A new year a new look….

After nearly three years of bringing you naturist news, life updates and factual and lifestyle information , I feel it’s time for a new look and a new site.

As previously with my other site https://freewilluk.wordpress.com this site will remain available to read !

As from today no new posts will be published here but can now be found at our new location which is here: https://clothesfreeliving.wordpress.com

In the Know

Great Garden Designers

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783)

Lancelot Brown more commonly known with the byname Capability Brown, was an English landscape architect. He is remembered as “the last of the great English 18th century artists to be accorded his due” and “England’s greatest gardener”. He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure. He was nicknamed “Capability” because he would tell his clients that their property had “capability” for improvement.His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked. It is estimated that Brown was responsible for over 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work still endures at Croome Court (where he also designed the house), Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Appuldurcombe House, Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village), in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations. His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scattering of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers, were a new style within the English landscape, a “gardenless” form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles.

Humphrey Repton (1752-1818)

Humphry Repton was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown; he also sowed the seeds of the more intricate and eclectic styles of the 19th century. At a low ebb and with his capital dwindling, Repton moved to a modest cottage at Hare Street near Romford in Essex. In 1788, aged 36 and with four children and no secure income, he hit on the idea of combining his sketching skills with his limited experience of laying out grounds at Sustead to become a ‘landscape gardener’ (a term he himself coined). Since the death of Capability Brown in 1783, no one figure dominated English garden design; Repton was ambitious to fill this gap and sent circulars round his contacts in the upper classes advertising his services. Repton produced designs for the grounds of many of the foremost country houses in England, Scotland and Wales:

•Antony House

•Ashridge House

•Ashton Court

•Attingham Park

•Bayham Abbey

•Blaise Castle

•Bolwick Hall

•Broke Hall

•Brondesbury Park

•Burley-on-the-Hill

•Cassiobury Park

•Catton Park, Old Catton, Norwich

•Clumber Park

•Cobham Hall

•Corsham Court

•Courteenhall

•Crewe Hall

• Culford Hall, now Culford School

• Dagnam Park, Essex

•Dyrham Park

•East India Company College now Haileybury

• Endsleigh House

• Gosfield Place

•Grovelands Park

•Gunton Hall

•Hanslope Park

•Harewood House

•Hatchlands Park

•Honing Hall

•Highams Park, Woodford

•Hylands House, Chelmsford

•Kenwood House

•Kensington Gardens, alterations

• Kidbrooke Park, now Michael Hall School

•Leigh Court

•Longleat House

•Plas Newydd

•Pentillie

•Rode Hall

•Royal Pavilion at Brighton

•Royal Fort, Bristol

•Rudding Park, Harrogate

•Russell Square, Bloomsbury

•Sarsden

•Scrivelsby

•Shardeloes

•Sheringham Park

•Stanage Park

•Stanmer Park

• St. John’s Park, Ryde, Isle of Wight

•Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire

•Stoneleigh Abbey

•Stubbers, North Ockendon

• Sufton Court, Herefordshire

•Sundridge Park

•Tatton Park

• Thoresby Park

•Trent Park

• Trewarthenick, Cornwall

•Uppark

•Valleyfield, Fife

•Wanstead Park

•Waresley Park

•Warley Woods

• Warren House, Loughton

•Wembley Park

•West Wycombe Park

•Wingerworth Hall

•Woburn Abbey

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)

Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, artist,and writer. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson’s The Garden.Jekyll has been described as “a premier influence in garden design” by British and American gardening enthusiasts. From 1881, when she laid out the gardens for Munstead House, built for her mother by John James Stevenson, Jekyll provided designs or planned planting for some four hundred gardens. More than half were directly commissioned, but many were created in collaboration with architects such as Lutyens and Robert Lorimer. Most of her gardens are lost. A small number have been restored, including her own garden at Munstead Wood, the gardens of Hestercombe House, and the garden at the Manor House in Upton Grey that she designed for the magazine editor Charles Holme.

Harold Peto (1854-1933)

Harold Ainsworth Peto was a British architect, landscape architect and garden designer, who worked in Britain and in Provence, FranceHarold made Iford Manor his permanent base. He re-designed and expanded the garden, trying out new ideas, and incorporating the artefacts collected during his travels around the world. The garden at Iford illustrates particularly his Arts and crafts approach to architecture and garden design.Most of Peto’s major commissions were executed between 1900 and 1914. His projects include work at Easton Lodge, Essex; West Dean House, Sussex; Crichel House, Dorset; Petwood, Lincolnshire; High Wall, Oxford; Buscot Park, Oxfordshire; Hartham Park, Wiltshire; Bridge House, Surrey; Heale House, Wiltshire; Wayford Manor House, Somerset; Burton Pynsent House, Somerset; Ilnacullin, County Cork, Ireland.

