2021 – CHW
Still a howling (warm) easterly wind.

A carpet of mainly large white flowered wild violets above Crinodendron Hedge in and above the new planting where the soil was exposed after our tree felling. As we saw they are predominantly purple and smaller flowered on Sinogrande Walk.

The original Caerhays collection which still exists today is therefore:

C. speciosa ‘Umbilicata’ – Slip Rail (deep salmon-pink and very early into flower with last year’s quinces still on the tree)

C. japonica – Crinodendron Hedge

C. cathayensis – Crinodendron Hedge (biggest fruits and biggest thorns)

Perhaps over 100 years old and certainly nearly centenarians.

The best modern or new varieties of flowering and fruiting Chaenomeles seen in the lecture were as listed below. Well worth obtaining for the next Burncoose catalogue if we can. In the USA there are 450 varieties of Chaenomeles in cultivation apparently.

C. speciosa ‘Mango Storm’ – has second flowering and rounded yellow fruits

C. speciosa ‘Madame Butterfly’ – pink/bicolour

C. speciosa ‘Salmon Horizon’

C. speciosa ‘Orange Storm’

C. x superba ‘Apple Blossom’ – pink and white – variegated

C. x superba ‘Issari White’ – tiny flowers in profusion

C. x superba ‘Pink Trail’ – white flowers age to pink

2020 – CHW
While President Trump attempts to pretend he was being ‘frivolous’ when he appeared to be telling people to drink bleach, or inject themselves, or at least ‘try it out’, we are now getting to the real crunch. Business leaders reckon we have all been ‘on holiday’ for quite long enough to fuck up the economy and force us to pay back what the government has so efficiently paid us as businesses, employees, and the self-employed. Not much thanks for that of course and still plenty of aggrieved bleaters who have fallen through the net (Branson of all people!) which of course they have and will.

With Boris back I would hope (and have expected for some while) that we will be, at least business wise, be released from the worst of lockdown by the end of next week. Not the moment for a piss-up to celebrate but common sense, and work, and reality has to get going again before we fall into a state supported socialist slumber of entitlement, idleness, and inactivity as being the normal way of life. The more I hear ‘wittering’ in the media about mental stress, strain, and entitlement the more I fear for reality and our democracy.

It has been a ‘war’ and, so far at least, the vast majority have survived (including the NHS). There will be more casualties in the ‘war’ but, unless we start to ‘get on with it’, there will not be anything which we would have previously recognised to get on with! As it is ‘staying-in’ has probably caused more hardship, illness, and long term medical damage to people and the economy than corona.

Hindsight and historians will find all this to have been bonkers! Only the British public would have obeyed so readily. Just look at German and US protestors. China knows how to deal with them!

The new great ‘Satan’ from whom 75% of the plants which we enjoy today actually came?

A still overcast day where the scents of rhododendrons were quite overpowering. The rhododendrons are at their absolute best now. However it is a very early year and we do, now, desperately need real rain. It seems COVID-19 has kept the wet weather flows away. Perhaps the jet streams over the Atlantic have less pollution driving them. The breeze has been in the east for the last four weeks.