BOGGED DOWN

Grey days and damp skies, sodden grass and tangled weeds, it seems a very long and slow progress from Autumn into winter. Elections and impeachment so drag on and a friend keeps sending me photos of sunny South Africa. 
 

We have six wild pheasants wandering the garden, three of each sex, the hens twitchier than the strutting males. It is time to move manure and compost but I look out of the window and then put on the kettle.
Another spring has appeared in the top of the wood right in the middle of a patch of lawned grass. Soon there will be so many drains and ditches and streams and boggy areas there will be no room for anything else.
Enough grass is cut so that it can be left till the spring but no reply from the potential gardener, will have to try and contact him again. Perhaps he is in South Africa or somewhere sunnier than here (and warmer).
 

  There, that feels better, had a good moan and I haven't mentioned elections, impeachments, Brexit, my knee replacement, being cold . . .
R has bought me a gilet to stop me complaining that the heating is off - nice and warm (except for the feet)
  Hoy! I hear, I thought this was a gardening blog - well it is but I am not doing a lot of gardening at the moment.
Wait, the rain has ceased, I will . . .
Wait! It is raining again . . .

 


When it rains there is always the sanctuary of the shed if I can get into it with all the junk. I had a look at the apples stored for the winter and most were alright but - not all!

  I wonder what it tastes like? 
Think I will miss out on that one.

It is still November, just, and in the garden time has gone wonky - the leaf litter is pierced by daffodils and outside the kitchen snowdrops are showing their stems. 



Time for an Eco poem?

PROMISES

For a full month now I have watched the rain - 

it moves in grey waves across the drenched fields, 

water-logs the turf and coalesces 

into rivulets which feed the old beck 

back of a dry-stone wall dressed in wet moss.

The gloom of a cloud ridden sky fills me

with despair, for this is man made sorrow

fuelled by greed, without consideration

for the new generations yet to come, 

for the innocent animals and plants

with which we share this world that we have ruined.

And if the sun comes through, fills the garden

with misplaced hope, I turn my face up and wait

for the warmth, for its invigoration.

If I were to stand there for long enough

I could watch the sunflowers turn their heads,

follow the sun, cold adders would emerge 

on the grassy bank and bask, gaining heat,

small birds dip their beaks in cool pond water.

When we are gone will they be gone as well? 

And will there still be sparrows in the dust,

blackbirds, wings spread, on the shed’s shingle roof?

I walk up into our small ash spinney,

wrapped in my kagoul, hear the branches talk -

for trees are memory, rings of lost years.

I will be gone long before the end comes

and will those organisms that survive us

outlast our dereliction of duty,

sigh with relief? I hear fine talk, promises

of action but see little being done.

We have pillaged this Eden, this small world

which circles a small peripheral star 

in one galaxy out of millions.

Too late?