Wordless Wednesday - ‘The March Hare’, Llandudno, Wales.

February Musing ~ 2023

 

" For days on end the steel grip of the frost holds the land.The plough lies half covered with snow; the robin hops in at the farm kitchen window. And all the time, under the coverlet of snow, the vivid green wheat grows in the field. Soon the thaw will come, and as the dark earth is visible again in the farmhouse garden, it shall be spotted with snowdrops and the pale gold of frilled aconites".

Words by Claire Leighton from 'The Farmer's Year', A Calendar Of English Husbandry, 1933.

Illustration by Edith Holden from 'The Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady', published 1906.

Quirky Cutlery

Himself and I  had a quick lunch at a small local garden centre earlier this week - the indoor premises were uncomfortably crowded so despite the artic temperatures we sat in a covered 'pod' with an overhead heater. We shared a delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato toastie. I had a hot chocolate and he a cup of tea. We were amused by the cutlery which accompanied our liquid refreshment. I was convinced that I could put such cutlery to good use in my greenhouse so must see if I can find a source.

Wordless Wednesday, Jigsaw Days

 

November Musing - 'An Easeful Approach To Autumn'

"Apart from those fronds prickling my conscience to do something about them , I ignore the words 'Tidying Up The Garden before Winter', with their nauseatingly prissy undertones . My ears are covered. I know that's what we should be doing in autumn: we should be clearing up the garden and leaving it ship-shape, with as much efficiency as some people clean the house , or their motor- cars on Sunday. 'Do it before winter', we are cautioned .....

Here, with my ideals turned towards easeful loving, there's a kinder climate and somehow find I don't bother until spring. And then it's too late to be a serious undertaking. Anyone can change their attitude of mind; if gazing out of the window in November, you think the place looks a shambles, comfort yourself with the knowledge that those untidy seedheads will look unbelievably miraculous outlined in rime. The sedums, lady's mantle, rose heps, twigs, stalks and stems - all the shabby eaves and the skeletons of radiant blooms left over from last summer - when outlined by frost will transform your habitual setting into somewhere unfamiliar. You will feel that you have never walked there before. Why not try it? Don't confirm to this tidying up business, but move into the territory of slothfulness. Inertia and a laid-back philosophy do have their moments. And this is one of them. From a home for shamefully neglected debris your garden will one day in winter be turned into a place of beauty, a place that is denied your neighbour, with his clean earth full of clumps of shorn stubble."

Extract 'From A Breath From Elsewhere' by Mirabel Osler.

Illustation - 'Autumn Garden, Norfolk' by Angie Lewin.

'Slightly Wordy Wednesday ~ 'You're Out Of Time'

 

Weird goings on in the garden - this inula is shining again after flowering profusely in the summer. At the same time there are also snowdrops in bloom as well as winter flowering jasmine. In the words of Messrs. Jagger and Richards "You're Out Of Time" and it's most disconcerting.

Wordless Wednesday ~ 'Wonderwall'

October Musing - Fall

"This is the time of year where everything drops into the earth. In the spring there is an upward movement all around one, with a lift in plants and trees. Now it is the time of weight, when seed pod and berry, fruit and leaf fall and return to the earth. It is truly the fall, a lovelier word for this season than autumn. The horse chestnut has cast down its shining fruit, warm of colour as it breaks from its tight fitting, kid-lined case case, on the soggy ground all around lie these lumpy, horned shells. The winds blow down pears and we find them, yellow and brown surrounding the trees at their base .....

How it rains these days . In the grass by the hedges, large shiny slugs appear, black as liquorice and beautiful of shape as they stretch themselves out. They heave like ships on a rough sea in their passage across the grasses. The garden is sodden and the trees drip, their autumn colours deepened and burnished. But roses and violas still bloom, and carnations are in bursting bust. Michaelmas daisies are untouched by frost, and the cosmos still shows pink among its seedling heads. We gather bowls of bright-coloured flowers for the house .....

Autumn is not the sad time it is supposed to be. Darkness falls at five o'clock and the garden is cold and wet, but it is a season of planning and expectation. It is now that we plant our bulbs, in itself an act of faith. How then can autumn be called dull and hopeless? Even the fallen leaf is food for future years of foliage and fruit, and promises next summer an added colour to the flowers."