Margery Fish (1888-1969)

Margery Fish (née Townshend) was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal cottage garden style. Only after Walter’s (her husband)death in 1947 could Margery fully implement her ideas and develop her skills as a plantswoman. She became interested especially in unfashionable green hellebores and other shade-loving spring flowers. She sought to make things grow in cracks and crevices. She soon had a group of correspondents, with whom she swapped ideas and rare plant material. These included Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire, the garden designer Nancy Lindsay, and the Somerset neighbour Violet Clive of Brympton d’Evercy, an equally passionate gardener. By the late 1950s, East Lambrook garden was being opened to the public for charity and had a small plant nursery attached to it. In 1963, she received a silver Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Russell Page (1906-1985)

A painter and garden designer. Russell Page studied at the Slade School in London before a love of plants drew him to garden design. He began his professional career with projects in Rutland (1928), and chateaux in France at Melun (1930) and Boussy Saint-Antoine (1932).On his return to Britain Page was employed by the landscape architect, Richard Sudell, and he began remodelling the gardens at Longleat – work which would continue for many years.Between 1934 and 1938 he contributed articles to the periodical, Landscape and Gardening.From 1935 to 1939 he worked in partnership with Geoffrey Jellicoe. Page and Jellicoe designed the landscape and building for the ‘Caveman Restaurant’ at Cheddar Gorge on the Longleat estate in Somerset, and worked at Royal Lodge, Windsor; Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire; Holme House, Regent’s Park, London; Broadway in the Cotswolds; Charterhouse school.They became friends but the partnership did not work financially. Jellicoe was reticent on this point but used to say ‘Oh, I knew my Page’. From 1945 to 1962 Russell Page lived and worked in France and had an international practice. Russell Page’s book The Education of a Gardener (1962) is a pleasure to read and a fount of wisdom.

 

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (1900–1996)

Geoffrey Alan Jellicoe was an English architect, town planner, landscape architect and garden designer. His strongest interest was in landscape and garden design. Geoffrey Jellicoe studied at the Architectural Association in London and later became its principal. His book on Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (1925) led to a commission for the design of the garden at Ditchley Park. Two of Geoffrey Jellicoe’s favourite projects are freely open to the public: The Water Garden in Hemel Hempsted and the Kennedy Memorial in Runnymede. Geoffrey Jellicoe’s most ambitious English garden design was for Sutton Place in Surrey. In the longer term it is likely that Jellicoe, like Repton, will be valued even more as a landscape theorist than as a landscape designer. Jellicoe had a vast knowledge of landscape design history, as demonstrated by his book on The Landscape of Man, and was keenly interested in applying this knowledge to landscape design projects, as explained in his 3 volume Studies in Landscape Design and in his Guelph Lectures on Landscape Design. Educated in same school as Calvert Vaux (London’s Architectural Association), Jellicoe was one of the first to appreciate the shortcomings of a Modernist design approach and arguably became the first Postmodern landscape and garden designer. His friendship with a number of leading modern artists led to an interest in Carl Jung and to Jellicoe’s interest in the role of the subconscious in landscape design.

Rosemary Verey (1918 – 2001)

Rosemary Verey, OBE, VMH was an internationally known English garden designer, lecturer and prolific garden writer who designed the famous garden at Barnsley House, near Cirencester. She was born Rosemary Isabel Baird Sandilands and educated at Eversley School, Folkestone, and University College London. In 1939 she married David Verey, whose family owned Barnsley House. Verey’s most famous garden design was that of her own house, Barnsley House, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. In 1970 she opened the garden for one day to the public for the National Gardens Scheme but eventually it was open 6 days per week to accommodate the 30,000 annual visitors. In 1984 when her husband David died, Rosemary Verey began designing gardens for American and British clients. Most notable are HRH the Prince of Wales, and Sir Elton John, Princess Michael of Kent, the Marquess of Bute and the New York Botanical Garden.Rosemary Verey was well known for taking imposing elements from large public gardens and bringing them into scale for the home gardeners use. Her laburnum walk, which has been photographed many times, is an example of this technique. The National Trust’s Bodnant Garden in North Wales has a very large laburnum walk that inspired Verey to plant a similar, smaller scale laburnum walk at Barnsley House. Verey is also noted for making vegetable (ornamental potager) gardens fashionable once again. The potager at Barnsley House was inspired by that at the Château de Villandry on the Loire in France.She was awarded the OBE in 1996 and in 1999 from the Royal Horticultural Society the highest accolade that Society can award, the Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Greenhouse Maintenance

Using a greenhouse isn’t just about growing delicious tomatoes – you need to know how to keep it in tip top condition to get the best out of your plants. Like any building, a greenhouse needs maintaining. Use our tips to keep your greenhouse in good condition.

