ON MOTHER'S DAY?

I get my love of gardening from my mother? Her father? Even if it was, "Can you rake the gravel again, please." On the stairs we have a water colour painting by my Grandfather of his garden at St. Anne's Mount in Liverpool, and the rose garden.

Today is Mothering Sunday - and it is raining.

Again.

I am sure that winters are becoming much wetter, the lawns soggier, the surrounding fields muddier. These are the waterlogged lower lawn areas sown for wild flowers! Fingers crossed.

Anyway - gardening now is about pacing and short bursts - dig, flex knee, stretch back, go over to seat and sit till pulse settles to normal, then repeat. Lots of tea and too many biscuits.

I pick up a few small feathers, a tuft of rabbit fur, perhaps scratched out in a fight? Stick them on top of a post for birds to use as nesting material. One alstroemeria and one phlox have turned into twenty plants of each - I just cannot throw them away so they are deposited on a heap of soil by the apple tree. In fact the red alstroemerias have hundreds of underground roots like long thin potatoes and if I leave just one it will sprout later in the year - as bad as the Japanese anemones.

Wednesday it poured with rain, then Thursday morning we woke to the results of the gale. Fortunately only one pot broken.

Benches on their backs, pots spread around, the Euphorbia characias Wulfenii streamlined across the bed.

Even the bench down by the pond on the decking was on its back.

I have removed the broken pot and put the box into  another. I have still not decided what to do with all these box plants - a hedge, perhaps a bed of box balls at the back of the house?

So the weather varies but this has not deterred the frogs from spawning in the pond, mind you the heron was there this morning looking for breakfast.

There are signs of spring, hellebores flowering and cascades of golden catkin rain in the hedgerows.

When it is cold, wet, windy and foggy then the best place to be is by the wood burner with a good book or the crossword. The small chair is actually the one I was nursed in as a baby!

The amazing Canna lily in the house is flowering again. It is getting so big we will have to build a new extension just to house it. 

Outside the quince is stirring and we will soon have flowers on the flowering currant.

Up in the wood some of the flowers Tom planted many years ago are out, his daffodils and crocus.

Mr Tod has been through the garden again fascinated by the camera - There may be a light he can see on it. Having said that he might be a vixen so possibly Mrs Tod.

And there are flowers coming outside the garden - this is Petasites Albus - the white butterbur, flowers first then the big bristly leaves. The small leaves here are wild garlic. It is in the side of a road up the valley.

The world is a garden - alright not of trimmed hedges and manicured lawns - but sometimes the wild can outdo the ornamental garden - I cannot wait for the bluebell woods to flower in early May - glorious.

And a message to Neil, my good friend, get well soon for we shall be released from lockdown and the Masons' Arms awaits.