberant leaf, but the little bundle remained …just that.  When my friend asked about it, I tried to sound hopeful, but as May advanced, I sadly began to wonder what else I might plant in that big pot. I’d given up on it, but couldn’t bring myself to put it in the bin.

Last week, after several rainy days, a sunny evening tempted me outside. Rounding a corner of the house, I halted, astonished to see an inch-long stem bursting from among the twigs, crowned with fresh, glossy leaves. Within days it was 6 inches high. This is how it looks as I write: a reminder – at least to me – not to give up too soon. Even the most unpromising things may surprise you!

As Spring Advances ...

May 2023

For the past week, for some unknown reason, we have had no street lighting along La Laguna’s single road, so that if I step outside at night, I am enveloped in pre-industrial darkness. Silence is never really silent in the depths of the country. When you stand still and listen, it’s actually full of sounds: the rustle of leaves, the stirring of insects, birds settling down for the night, the far-off, distinctive bark of a neighbour’s dog. It’s heartening to be reminded that life goes on even when we cannot see what is right in front of us.

This year, unlike the past several, it seems that this small corner of the world is on course to have a spring like the ones before 2017, the year when the negative effects of climate change really began to be felt in these parts. As of today, the wisteria that runs along two walls of my house has been in flower for ten days, and its leaves are starting to emerge as the long garlands of blossom fade. The lilacs are burgeoning, too, and the big yellow irises in the lane are fully out. Long-range weather forecasts promise us a frost-free month, and on the strength of them I’ve dared to transfer some black currant cuttings, obtained at a seed-swap event back in February, to their permanent positions outside. Fingers crossed that the forecasts are right, not just for this garden, but for the wine producers of Galicia’s Ribera Sacra, whose vines, planted on the steep hillsides terraced by the Romans, have been devastated by May frosts in recent years.

Attending the conference of the Spanish federation of Camino-related associations in Orense last week was stimulating, informative, intense and fun, all at once. It was wonderful to reconnect with Camino friends not seen since before the pandemic, and to catch up with projects aimed at improving still further what can be offered to pilgrims in many localities. It was also encouraging to hear, as the leitmotif of so many of the presentations, the commitment to traditional hospitality: a major concern, as some readers will recognise, of my recent book, Waybread. Others may smile to learn that plantago mayor, the plant that set off the idea for the book in the first place, is once again to be seen ‘here, there and everywhere’ around the garden, resisting all efforts to shift it.

Notes From a Quiet Garden

April 2023

The equinox has passed, the clocks have gone forward. Spring is officially here, though at an altitude of 1100 metres, signs of it are slower to emerge than in places lower down. In Sarria, for instance, 40 kilometres farther along the Camino Frances at a tenth the altitude of La Laguna, there are already early roses, whereas mine are just putting forth leaves.

Still, the promise of the season is evident. Tiny aconites and snowdrops nod in the angles where granite walls meet, and I note that last year’s deep blue muscari have established themselves in new situations that owe nothing to any effort of mine. They join the irrepressible calendulas - hundreds of them, all the offspring of a single plant given to me by a neighbour – in bringing dashes of bright colour to a garden that is still largely clad in wintry brown.

Another charmer is the red-stemmed dogwood (cornus sibericus), cheerily coming into leaf against the stone wall outside my kitchen, but what is really splendid just now is my sole star magnolia, decked in white blossom like an old-fashioned bride. This little tree, whose furry grey buds have been biding their time since December, seems to possess an innate wisdom that prevents it from flowering too soon. I wish I could say the same of the narcissi, true harbingers of spring joy, but soon blown flat by the westerly gales.

It’s too early, at this elevation, to plant seeds in the open ground of the vegetable plot before mid-May, but one can plan. I always try to include something I’ve never grown before, partly for fun and partly to have something interesting to offer my neighbours, who are generous to a fault in sharing their produce. Since I can’t rival their immense and perfect specimens, I resort to novelty, and so far have introduced them to parsnips, shallots, black tomatoes and oak-leaf lettuce. This year it will be a variety of chard called ‘Bright lights’, a riot of red and yellow stems with variegated leaves that look as good on the platter as they do in the plot.

The ‘Little Summer’ Without a Name

March 2023

In much of Europe, late February or early March always brings a week or so of warm, sunny weather that feels more like May. These were the classical Mediterranean world’s ‘halcyon days’, when kingfishers could nest undisturbed by winter storms, thanks to the protection of Zeus. A similar week in autumn is widely known as ‘St Martin’s summer’ after the compassionate saint who divided his cloak with a beggar and whose feast day falls on 11 November. The late winter spell of balmy weather appears to have no such saintly association, yet it is a recognised annual weather phenomenon. Elsewhere in Spain it is un veranillo, in Galicia, un pequeno verán, and here, in the dialect of the area around O Cebreiro, it’s un pequeno vrau: a ‘little summer’, which is regarded as very much its own season, just as England’s ‘midwinter-spring’ was to T.S. Eliot.

There is a sudden sense that new life is stirring. Even as the snow melts under a cloudless sky, green hellebores nod in the cold wind and the first tiny wild daffodils emerge along the roadsides. Magpies wage noisy, cackling love and war (and yet again I ask myself how anyone, even a medieval Galician king, could name a daughter ‘Urraca’ in homage to this raucous bird). More pleasing to the ear is the rush of water along the irrigation channel that runs through La Laguna. The water comes from a pure mountain spring that has never been known to fail, and the system by which my neighbours divert it to their respective fields on specific days of the week, using only a simple hoe, dates from time immemorial.

Opening the sluices to let this snowmelt-laden channel enrich the slopes is only one of the tasks proper to the pequeno vrau. Tractors rumble past, dragging tanks of fertilising purín (cow urine) that will be tipped down the hillsides in a precipitous gush. Stalls are cleared and manure spread. After weeks in the barn, cattle are turned out to pasture and gallop past my house, jumping and frolicking like children let out of school – a surprising and comical sight for those who’ve never considered that cows might have a sense of fun. The hamlet’s low granite walls are suddenly warm enough for us to bask on, like lizards. The shouted greeting now is ‘Warmer out than in, eh?’, since our stone houses hold the chill of winter and our otherwise faithful chimneys smoke us out. For the length of the vrau, we fling open our doors each morning to let in the warmth.

Then, as quickly as they came, the halcyon days are over and March turns its back on the promptings of spring.  In a rough year, the Atlantic gales return, tearing slates from roofs and forcing us indoors to stoke up our woodstoves. They retreat, finally, in the face of the greater force that is spring itself. This time it’s for real, casting the famous ‘green haze’ over the landscape, and decking the wild plum and cherry trees with blossom as far as the eye can see.