RAMBLINGS OF A HORTIPHOBIC

Just going through a rough patch - watching the weeds and grass grow and SIGHING deeply.

Perhaps I shall shut my eyes and get stoned? - Talking of stones - here is another obsession which I share with our friend Sylvia, (the lady of the oak tree) - when I am away I shove a stone in my pocket and bring it home. Of course I want then to be interesting visually if possible.

So there are stones here from Lanzarote and New Zealand - even a stone brought back from our honeymoon in Corfu in 1969!

The first picture also shows an old sundial which belonged to R's late father and was rescued from his garage.

The next shows a mixture of fossils and a piece of agate. This was not brought back from an exotic location but purchased from a shop at the Childwall Five-Ways roundabout on Queens Drive in Liverpool many years ago as a present for my wife - just a whim. I brought it in to her parents house and announced that I had something for you. R's mother turned round and said, 'Thank you, how nice,' so it only came back to us some years later!

(Any way it was probably bought by me, for me, using the gift to wife as an excuse for spending the money).

The third picture is of a small stone sink -

from my mother's garden - filled with small bits including a bit of beach ground green glass and an old stopper.

Now here is a warning - I have just picked some deep purple buddleia to go with orange crocosmia in a vase. On picking up a stem of the buddleia I was stung on the right index finger by a bumble bee. Just glad it was not a wasp - bee stings hurt a bit but soon settle but wasp stings are nasty!

Went down the garden to pick some sweet peas and nasturtiums for the house. R loves nasturtiums. In our first year we had acres of bare soil around plants so one solution to this was to sow nasturtiums - and they have been with us ever since. I have had to be quite ruthless - treating them as a weed where not wanted.

No doubt time will heal and my hortiphobia will soon change to hortiholicism. Just a bit of sun and the healing process can begin.