Cleaning

Once a year you should give your greenhouse a really good clean – this will make sure the glass allows the maximum amount of sunlight in, and prevent nasty pests and diseases from being allowed to take hold.

The best time to clean your greenhouse is early spring, after the worst of the cold weather but before you start planting seeds.Start by removing everything that isn’t bolted down from the greenhouse. Make sure you pick a mild day if you have overwintering plants so that they don’t get damaged by the cold. If you’re worried, wrap delicate plants in fleece or move them to a shed or porch where they will be sheltered. If you have heaters in your greenhouse, make sure they are switched off and removed if possible, and the electricity is turned off.

Get rid of as much rubbish as you can, throwing out used growbags (empty the compost into a compost bin or onto the garden), and sweeping up dead leaves and spilled compost. Give your plants a good once-over too, removing any dead, damaged or diseased leaves. Be brutal and throw away any plants that are too far gone to survive. Disease can spread easily in a greenhouse so make sure you dispose of every infected leaf.

If you have plant beds in your greenhouse, give them a good weed and dig over, checking for grubs, slugs and other pests.Wash the windows and all other surfaces in the greenhouse with a mixture of detergent and warm water. Jeyes fluid is ideal for cleaning with as it will disinfect and destroy diseases, as well as cleaning as it goes. Use a sponge with a scourer on one side so you can scrub at any stubborn stains. Change your water regularly so that you’re not just spreading the dirt about.

Wash down all of the pots, tables etc that you’ve removed from the greenhouse too, making sure you do this somewhere away from plants that could be harmed by the strong disinfectant.Clean the outside of the greenhouse in the same way, using a mop or a sponge attached to a stick to reach the roof. Make sure you clean any old leaves, moss and gunk out of the gutters while you are washing the outside.

Frame and Base Maintenance

While you’ve got the greenhouse as empty and clean as possible, it is a good idea to check over the frame and base to see if anything needs fixing.

Ensure the base of the greenhouse is solid, and that the frame is securely fixed to it. Check for any small gaps where draughts and pests might get in, and seal them up with exterior sealant. Next check the frame over. If the frame is aluminium, check the joints to make sure no bolts are loose, damaged or missing. Look over the windows, ensuring that all of the clips holding the glass in place are there, and in the correct positions.

If your greenhouse has a wooden frame, a bit more maintenance is required. Wooden frames need repainting every other year or so. If you are repainting, wash down the wood if you haven’t already done so, and go over it with sandpaper. Check for any signs of rot and woodworm as you go over the frame and treat with wood treatment solution if needed before painting.

Replacing Broken Panes

If any panes of glass are cracked or broken you should replace them. This is a very simple job if you have an aluminium-framed greenhouse. The pane will be held in with metal clips – use a pair of pliers to grip the clip and unslot it. Do this for all the clips holding the pane in, making sure to support the glass so that it doesn’t fall out once you’ve removed all the clips. If a lower pane is damaged, you may find that it is holding a higher pane in place so you’ll need to remove both to start with. You can put the undamaged higher pane back in place of the broken lower one.

Have a glazier cut a new piece of glass or plastic to replace the old broken one, and make sure the plastic seal is in place before fitting the new pane in place. For wooden-framed greenhouses the job of replacing broken panes is slightly trickier – the glass is usually held in with putty or sealant on the outside and metal pins (also called brads) on the inside. Use pliers to pull out the pins – taking out just as many as you need to in order to slide the pane out safely. You may find that the putty or sealant on the outside holds it in place a bit too well, so use a craft knife to break the seal. You’ll need to replace the sealant once you have your new piece of glass in place anyway, so remove all the old material while you have the glass out. Once you have your new pane ready, put it in place and very carefully hammer new pins into the frame to hold it in place. Apply new putty or sealant to the outside of the frame to seal the pane in.

Shading and Ventilation

While the point of a greenhouse is to provide a nice warm, light environment for your plants, in the summer it can get a bit too hot so it’s important to provide ventilation and shading to protect your plants.

