IT IS REALLY ME

So it is over a year since the operation on my neck.

So much has happened.

My talented brother Steve died at the age of 85 and we had a wonderful send off for him.

In the garden we are waiting for the paths to be redone, we keep and lose gardeners, R has radically swept away veg beds but has recently been spreading the snowdrops yet more.

We are beyond the start of spring, the thrush and wren are belting it out and the woodpecker is drumming in the trees. We have had ducks on the pond and the heron most days for breakfast.

So to some pics - Fatsia in fine fettle

Camellia by the shed with both pink and white flowers

Clematis armandii loaded with flowers 

the wild daffs by the path in the wood

and one of the hellebores.

The weather has been WET!!! we have yet an other spring coming up in the lawn and everywhere is boggy. As I am limited to movement with a rollator there are areas inaccessible to me.

We are still waiting for hedgehogs to take up residence but have spied some  mice. My grandson Robin says there are newts in the pond.

So what to do, well Damson Press are publishing a pamphlet of my poems - I wonder when the poet laureate is retiring? But he is much younger than I.

Title poem -

THAT WAS THEN

Legs less limber, he walks the fells

In his head, sees things as they were,

Remembers trees now fallen, walls gone.

Where there was a path is bracken,

Chest high and laced with bramble,

Pasture is bog, fields scrub.

He thinks his way down to the beck

And climbs the fence, can almost smell

The sausages baked in the fire

His mother made, taste the cold water.

The brown stones in the river bed 

Are still slippery and hurt his feet.

And he can hear the raven call

As it sheds air from its wings

And falls whirling from a crag.

His collie nuzzles at his hand

And he strokes it’s head,

Takes a deep breath and smiles.

But that was then, and now

He puts the kettle on, makes tea,

Retrieves a biscuit from its tin,

Puts his feet up by the fire,

Gets out his iPad, opens Kindle,

And escapes from reality.

Time for a coffee . . . . 

I’M DREAMING OF

 A dry Christmas, with no rain or snow or hail - actually no rain would be good.

So Happy Christmas to all those in more balmy (barmy?) climes from Welly boot land.

I have been rash and bought a small chainsaw for pruning and dealing with all the fallen wood after the snow. Unlike the banks we have lots of branches on the ground. So the stream is unblocked but the grass is so wet water runs across it and I have to paddle and squelch. The gardener wisely has stayed away. (It is raining again.)

The twenty first is the shortest day (hurrah!) so I can only get longer in the tooth from now on.

And then storm Pia came along and blew and soaked us all.

All around then garden are remnants of the summer that need clearing away -

But the weather is so unkind. I has planted grasses after seeing them covered in frost and looking beautiful in magazines but now they will have to be cut back and removed. And R and I have had some sort of cold - she coughed and I ached. No I do not know if it is Covid as our testing kit is out of date and why bother anyway. As it becomes gloomy outside the sky turns, not red, but a pale purplish grey like a bruise. And in then background is the roar of the wind.

So happy Christmas and New Year!

But there are signs of hope, snowdrops through, daffodils too and buds on the camellias.

And the winter flowering viburnum bodnantiense is well out.

And every day there is four o’clock again and again, and it is dark, no moon, no stars just cloud, and rain.

FOUR O’CLOCK 

It's four o'clock, whatever I say,  

it's four o'clock again,

a dark and drab December day,

and it's just begun to rain.

The sky is filled with dismal grey

we’re short of sun again.

Time is ever set at four

this year’s gone down the drain,

And its miserable outside the door,

its four o’clock again.

Winter - always four o'clock,

as the afternoon light falls,

I would go outside. unblock

the beck but can’t be arsed at all.

I shall makes some tea

For R and me, have a piece of cake,

take a break from the dreary rain,

Oh! It’s four o'clock again.

But the tree is up and decorated, we have bankrupted ourselves in the supermarket so for ten days Scrooge will have to go on the back burner and wait.

