Erigeron and Borage, a yellow rose, Viburnum bodnantense.
The Evolution of a small garden, lots of mistakes, lots of hard work, for those who love gardening.
Monday, 28 December 2020
NOOK AROUND CHRISTMAS
Erigeron and Borage, a yellow rose, Viburnum bodnantense.
Saturday, 19 December 2020
AWASH
Then, within a few minutes, it all changes. The wind rises, it becomes unnaturally dark and there is water cascading over the gutters.
BETWEEN
And in the daytime - I doze, inertia
grasping me after every meal, my eyes close.
The kitchen is a duvet of warm air
generated by our amber Aga.
I sit on the Marks and Spencer sofa -
so troublesome when I seek to rise -
my old joints and muscles complain, creak.
And a deep lethargy infuses me.
Each sinew relaxes, tension tapers.
I settle into the soft cushions, sigh,
half here, half some other place,
some other plane. I almost dream,
peace, contentment just out of reach,
my breathing slows but I am still awake.
And I am in a silent interlude,
a vital space where nothing happens,
a pause between the chiming of a clock,
a held breath, when the conversation dries,
what is written between the lines of prose,
verse, the practised pause in a comedian’s
delivery, the timing of the joke.
And all but peripheral perception
is suspended. It is often now that
lines of yet unwritten poetry come,
but I am too somnolent to sit up,
take my pen and paper, write down the words
before I forget and they slip away,
verse that might have been is lost -
between.
Friday, 11 December 2020
WAITING FOR 2021
The garden is in winter clothes, low light, cool damp air and wet grass. Mornings are sometimes foggy and the air is still (when it is not raining.) I must get out of the habit of paddling about in the muddy grass in my ordinary shoes, put on my wellies.
Down on the town canal the mute swans have been dying of avian flu, a real tragedy. It even made the national news.
Small things light up the garden especially the white honesty seed heads - in fact they have self seeded into the horse paddock next door.
Whilst the gardener was scoping the path I applied Ariel biological washing powder to the moss on the tarmac - it seems to do the trick.
There are still odd flowers around, roses and fatsia, a few creeping campanulas, nasturtiums and calendulas but not a lot.Buds are fattening in preparation for next year - the magnolia stellata, azaleas and camellias particularly obvious.
I have started on the big bed, pruned the roses and removed some of the forgetmenots - they have been replanted to edge the paving outside the extension. Then manure and compost has been barrowed and spread.
This blog is a bit late what with short days, some sort of virus around, Brexit, not to mentions recovering from a colonoscopy (had a bit of a bum time!).
R is making mince pies and feeding the Christmas cake with booze.
Friday afternoon and it has rained all morning. Now it has paused. I
walk down to the gate with the rubbish and the air is still, but filled with the sound of rushing water, in the beck, in our stream. The sheep are ghosts in the back field, long ago having given up avoiding the rain. Anyway their fleeces, though wet on the outside, keep them dry inside. Not a bird call cracks the silence, even the rooks are gone somewhere else.
Everywhere the daffodils are through, some standing eight inches tall though no buds are yet evident.
2021? Well it cannot be as bad as 2020 - can it?
Tuesday, 1 December 2020
IT IS WINTER
I think.
It is Friday, I am on a fibre free diet as I am due to have a long pipe with an eye on the end stuffed up a rather personal orifice next week - Covid test tomorrow.
So, walked the garden - I have never known it so wet in the lower lawn, the grass is dying due to the water logging despite there being drains there. Near the end I went along below the hedge at the back of the house and, I do not believe it, something shiny caught my eye. It was the BMW car key I lost in the spring and spent days searching for! Not much use now as I have changed my car - for one of the BMWs with the dodgy battery so my hybrid is running on petrol at the moment.
Rain comes and goes, if there is sun sometimes a rainbow.
The veg garden still has broccoli and winter spinach, pots outside are flowering.
And down in the pond, where we want water, the moorhen swims.
Since the rat invasion I have been banned from having bird feeders outside the kitchen - someone in the house does not like the outside rodents.