You can use old net curtains, special roll-up shades, or opaque plastic to line the windows and protect your plants from the sun when needed. Another option is a special shading wash that covers the glass, and can be washed off in the autumn.

Automatic openers can be fitted to windows and vents so that when the temperature in the greenhouse gets too high, the window will open by itself. When the temperature goes down again at night, the window will close itself so you don’t need to worry about it.

More Tips

Let spiders and ladybirds into your greenhouse as they will eat all sorts of nasty pests for you.Keep a tray of water on the floor of the greenhouse to raise humidity.Don’t shock tender young plants by watering them with cold water – keep a container of water inside the greenhouse so that you have warm water to give your plants.Use bubblewrap to line the greenhouse during winter, as this will help to insulate it and protect your overwintering plants from the cold.

Change Your Outlook on Life

By Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., she is a clinical psychologist and an author

In many ways, striving for perfection is a recipe for disaster. I’ve spoken with too many people who could never be smart, successful, slim, or striking enough to meet their own unrealistic demands. All the while, these individuals failed to experience themselves as people of value just for being themselves.

I’ve worked with countless couples that spend as much time obsessing over their relationship as they do experiencing their relationship. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if these thoughts were kind, compassionate, and introspective. Instead, they are harsh, cold, and critical. The demanding attitude we all have toward ourselves often divides our lives into two realities—what’s actually happening and what we tell ourselves about what’s happening. People who live in pursuit of perfection are missing out on the real pleasures of life.

We’ve heard the expression “live in the moment” so many times that the words can lose their meaning. We lose track of the fact that much of the time, we spiral off into thoughts that have little to do with the here and now. Buying coffee, we forget to meet the eyes of the stranger serving us. We obsess over how we look instead of noticing how we are being looked at—by a loved one, for example. When we fall in love , we worry about losing it, rather than enjoying the blissful feeling of being in love.

How can we shift from judging our lives to actually living and enjoying them? Here are three key elements:

1. Silence Your Inner Critic

Whether we are accomplishing a major goal or enjoying a simple pleasure, our “critical inner voice” is a thought process that can constantly question, critique, and undermine our experiences.

It subdues us and holds us back. It tells us we aren’t good enough or warns us that we will lose everything. It tells us that we have to be special to be worthwhile. It shouts, “If you’re not the best, you’re nothing.” When we receive an acknowledgment, it says, “You don’t deserve it.” When we fall in love, it whispers, “She will leave you.” When we listen to this voice we miss out on reality. We lose touch with the tactile, feeling, tumultuous roller coaster of real life. Instead, we stay in our own heads, failing to connect with the people, places, and experiences that make our moments worthwhile.

A friend of mine was invited on a getaway by her boyfriend of a few months. She was excited, but a few minutes into their long drive to the mountains, her critical inner voice started in on her. “What will you talk about? You don’t have anything interesting to say. He’s going to realise how dull you are.” The running dialogue in her mind made her unusually quiet, uncomfortable, even awkward. By the time they made their first gas stop, she wished she’d never agreed to come. Then, stepping out of the car, she felt a rush of cold, crisp air. She noticed they were surrounded by snow. It was beautiful.

She realized that her self-critical thoughts had left her missing out on everything from conversation with her boyfriend to taking in the stunning scenery. It was a wake-up call that gave her the insight necessary to silence her inner critic. She spent the remainder of the drive actively ignoring the “voices” that surfaced. When her “voice” told her she sounded stupid, she’d tell her boyfriend a story. When it said she seemed “desperate,” she’d put her head on his shoulder. When it commented on her appearance, she’d look admiringly out the window. Though it got stronger at first, like a child throwing a tantrum to get its way, eventually, the voice grew quiet, and she stopped noticing it altogether.

This is the approach we must all take, and it was recently, and perfectly, illustrated in an account by Amy Poehler in her book, Yes Please, in which she refers to her inner critic as her “demon”:

Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head for love. They feed their demon, and it gets really strong, and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin.

Actively ignoring and taking action against your demon will initially make its voice louder and you more anxious, but it is the only way ultimately to silence it. Dr. Daniel Siegel, a leader in interpersonal neurobiology, says that the only appropriate attitude to have toward yourself is to be curious, open, accepting and loving. This attitude is what makes change possible. It’s what helps you to not only reach your goals but also enjoy and appreciate the road that gets you there, imperfect as it may be.