Extracts from the October chapter of 'Four Hedges' by Clare Leighton. 

Illustration. of 'The Acorn Fairy' by Cicely Mary Barker.

Himself and I visited a local pharmacy a fortnight ago for the first of two seasonal vaccinations. We parked just outside where on getting out we noticed that the ground was littered with fallen acorns. We both hoped that nobody had parked nearer to the tree otherwise they and their vehicle might have been in danger. 

Earlier today I was delighted to discover that some of the Flower Fairy paintings by Cicely Mary Barker will be exhibited at a local art gallery next year! I'm looking forward to seeing the fairies in the flesh.

Wordless Wednesday ~Through The Garden Gate

 

More May Musing - On Buttercups

" I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we’d be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods ...  It was only a field of buttercups, but we were young.’

- Jeanette Winterson

.

May Musing

" The growth is a remarkable thing during these weeks between spring and summer. If you could hear it, there would be a tangible hum, made from a million buds breaking and stems flexing. The tide of green sweeps up and over bare earth, cloaking it as fast as the leaves fill out above us. Blink and you miss the soft marbling on the new leaves of the Epimedium and the dusty bloom of the overlaying the ruby young growth on the 'Molly the Witch'. Blink again and the first of the peonies will be open - primrose cups filled with bees.

The flurry of spring perennials starts the summer garden. One layer takes over from the next, replacing and adding like an increasingly complex textile".

From 'Natural Selection' by Dan Pearson.

If you enjoy Dan's writing and have not come across it yet he produces an excellent online gardening, growing, cooking and making magazine most Saturdays over at 'Dig Delve' together with his partner Huw Morgan. You can also subscribe to have it sent to your inbox.

May is such a beautiful month and although my favourite of the month I've noticed a distinct lack of May musing on my blog. I hope to return with another snippet or two as this magical time of year unfolds.

Wordless Wednesday ~ 'Parklife'

 

February Musing ~ Winter Dreams

"Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream." 

Quote by - Barbara Winkler.

Illustration - by Mary Azarian

Slightly Wordy Wednesday ~ 'Imbolc'

Today not only marks Candlemas Day, the Christian festival of light but also concludes the pagan festival of Imbolc. Imbolc marks the half way point between the winter and spring equinoxes which is indeed good news for people in the northern hemisphere. Both of these festivals have connections with purity, cleansing and hope and snowdrops are often associated with these festivals. Snowdrops were once known as 'Candlemas Bells', usually being in flower at this time of year. The above photo is of galanthus 'Imbolc'. Despite the fact that is has been the sunniest January on record in England as well as being warmer than average  the flowers on my clump of 'Imbolc' in the garden are still shut tight. The flower is from a bulb that is growing in a pot in a sheltered spot near the house. This is one of my favourite snowdrops and one of the last to open for me.

January Musing - A Posy On The Kitchen Table

"Every day of the year there would be a posy to greet you on the kitchen table. Pushed at random into a little pot to suitable utensil, the posy would be there come rain or shine, and it was the reward of adventure, the fruit of labour or the chance happening of something one of her many birds had brought to the garden. In this posy were mapped the weeks of the year. A spring of Hamamelis and Galanthus in January, or a tuft of old man's beard and rosehips come autumn. Her posies were the garden distilled in a jam jar, and often she would pick a spring that you might admire from the assemblage and push into your hand as the making of a cutting. She shared her garden well, and to this day I try to keep a posy from my own garden"

Words - Dan Pearson from 'Natural Selection'

Illustration - Winifred Nicholson

November Thoughts

"November provides us with a breathing point. Colour is going, if not gone, and branches are newly naked, revealing the bones of things. Scarlet hips are left starkly alone in the hedgerows, and the floor is littered with the fruit of a growing season. Birds are moving seed about, windfalls pecked to little more than skins. We may well have had the first frost by now; if not, it is sure to hit by the end of the month. With it the dahlias are suddenly blackened, to leave behind just a trace of their autumn bulk. The brick-red schizostylis and lipstick-pink nerine continue to flare for a while, yet in stark and diminishing contrast to the decline around them. There are a few other flowers out - perhaps a rose or two looking out of placeand left behind - so they are doubly welcome.

