(almost) FIFTY SHADES OF GREY?

In winter, yes, the predominate colour is green. But, if one can, there are ways to introduce other shades into the garden - like grey.

Quiz time - what is this? (not the door mat upon which I have photographed it.) No it is not a stone from the garden. Answer at the end.

Let me start with leaf colour, bud colour, well plant colour. (And I have forgotten ash and birch bark).

Cue for a poem - 

SONG FOR A TREE

(from the Norse)

Ash .....

our flesh is your wood,

you are the Tree of the World*,

you are my hammer haft,

and cleft the cure of my child.

Your flesh comes late,

goes so soon.

Ash .....

when your leaves fall

your limbs are bare and grey.

When a gale blows

your one-winged keys

spin to another day;

your black caps mourn.

Ash .....

your wood is white

and hardened in the years;

your sawn branch

cleaves well, burns long.

Summers ascend in smoke,

and that which remains ..........

*Yggdrasil

I get on with it -

                     Magnolia stellata buds                          Buddleia

Santolina                           Lavender

Euonymus                     Hebe

Snow in Summer                    Rockrose

Pittosporum                 Brachyglottis

These are both shaped by the memsahib's delicate hand into globular shrubs. She likes a bit of topiary - TOPIARY, I said.

Sage               Stachys

But there are other things in the garden that are grey (besides myself)(especially in the winter)(and when tired from forking manure).

The grey zinc of a flower container made from an old water tank, the fake lead look of a fibreglass planter.

Even the outdoor electric sockets are grey (and the bird dropping) as is the hat on Doc in the poppy bed.

Slate chipping paths and paving slabs add to the greyness of this time of year. (What about the dry stone wall at the end of the garden, the greyness of the water in the stream? Okay, I admit it, I forgot them.)(But then I haven't, have I as I have just mentioned them.)

It is half past three, the sky is grey and the light is failing. Oh! For the long evenings of summer when twilight and dawn almost meet.

So what is today's mystery object?

Clue - I picked it up on Oputere Beach.
Clue - it had floated there.
Clue - it is as light as a - well bit more than a feather but you get what I mean.
Clue - Oputere Beach is on the North island of New Zealand.
Clue - it probably came from somewhere called White Island.
Clue - it is good for removing hard skin from your (not my) feet. (I do not have much hard skin on my feet.)

So to the answer - next week?



No, cannot be so rotten - it is a piece of Pumice fired out of a volcano.

What that has to do with gardening (apart for the hard skin bit) . . . nothing.
However - IT IS GREY! (unless you live somewhere where they cannot spell properly and call it grAy.              

No offence meant.
(Not much I hear a voice.)