2. Don’t Avoid Feelings

Psychologist Robert Firestone, my father and my co-author on Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, recently pointed out that living in the moment isn’t always as joyful as the saying would suggest. Life is filled with a wide array of emotions including pain. However, living in the moment does ensure a more lively existence. We can’t experience the past or the future, yet we spend much of our time lost in regretting the past and worrying about the future. Still, the present moment is all we have. Think of what we are missing when we trail off and focus on things we aren’t actually experiencing. Think of how we tune out or numb ourselves in an effort to avoid whatever we would think or feel if we let ourselves be right where we are.

Most of us engage in behaviors that numb us in an effort to avoid sadness. But sadness has many benefits: It makes us feel rich, full, and alive to feel our sadness. It has a rejuvenating effect that grows our capacity for happiness. When you try to kill off a part of yourself, you lose more of yourself than you think. The fear that motivates us to avoid deeper feeling frequently leaves us dulled, anxious, and miserable instead.

3. Refocus Your Attention

When we listen to our inner critic, it is like looking at ourselves through someone else’s eyes instead of our own. We must learn to take the focus off ourselves and look for meaning in our experiences. This still means setting goals, but also enjoying the journey. Life is about striving, not just being there. Have you ever set a goal to exercise or lose weight, then felt slightly empty when you reached it? That’s because life happens in the journey itself. Your energy can only be felt in your actions.

As you live your life, remind yourself: Slow down and pay attention. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Focus less on evaluation and more on your actual experience. Look out the window of your car. Be in the moment, “Pay attention in the present like your life depends on it.” And if you do get lost, never beat yourself up; just bring your attention back to the present moment. You can actually strengthen your mind like a muscle by putting your attention where you want it.

Life is too precious to waste lost in our heads, evaluating ourselves, one step removed from our own experience. We can live more fully by paying attention to our senses and being willing to feel what we are actually experiencing at any given moment.

Original Article

30 years in Cold Storage

Classic Album

I’ve always loved listening to music 🎧 and ever since I was a teenager have collected LP’s,Compact Discs and originally cassettes on a whim some I’ve played to death others I’ve only played tracks others I’ve probably never played. American Pie is probably one of those in the latter category. It has therefore been in cold storage (rather apt considering its -5°c outside) until today when I watched Don McCleans American Pie classic album programme on BBC iPlayer this morning.

American Pie is McLean’s second album; his first, Tapestry, having been released to only moderate commercial success and acclaim in 1970. McLean was a protégé of Pete Seeger, having played with him in the 1960s. The album American Pie was intended as a unified work, as McLean has said that he was influenced by the Beatles’Sgt Pepper album and envisioned American Pie to be a similar album. Believing that an artist’s work should stand by itself, McLean generally did not offer explanations for his work’s themes or meaning,though he did describe the title song as involving “a sense of loss”. The album was dedicated to Buddy Holly, a childhood icon of McLean’s, and was released in 1971 on the heels of the ’60s, the defining decade of McLean’s generation. It has a melancholy feel and rather sparse arrangements.

Tracklisting

1 American Pie 8:33

2 Till Tomorrow 2:14

3 Vincent 3:59

4 Crossroads 3:38

5 Winterwood 3:10

6 Empty Chairs 3:25

7 Everybody Loves Me, Baby 3:34

8 Sister Fatima 2:33

9 The Grave 3:12

10 Babylon 1:42

The album was recorded in Studio A at The Record Plant on West 44th street in New York City. The producer, Ed Freeman, decided to use accomplished musicians who were not “studio musicians who could act like a metronome” because he wanted to capture the feel of a “band that was really cooking,” so he rented a rehearsal studio and they rehearsed the title song for two weeks before they recorded it. Because McLean rarely phrased his singing the same way twice there were as many as 24 takes for some of the voice parts, but the rhythm tracks are mostly one take.

The title track contains references to the death of Buddy Holly (McLean being a 13-year-old paper-boy at the time).The phrase “The Day the Music Died” was used by McLean on this song, and has now become an unofficial name for the tragedy.It is not a nostalgia song. “American Pie” changes as America, itself, is changing. For McLean, the transition from the light innocence of childhood to the dark realities of adulthood began with the deaths of his father and Buddy Holly and culminated with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, which was the start of a more difficult time for America.

The original United Artists Records inner sleeve featured a free verse poem written by McLean about William Boyd, also known as Hopalong Cassidy, along with a picture of Boyd in full Hopalong regalia. This sleeve was removed within a year of the album’s release. The words to this poem appear on a plaque at the hospital where Boyd died. The Boyd poem and picture tribute do appear on a special remastered 2003 CD.