We are surrounded by rot and decay, but it is not a death to be disturbed by but rather celebrated as the cusp of this annual cycle. It's an appropriate time to pause for thought, and, with it, the potential for new planting. 

I wait until the garden starts to feel on the wrong side of neglect, before imposing any order, and even then I favour a less-is-more approach. Sweeping the mouldering leaves from the lawn or terrace imposes a little order on the chaos and allows you to stand back for a while to assess the departure of the growing season, but the pause is brief: there are tulips to put in the ground, plants that need their winter protection , and the season for planting bare-root trees and shrubs opens up again as nurseries start lifting them before the ground freezes. Use the time well to plant before the year is out and new plantings will be settled in before the worst of the winter arrives."

- an extract from 'Natural Selection' by Dan Pearson. 

- illustration by Eugene Grasset.  

"Busy Doing Nothing" ~ Aberporth, Wales 2021

June Musing ~ Rosy Thoughts

 

"The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying. Its fragrant, delicate petals fully open and ready to fall, without regret or disillusion, after only a day in the sun. It is so every summer. One can almost here their pink, fragrant murmur as they settle down upon the grass 'Summer, summer, it will always be summer."

Illustration - by Gustav Klimt.

Words - by Rachel Peden.

June Musing - On Sweet Peas

 

"Picked first 'Matucana' sweet peas in the eternal exhaustless freshness of the morning. They were self-seeded seedlings from last year, sprouted in the autumn were they fell by their tepees and got a head start. I popped them in my ponytail where the scent nudged me all afternoon. I gathered a full bunch on June 4th, the sweetness all the more intense after a ten-month wait. Sun-warmed water, soap suds, marzipan, marshmallows ; treats of all kinds come to mind on sniffing the first sweet peas. The first lathyrus odaratus flower of the year is like the return of a great friend, usually alone and fragile, who has made it to your doorstep. A couple of days later you might be able to pick six and proudly put them on the kitchen table. A week later the house is filled with them in every sort of vessel, like paint pots, like a flower show. The wait, the patience, the frost fingers, grappling with hazels, mania about mice, all becomes worthwhile"

An extract from 'Scent Magic: Notes From A Gardener' by Isobel Bannerman.

My sweet peas including 'Matucana' are not in flower yet but hopefully that great friend will return later this month. I have used a photo of a bunch I picked in July 2016.

March Musing - Daffodils

 

Narcissus pseudonarcissus in a Cumbrian churchyard -13/03/2014

"At first, you can hardly see them : slim, green tips barely distinguishable from the dew-drenched grass. Some, it's true,  are not so slim - here and there are pale swellings, hardly enough to alter the outline but firmer somehow and more promising. Day by day they become less reticent, and though, some stay hidden amongst the clumps of chaotic dead grass, others stand tall and straight ready to meet the sun when it may choose to appear. Their heads begin to tilt, as if still too shy to look at you straight in the eye, but almost at once their astonishing secret is out in a flash of yellow and a silent, spectacular chorus of trumpets. Daffodils herald the spring with vim and verve, seizing the limelight from the more diminutive earlier risers. Brighter than snowdrops, taller than celandines or aconites daffodils instantly command attention ...... only prolonged falls of heavy snow can utterly defeat a company of daffodils: when the sun returns and the ice retreats the yellow stars will generally be out again. Daffodils upright and bright, seem invigorated by seasonal setbacks.

'The Daffodil Fairy' by Cicely Mary Barker.

Just as it seems that it will never be light or warm again, huge teams appear in their high vis-jackets to rescue us from the effects of a prolonged winter. In villages across Britain, worn-out verges begin to gleam with scattered daffodils in early spring to , until the roadside is ablaze in a luminous citric glow, often outshining the sparse street lights.

A few of my own daffodils, March 2016.

As the chilly dawn begins to break a little earlier, these seasonal signs reminds yawning drivers and shivering teenagers that things are not, after all quite as dark as they have been and that brighter days are coming.

~ an extract from ' The Brief Life of Flowers' by Fiona Stafford,  which is well worth a read, revealing how even the most ordinary flowers have extraordinary stories to tell.