Category: Gardening

The magnolia’s nearly out

Yesterday was so warm after lunch.
There is so much to do in the garden.
I should really have been out there weeding and seeding. Instead I sat in the recliner and listened to a rather good play on the radio then read for a while, before a long walk with a friend and her excitable lab. All wonderful in the beautiful Spring sunshine!

I thought I’d better make the most of it all, just in case these few days will be our ‘early Summer.’

Euphorbia

Continue reading “The magnolia’s nearly out”

Signs of Spring again

It’s an every day, ordinary drop of rain water on the hairy leaf of a common-all-garden lupin leaf, but it caught my eye, glistening in the light.

Lots of gardening today, but the sky was overcast, so that my solar-powered radio failed me and I had to collect the old battery-powered one from the bedside! Weeding and ‘Weekend Womens’ Hour’ and an occasional cuppa. Better than shopping any day.

Now that a lot of the winter debris has been cleared the flower beds look a lot more Springlike.

Sparrowhawk outside my kitchen door!

Mid afternoon, and a resounding crash from the direction of the kitchen. I rushed from the sitting room, flung open the kitchen door; just outside, a bird of prey atop a dead pigeon. I can only imagine that the very dead victim had crashed into the door in a desperate attempt to flee from the bird of prey.

Continue reading “Sparrowhawk outside my kitchen door!”

Garden maintenance

I remember reading once that 80% of gardening is the equivalent of housework…. keeping things tidy and doing the routine stuff.
In some ways this is a fair analysis: yes, the garden has to be kept tidy and ordered, the grass cutting and weeding are necessary…. but as comparisons go it’s rather incomplete.

Indoors the floor is washed and gets foot-printed again, the carpet is hoovered and gets bitty again. The toilet is cleaned and gets….. well you get the picture.

In the garden, especially at this time of the year each action brings on an even bigger reaction (sorry Newton, your law doesn’t work in the garden)

Today I have mainly been gardening. Well for three and a half hours. I got out the hoover lawn mover and did the grass, then trimmed the edges. Suddenly the garden looked sharper and more cared for. Where I didn’t cut the lawn, just where the snow drops are finishing and the crocus are boldly doing their thing the longer grass looks right: bright and strong against the colours.The bumble bees were out in force, exploring the flowers and getting covered in pollen.

Then I started on the borders, accompanied for a while by radio four and ‘Gardeners question Time.’ (My wind-up / solar-powered radio is my gardening companion.)

I cleared away all last season’s growth which had died back during the winter. And as I cleared new tips of growth were pushing up through the warmed soil giving me that feeling of hope that comes each Spring.

Of course time ran out before the jobs were finished. I had to come in to have a bath, scrub behind my fingers nails and assemble a fish pie before trotting back into Oxford for a poetry reading which was very entertaining and inspirational.

And I returned from the poetry reading to the rest of the fish pie and a glass of wine. Pretty perfick. Oh… and a slice of collapsed banoffee pie! (Not bad, with the topping scraped off.)

And in the morning  when I look out of the window I shall have a huge feeling of accomplishment which I NEVER get from housework.

 

Childhood

I started writing this as a comment on Janus’s post but got a bit carried away. As I did not want to hijack his, (I am considerate that way), I decided to write my own.

I have mentioned that I came from a large family. Living in the Tropics meant that the hours of daylight were fairly constant throughout the year. About 11 hours in winter and 13 hours in summer. In a farming community not a great deal went on after dark, especially during the week. We did not have television at home and so we spent our evenings together talking, reading and playing games. My mum taught us at home until the age of 10 when we were sent off to boarding school. Continue reading “Childhood”