 

The album reached number 1 within two weeks of release and was certified gold within six months, spending almost a year on the Billboard Album Charts. Its appeal cut across genres, in what was becoming a fragmented music scene.

 

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This post is dedicated to EJ

Happy New Year

Just a short message to wish all those viewing my blog a “Happy New Year” and Best Wishes for 2018.

Hopefully during the year we can again push the case for non sexual “natural ” nudity and show people just how normal naturism is.

At the same time share knowledge on other topic as well as preview the kind of photography that you can take in place near to you.

Let’s hope 2018 is a good one !

An English Garden

Some things to do in the garden….all year round !

Theses videos are brought to you from the delightful people at English Garden Magazine English Garden

Evergreens

The single biggest improvement you can make is to plant more rich-green evergreens with high-gloss leaves. These shine out like a beacon in winter light and radiate warmth just when we gardeners need it most. You can use them informally by planting evergreen shrubs, or you can topiarise yew and box. Tightly-clipped evergreens, such as yew and box, will add formal structure as well as warmth. They look particularly stylish in town gardens.

Box (Buxus sempervirens ‘Suffruticosa’) can be clipped into any shape due to its small leaves. Spirals, cones, balls and squares are more traditional. But I have a handsome cockerel and a hen! The traditional time to clip box is early June, after the frosts have ceased. If the shape needs more honing, give it a second light trim in late August. Yew is clipped in August and is a much larger plant suitable for hedges or larger single specimens

Both are best grown in the ground and both will benefit from a controlled release fertiliser used in the growing season – between April and September. You can containerise box. But it will need regular watering and a fortnightly nitrogen-rich feed to keep the foliage a rich green.

Some evergreens will also provide winter fragrant flower as well as good leaf and the best of all is Sarcococca confusa. This oriental, small shrub has rich-green pointed leaves and ivory white flowers which are little more than collections of stamens. But they belt out a powerful scent which will fragrance a wide area so use it close to gates, doorways and paths. This shrub is also very happy in a container.

There are lots of skimmias that you could use too, but the star performer is Skimmia x confusa ‘Kew Green’ -a small laurel-like shrub which produces sweetly fragrant cream flowers in spring. Skimmias are tremendous garden value, because they produce their buds in the previous summer. ‘Kew Green’ has triangular heads consisting of hundreds of lime-green buds suffused in rhubarb pink. These are every bit as decorative as the flowers and they give a long season of interest before the flowers open. Some female skimmias also berry well and the best is S. japonica ‘Nymans’.

If you need a larger winter-flowering evergreen for the edge of a garden, forms of Viburnum tinus are ideal. They have the added advantage of being able to grow happily in deep shade. Although the clusters of flowers aren’t fragrant the combination of pink bud against white flower is delicately pretty in winter light. ‘Eve Price’ is the most compact and colourful – the dark, almost-red buds frame pink flowers. ‘Gwenllian’ is larger (up to 10 ft or 3 metres) with paler blush-white flowers.

You can also explore hollies, eleagnus, aucubas, choisya, osmanthus and photinia. But opt rich-green leaved varieties rather than the golden variegated ones if you want to get the ‘winter warmer’ effect.

Pottering Around

Even though it’s wintertime I am still on the lookout to improve things in the garden and as usual at little or no cost. I visited a local garden centre and bought some supplies and saw four plants I need of care and attention so I parted with a small sum and took Home a Coprosma ‘Lemon and Lime’,two Olearia Moondances and a Erica lusitanica Sheffield Park.

I know it’s not really the time to plant but I love to put my gardening skills and knowledge to the test and hopefully they will brighten up a drab unappealing part of the garden.

They’re all evergreen so I’m hoping they’ll flourish on the sunny side of the garden. Once I’d got them home I positioned the where I wanted them got out the fork and trowel and dug the holes.

The wintery sun was out by then and once I’d added some fish,blood and bone and some fresh compost and watered them in the job was done.

Three for Christmas

Christmas is a time for giving so I’ve given myself three recently released albums from bands/artists I’ve followed over the years but not so much recently.

First up U2 and their new album Songs of Experience how good is it ?

U2’s last album, 2014’s Songs of Innocence, was overshadowed by the PR stunt that accompanied the record’s release. Seems a lot of people weren’t so happy about finding a free U2 album in their iTunes accounts.

Lesson learned, but the controversy pretty much steamrolled over everything else about the album. Like, if you actually bothered to listen to it, Songs of Innocence wasn’t as lousy as all the negative press let on. A proposed companion LP, Songs of Experience, was to quickly follow, but plans were scuttled and the album was retooled in light of the iTunes debacle and singer Bono‘s subsequent health issues.

