LIFE BEYOND THE JAB

Yes, we have had the first dose.

The gardener cometh and we ask him to cut back all the plants between us and the far garden. This improves our view from the house and increases the amount of weak winter light coming in. Now all I have to to do is tidy a bit more and apply a liberal top dressing of compost and/or well rotted horse manure. The compost in the heap is a bit woody - a lazy old man not chopping and turning it enough.

It is strange how such an application of muck does make things look better, here around a cut back fennel with new leaves already coming on. Of course one reason it looks better is you cannot see the weeds I have been too idle to remove. This may work for annual weeds but perennial weeds will find a way though sooner or later. An then I shall mutter about creeping buttercup and broad-leaved willowherb.

A word about weather - snow falls, lies for a day then is rained away. It rained so much that a new spring appeared in the top lawn. On further investigation it is because the drains from the back field are clogged so off I go with a rake to clear them. In the morning, going out in the garden, I can hear the roar of the stream where it falls from the bottom corner into the horse paddock next door.

 

There are still a few flowers in the garden -  snowdrops in the flower beds and a lot in the woodland.  One surprise is the flowers on the Clematis armandii on the mower shed, a plant that I thought was dead after it developed a severe attack of wilt, but it has regrown after hard pruning. In the pots outside the door the little violas are looking a bit ragged but we have some flowers. There also the variegated hollies, euonymus and other shrubs. The Choisya ternata Sundance I put at the veg bed end of the main path is thriving.

           

By our back door which is at the side of the house (the front door is at the back) there is a wonderful waft of scent in the evening - from the sarcococcus I planted there just for that purpose.

It its Tuesday and rain all day. There is not a breath of wind, even the eucalyptus is motionless. Our small stream that often dries up is in spate.  I fritter the time away and find on Facebook that some twit says my life is defined by the song that was at number one on my fourteenth birthday - it is Eddie Cochran's Three Steps to Heaven - make of that what you will.

The weather is so fickle at the moment - a glorious sunrise, then a light snowfall, then rain -

A passing heron does not give the pond a second look. It is too soon for frogs who will be buried in the mud at the bottom. There seem less birds this year but I expect they have found another garden they prefer. Anyway the rain does not seem to deter the rabbits. I went out to the trail camera to see what I had captured but there was only myself going out to the trail camera to see what I had captured.

So to the snowdrops that are exploding across the garden, here on the upper banking where they will be succeeded by daffodils and primroses, then camassias and fritillaries. It brings hope of a new year in a dark month and a dark time.

With the virus I sometimes wonder how the world would be without mankind messing the place up -

AFTERWARDS

i 

Gorse, birch, bracken 

block the eye, 

sky touches land.

Views are gone -

no lake, no mountain,

no tarn, no crag.

The tree line risen,

fell now a forest,

meadow a quag.

They took the sheep, 

they did, farming ceased.

wilding the word.

Boar, lynx and wildcat

roam, eagles hunt,

beavers build dams.

ii

Then we went,

never to return,

the world recovered.

Weeds cracked concrete,

crumbled tar.

damp corroded steel.

Wilding was the word,

self-inflicted

was the way, 

Some say disease,

plastic, toxins

were the cause?

It does not matter -

on man free Earth

none say anything.