COLDER AND COLDER

 Just have to brass it out I suppose, sitting here with a gilet and a fleece on. (Oh! And a shirt, socks and - well you know.)

Have to remember to feed the birds. There is a clear part of the pond and some running water in the stream. This morning looked out of the window and we had two herons by the pond. This afternoon we had our plastic heron and a white egret!

When the sun does come out it gives little warmth but does brighten up the world. 

Even the frozen veg beds have a sort of geometric appeal - perhaps? There is not much gardening going on and we have just heard that we are being taken off the special offer electricity rate we have had for two years - our electricity costs are doubling.. Time to light the wood burner.

The sun does give backlighting now it is low in the sky - not long to the shortest day.

The fatsia, as usual is covered in flowers but the sedums need tidying up - very dead.

So now I will give you a few photos taken from outside the kitchen doors and if you are reading this in Australia you can chortle away in your comfort. 

So I meet my neighbour walking her dog and wonder what sort of nerve endings the dog has in its paws. It trots along on the frozen ground without a care in the world. Birds' feet too must be numb.

There is supposed to be the Gemini meteorite shower tomorrow night but pessimist me expects it will be cloudy, not that I will get out of my warm bed to look.

R has bought a new hot-water bottle which makes me wonder what ever happened to chilblains? Mmm, should not have asked that, will get a deluge of replies.

I am trying to read a book on Black Holes by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw but the maths is beyond me. Still has some interesting concepts all of which are not really relevant to my electricity bill.

SPACETIME

I sit, time runs down our stream.

We have met before, will again,

but that stream will be another,

with other water, different sound,

and, anyway, one future day

all that I am will dissipate,

cross an event horizon,

sink into the flow of a dark hole.

I assume my subatomic particles

will still exist, my quarks and muons,

neutrinos, protons, neutrons

but I am probably wrong.

And when all the black holes

have fused, become unstable,

will there be a new big bang, 

new universe, another me?

GETTING LIGHTER AT LAST

Dry-ish at the moment, clearing beds, failing to light bonfire again, running the sit on mower in shed so battery does not go flat, time for mower servicing, read Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke again and forgot what a brilliant book it is (and found that it is my Dad's copy and a First UK Edition!) 

Now must  go out and move loads of ivy to the bonfire. Today will try with dry sticks and firelighter and paper and so on - was foggy early on but now cleared and sun shining.

I moved the bird feeders to another tree and the pheasants have moved with them, waiting for the great tits to discard any seed slightly below perfect.

There are signs of a new year with the euphorbias burgeoning with life, this one Characias, ssp Wulfenii.

Snowdrops coming out but R worries as one of the trees has come down on part of our woodland display, dreaming of bluebell woods in the spring. (This is at Muncaster Castle, cannot claim our ones are as good.)

Egret on pond,

And won Country Life poetry competition!

WITH EYES CLOSED

‘I remember the touch of things:

the brittle harshness of barn straw,

the warm softness of September hay.

They all come to mind, make me wonder

how so many things - not scent, not sight,

not taste, nor sound - are stored 

within my head: my father’s cheek

late in the day, rough with stubble,

the coldness of my mother’s hands - 

she would come in from the dairy,

silently, thrust her fingers

down my collar, extract a cry.

But that is sound not touch.

Sense the softness of a hen’s wing, 

moss on a dry-stone wall, 

a long-haired collie, stretched cat,

the harshness of a pig’s back,

crumbled slate on the quarry tip,

the rasp of a calf’s tongue,

the pain of a fist of gorse.

And there are may things 

remembered wordless. -

lichen on a stone, tadpole slime,

a slither of minnows on the palm.

Some things are more abstract - 

a warm bed under an eiderdown, 

being wrapped in total darkness,

bathed in sunlight, washed with happiness;

the ribbed surface of my elephant,

hand-knitted, hand-stuffed, no ears,

clasped within my arms.