There’s no telling how the restructured Songs of Experience, U2’s 14th album, compares to the original vision, but as it stands, it’s pretty much a sequel. In other words, it sounds an awful lot like other U2 albums from this century.

“Shooting off my mouth, that’s another great thing about me,” Bono sings on the anthem-sized “You’re the Best Thing About Me.” Maybe so, but he keeps the politics and moralizing to a minimum on Songs of Experience, instead keeping the focus on issues of mortality and matters of the heart. It’s more All That You Can’t Leave Behind than The Unforgettable Fire, and U2 know it, opting for general uplift over deep purpose. That leads to some broad emotional checkpoints throughout.

The thing is, All That You Can’t Leave Behind found purpose following Sept. 11; the sentiments here are so blah that a personal connection almost seems unreachable. “The Showman (Little More Better)” isn’t too far removed from the deadwood Imagine Dragons produce, and the revisiting of old standbys – big choruses, shimmering guitars, musical flourishes designed to fill stadiums – does little to distinguish the album from the last one or the one before that. Songs of Experience, like the past few U2 records, is another U2 album that U2 think their fans want.

So, it’s little surprise that the best songs are the most familiar sounding: “Lights of Home,” “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” “The Blackout, “Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way” and even “Get Out of Your Own Way,” which features rapper Kendrick Lamar repaying a favor to U2, who appeared on his album from earlier this year – the way better Damn.

Still, the opening (“Love Is All We Have Left”) and closing (“13 [There Is a Light”]) tracks attempt to elevate Songs of Experience into something grander than it is, and offer a hint at what the album might have been if it didn’t take the expected route so often. Both songs go deeper, lyrically and musically, than almost everything they bookend.

That doesn’t mean Songs of Experience is a terrible or even a bad record. It just isn’t very memorable. Besides a couple songs, chances are none of these will go on your playlist alongside band classics like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “One.”

The emotional reach and payoff, key elements to U2’s success, aren’t there for the most part – even though everyone, including the album’s long list of producers, works overtime to polish the 13 songs to modern-day specifications while still nodding to the band’s past. After all these years, there’s simply too much baggage for U2 and any new music they make, and lightening the load seems moot at this point.

Read more:

Next Up :

Stop everything guys, because it’s finally here. Liam Gallagher’s album might be the most eagerly awaited solo debut of the year, but is it any good? The answer, thankfully, is a big, fat ‘hell yes’.

This is in no small part down to the fact that the brother-bothering Britpop hero and wise-cracking lad about town has done the sensible thing and roped in a hit list of Los Angeles music industry heavyweights to avoid a Beady Eye situation. Steering clear of weak Oasis imitations, producers Greg Kurstin (Adele, Lily Allen and the most recent Foo Fighters album) and Florence + The Machine collaborator Andrew Wyatt have bought pop gloss and slickness to Liam’s serious swagger, diluting his rough and ready rasp but never diminishing what makes him so great – his beautifully ballsy attitude.

‘As You Were’ is an album that has more in common with Primal Scream at their most flamboyantly fun and Spiritualized at their most dreamily epic rather than a dodgy rehash of ‘Definitely Maybe’; it’s plugging into the 1990s, for sure, but not the bits you’d expect. “I didn’t want to be reinventing anything or going off on a space-jazz odyssey,” says the man himself of the album’s influences. “It’s the Lennon “Cold Turkey” vibe, The Stones, the classics. But done my way, now.”

Certainly there’s a lot of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones here too, but the glammy, foot-stomping country bounce of tracks like ‘Greedy Soul’ make sure this isn’t a hoary dad-rock indulgence, but a totally 2017 rock record with its sights set high.

Big, beefy tunes like gospel groover ‘Wall Of Glass’ and sassy Primrose Hill hoedown ‘You Better Run’ are more than capable of blowing the roof off your local arena and slaying next summer’s festival season. The record shines a light on Liam’s softer side too, with lilting love songs ‘When I’m In Need’ and ‘I’ve All I Need’ as fragile and open as they are bold. Welcome back Liam – never leave us again.

Read more at http://www.nme.com/reviews/album/liam-gallagher-as-you-were-review#pURUibYrpS1cJiSO.99

Finally it’s the turn of the other Gallagher brother Noel

Noel Gallagher’s latest is the most ambitious of his solo releases, internalizing the heyday of late ’90s Britpop while sounding both urgent and absurd to mostly great effect.

