STICKS AND STONES

The poetry group to which I belong has asked for something more cheerful - a tough call at the present.

JANUARY LOCK DOWN

Mornings can be tricky, 

lying in bed, lingering on the world,

wanting to be somewhere else,

someone else, some other time,

body asleep, brain awake,

warm, not wishing to move.

But the day insists,

bathroom beckons,

brush teeth, splash face,

use towel to scratch back,

that unreachable place,

shave, dress.

Creatures of habit

inhabit predictable worlds - 

similar clothes, same breakfast,

cup of tea, news on iPad.

Clatter, paper arrives,

same news, same puzzles -

all different but the same.

What to do?

Supermarket? Go for a walk -

but it rains again

and again. Read,

have another cup of tea, 

coffee, biscuit?

Really need to have hair cut.

Thoughts of pony tails,

mullets, D.A. - God forbid!

Have a chipped tooth.

AM BORED!

Light the fire,

turn on the TV.

Nothing to watch,

turn on the radio,

4 extra -

Journey Into Space!

Lemmy. Really!

Now have had the jab

might not even catch the virus.

The snow has gone for now - so it is raining! I must pick up the sticks fallen in the wood.

Last of the current snowy pics, I especially like the contrast between colourful foliage and the snow.

Snowdrops doing well - all the dividing and replanting is worthwhile. R has this dream of a carpet of snowdrops from the house to the far wall along the upper bankings and in the fringes of the wood - bit of a way to go yet.

On one of the windowsills there is an assorted stone collection - from all over the place (including New Zealand) and they look colourful in the sun. There are others scattered through the garden, many now under soil and they spring a surprise when we dig them up. One large white chunk of quartz I remember carrying down in a back pack from Goats Water in the Coniston Fells.

In the wood the main path up is mainly moss now - this is due to mowing and our wet weather. The crossing places, many just an old plank, are submerged with the water flow and from the house you can hear the roar of water in the beck over the wall. This does not deter the snowdrops pushing up through the leaf litter.

S the gardener has been and moved the Euonymus elata to the left of the lower banking, something R has wanted done for a long time as it obstructs her view of the pond. He has also pruned one of the hydrangeas and dug over the big compost heap. I can always find something for him to do.

The amaryllis K and S gave us for Christmas seems to grow and inch a day. Soon we will have its glorious flowers.

House plants are on minimum watering and really just keeping them alive until they stir in the spring.

Some are getting too big and pot bound so I will have to divided them.

Anyone want 20 or 30 small aloe plants - they breed like rabbits.

Been out shifting manure and compost then found we have had a visitor turning the compost heap - well digging in it. (Rabbit). Since S the gardener dug it over it has already improved though too many sticks in there.

I moved 5 wheelbarrow loads to this small bed near the house - should be rich enough to grow something this year. I may move some perennials into it when I tidy the cutting bed. R has been pruning the hydrangeas up by the wood that Pam gave us.

Then she began to clear away the litter from around the snowdrops. Her work over the years is now paying off.

The division helps but they are also self sowing. 

One thing I noticed was the large amount of twig fall - something to do - pick up the sticks, something R does not like doing (nor does my back). 

SNOW TODAY, GONE TOMORROW?

So suddenly it snows and is cold and icy again. The problem is it limits what one can do in the garden other then prune and shift manure. What I can do is nip out with the camera -

So here are some of them - the lower garden with the pond and the shed, the view up the lower banking to the house.

The snow changes the whole garden, highlights branches and colour, conjures shapes. The dead heads of buddleia look different and sculptural.

On the ground the three toed prints of the pheasant abound, the squirrels hop prints and the characteristic rabbit spoor with the lagging feet are scattered in the upper areas.

No fox prints today - a long single file.

The cold is enough to freeze the electric gate - open not shut fortunately, but the paper is not delivered even though I salt the turn into our track.

R has a new set of pull on grips for her shoes/boots and will need to test them out.

Anyway the reintroduction of the bird feeder has produced some action, goldfinch left, chaffinch right.

No sign of any rats yet - presumably curled up somewhere snug and warm for now. I wonder if we have any hedgehogs in the sticking leaf piles though, with badgers tramping through the garden from time to time I rather doubt it as they like a juicy hedgehog.

The trouble with the snow and sun is that it is hard to stop taking photos so here are some more -

The way to the garden

South from the wood

The house from the wood

The house from the veg beds

And finally snowdrops in the snow.

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.