The sense of freedom on the fell,

by the lake, under the water chasing perch.

Of no responsibility, no worries

of waking on a Saturday - no school,

alive, with eyes closed.’

NOVEMBER

There are still flowers in the garden and autumn colour and sparrows in the rain.

The third week in October used to be the peak of autumn tree colour - but no longer, now we are heading into the third week in November and there are still leaves on some of the trees. 

And there are evergreen plants - especially the fatsia with flowers! Even its fallen leaves are scupltural.

Cherries may be full of blossom in spring but they also have wonderful autumn colour so here we go before the leaves all fall off - 

 

Sam the gardener has been tidying the small streamlet that drains from the back field. In fact our stream through the garden is a composite of several.

There are also fungi in the garden. Something has had a nibble at the shaggy ink caps.

And the cherries are not the only tree colour - cercidiphyllum.

Then when the sun goes again the mist insinuates its fingers into the trees and a steady drizzle falls.

There are a few scattered flowers still with us and in the corner by a shed the lemon balm is thriving. When we get our first real frost, now overdue, it will suffer. The fuchsia, planted by the gate to remind us of the glorious shrubs at Glencolumbkille in Ireland, yet flowers.

Then as quickly as the sun came the rain returns followed by mist and fog.

Despite winter's delay and autumn's persistence some things penetrate the dreariness. The Euonymus that was moved has not given us quite the deep red we had before but stands out beneath the big sycamore.

NOVEMBER

No warmth,

days are cycling down;

no light,

nights are drawing in;

no song

but a storytelling of rooks;

no leaves

on the old skeletal ash;

no flowers

on sweet peas long dug out;

no mow

of the lank rain-sodden lawn;

no sun

but a shroud of stratus cloud;

no wonder

the prevalence of S.A.D.;

no time,

another year near done;

now,

no more,

November.

So, lest we forget, here is one more photograph of the great white willow in full autumn splendour (and R if you can spot her?)

RAAAIIIN!

 

From drought to sog in a few days and the rain just keeps falling. The stream burbles, plants fall over weighed down with water. 

The garden is full of noise - nearly 100 rooks have decided our trees is a good place to congregate. A couple of loud claps disperses them but they soon return.

NO PATTERN

There's no pattern to it,

Rain on the window,

No logic.

Each drop is driven randomly

Onto the glass,

Hesitates, stops.

Some collect other rain,

Wriggle with gravity

Always down.

Each, a lens, refracts,

Captures and bends light,

Spatters it into the room

Into my eye.

There's no pattern in it.

Of course some clever mathematician

Will write an algorithm

To encapsulate it,

(So what!)

Turn raindrops to symbols,

To numbers,

To signs and letters.

I prefer a mystery,

A belief that

It needs no explanation,

That, no matter how hard one tries,

There's no pattern about it.

It makes me wonder what it would be like to be a deer in the cold rain but I suppose they do not think anything of it.

R made me a marrow last night stuffed with lamb mince - memories of those days when food was seasonal not all the year round.

I should be up the damson trees, crook in hand, collecting the fruit but we have already got enough and are giving them away. I have put the biggest pears in a brown paper bag with a black banana to try and ripen them. The banana gives off ethylene to help - we will see.

And we do have the odd bit of veg apart from marrows - curly kale and carrots, well at least one. Actually it tasted very sweet and surprisingly good despite ending up eating it as a side dish for a curry.

The last of the sweet peas are picked and the Virginia creeper just gets better and better but its leaves will soon be gone.

The seeded area where the old compost heaps were is covered in netting and we wait for grass growth. The heap of soil on the left will be moved - one day.

Now is the time of dark corners in the garden and the use of white flowering plants can light these up - cosmos, phlox and Japanese anemones.

And where there is no white there can be golden yellow.

So now it is Saturday and, surprise, it is raining again - cold wet and windy. Shall I go out and garden - what do you think 💦😕.