They were hard-pressed to top last year’s Potato Wars showdown, but on this season of every Britpop enthusiast’s favorite reality show, The Gallaghers, we’ve been treated to the most dramatic story arc yet. For the first time in their post-Oasis careers, Liam and Noel have each released albums within weeks of each other, setting up the proverbial WrestleMania of rock’s greatest sibling rivalry. Alas, it remains to be seen whether Noel’s latest record with current backing band the High Flying Birds, Who Built the Moon?, will match the chart performance of Liam’s recent solo effort, As You Were, which debuted at No. 1 in the UK. But in the real arena where winners are made and losers are shamed in 2017—i.e., Twitter—Liam has been putting on a clinic, delivering some his best material ever in the wake of what will go down in Gallaghers lore as Scissorsgate.

For his part, Noel seems to be heeding the lesson learned from Oasis’ rivalry with Blur throughout the ’90s. Only, in this case, he’s decided it’s better to be Blur—to brush off the nasty insults, disengage from the war of words, and just focus on making far more interesting records. Where Liam’s As You Were is essentially the perfunctory Fauxasis album that his old band would’ve churned out this year had they slogged it out this far, Who Built the Moon? feels like an attempt to rewrite their post-Morning Glory history.

The album imagines an alternate late-’90s where, instead of trying to make a cocaine-clouded update ofMagical Mystery Tour, Noel deeply internalized the adventurous music being made by his peers in Primal Scream, Spiritualized, Death in Vegas, the Beta Band, and David Holmes (whom he wisely taps to be his producer this time out). The new album’s opening track, “Fort Knox” presents an immediate study in contrasts. Like the kick-off to 2000’sStanding on the Shoulder of Giants, it’s more of a crowd-rousing entrance theme than a proper song—but instead of bluesy guitar riffage, we hear screeching cello drones, clanging percussion, gospel chants, a hip-hop-scuffed backbeat, the relentless drill of a jackhammer, and a female backing singer’s ecstatic wordless wails. Call it “Kama Sutra in the Bushes.”

Sure, there are few prizes for being on the cutting edge of circa-1997 British rock in 2017, but Who Built the Moon? abounds with urgency and absurdity—qualities that were sorely lacking on the Birds’ previous albums. For the first time in a long while, Noel sounds like he’s genuinely having a blast, adopting a motor-mouthed monotone on the glam-slammed rumble “Holy Mountain” as if he were Plastic Bertrand doing “Diamond Dogs,” and blissfully skating atop the glacial motorik surface of “She Taught Me How to Fly.” And just as the skittering psych-pop of “It’s a Beautiful World” seems like it’s about to dissolve into the ether, he summons guest vocalist Charlotte Marionneau of indie-pop enigmas Le Volume Courbe to deliver a surprise megaphoned address that revives the song as a Francophone answer to “6 A.M. Jullandar Shere” by former Oasis tourmates Cornershop.

Who Built the Moon? feels like the sort of album where Noel spent way more time mapping out the sounds than writing the lyrics. But “Keep on Reaching” whips up enough manic, soul-stomping gusto to forgive its obvious Stevie Wonder swipes (”Keep on reaching out for that higher ground”), while “Be Careful What You Wish For” oozes enough creeping menace to elevate its title from clichéd phrase to prophetic threat. Alas, in the album’s closing stretch, Noel attempts to inject the proceedings with some conceptual gravitas, deploying a pair of moody instrumentals (dubbed “Interlude” and “End Credits”) to bookend the winsome, swashbuckling pop of “If Love Is the Law” and the climactic foreboding ballad “The Man Who Built the Moon.” With no discernible logic holding it all together, the result is a more of an awkwardly fitting framework than a proper song suite, though at the very least, the latter track’s ominous, In the Court of the Crimson King-style grandeur does raise the not-unwelcome notion of Noel going full prog.

But more than any particular musical experiment, the best gauge of Gallagher’s growth on Who Built the Moon? is the song that didn’t make the cut. Included as a bonus track, “Dead in the Water” is a quintessential Noel solo strummer, an unplugged transmission from the same dark night of the soul that yielded acoustic Oasis outliers like “Talk Tonight.” It’s a great song, right up there with Oasis’ best B-sides. But it’s one whose raw emotion and bare-bones simplicity represent low hanging fruit on the High Flying Birds’ current skyward path.

After extended listening time what do I think ? Well I like the U2 Album the most as it sounds well rounded as a good band effort. The Gallagher brothers efforts are good too but lack the punch Oasis albums used to have. In order 1 – U2 2 – Liam Gallagher 3 – Noel Gallagher