MURK AND GLOOM

Out of the dismal days at the end of November come a series of dismal images and facts from a dismal gardener - back still bad so no shovelling manure or double-digging - I do not do the latter anyway but you get the gist. The pond reflects the leaden sky and has a half skin of ice. The only visitors are two moorhens and an odd thirsty wood pigeon.

It is bleak up in the wood and I do not have the energy to collect the carpet of fallen leaves and bag it for leaf mould.

The Rhododendron Ponticum has got too big and needs a hack back - it is a nasty shrubby weed and invasive - an alien plant from before we came here.

Up in the far garden the dreadfully wet autumn has taken its toll with the grass being sparse - (quite like that - sparse grass) - and a lot of creeping buttercup creeping everywhere. 

There are other less depressing parts of the garden - the shapes and tones of the shrubs one the banking below the house (ignore the dead crocosmia leaves in the foreground)(where they have been removed we have new green growth.)

And there are variegated evergreens further along.

I was reading the Oldie magazine the other day and there was this cartoon of a man in a chair being confronted by the Grim Reaper. "Before we go," says the man. "Can you cut the hedge." This inspired a drear poem entitled Scything -

SCYTHING

I know that you are coming

though I do not know quite how.

You know I will be waiting

when no morrow becomes now.

I sense you in my knees -

they’re osteoarthritic,

in crinkled wrinkled skin

and legs that are phlebitic.

I hear you in my deafness,

see you in failing sight,

in sleeping all the day

and wakening all the night,

in tightness in my chest,

the shortness of my breath,

I know that you are coming,

and I know your name is . . .

All very depressing but it got a laugh at the poetry group?!

Back to staring out at the garden  and waiting for the leaf blower battery to recharge.