Summer 2013

Gardening is work as well as a an art (like it, aanchal) and a hobby. Good work

It's also a delight. Baby song thrushes being fed outside my kitchen window this morning.

And after I took the bin down the hill to The Road, I pulled twenty sycamore seedlings out of an eighteen metre stretch of verge outside our wall on the lane. There are usually a few hundred in the garden too but they can mostly be mowed down.

nellie it is clearly a haven for wildlife.

Air giving currents of warmth and moisture
Clouds which develop and change
With thoughts of 'what do you see'.

Ephemeral movements of loss and rebirth
Always different,
No trust in their design
Yet a knowing of their assured presence.

As I haven't been up to much for a couple of years, my garden is now a jungle, although at present, quite a pretty one. My biggest bugbear is wood avens - the wild geum with a tiny yellow flower - they have just spread everywhere. Other than that, the ubiquitous equisetum (horse tail) which is so difficult to kill off. Oh and Spanish bluebells which look attractive but again are hard to kill and we don't want them to spread, do we? There's also a lot of sticky weed, goose grass or whatever you call it. I think the birds bring in the burrs or perhaps they come via my neighbour's dogs' coats. Have I adequately conveyed the extent of my problems?

Anno That sounds like my garden. Eight years ago I had some surgery and neglected the garden for 3 or four years. then just as I was starting to feel like tackilng it, DH took ill. For the last year I have largely ignored it but now I am being generous with the Glyphosate. Everything takes so long to get clear enough to replant, and then the season is too far on for most things to go in, and the first places cleared are starting to sprout weeds again.

I am getting too old for this.

Me too, Elegran. My trees - 3 rowans and 2 ornamental malus - are getting bigger than I ever expected though they look lovely when they're in bloom.

Rhododendrons and roses
Cygnets and sunshine
Sweaters and socks
Green on green and leafy glades

Blue sky and dusty grasses
Seashells and sand
Warm walls and lizards
Moonlight and moths.

dusty