We also used the back garden as a drying greeen...

We planted a few birch trees. They were meant to be the white-barked 'Jaquemontii' but turned out to be the faster growing and taller native birch - however this did mean that they soon became strong enough to support what turned out to be my favourite thing in the garden - the hammock!

Above all I wanted a cutting patch. I was totally seduced by Sarah Raven's lovely book.

We removed the conifers which blocked the view, the slabs, a wreck of a shed and other junk, planted hedge to fill the large gaps and give us privacy from the houses on either side, mowed the rough grass, put up a shed and woodstore and a 6X8 greenhouse and started a cutting patch growing everything from seed...

Have you ever started a garden from scratch?

Can I ask if anyone has found the layout of the blog page changed and the size of the font reduced? Oddly it appears misaligned on my laptop but not on my tablet or phone, or when I am in 'edit' on the laptop. Weird, and annoying!

..of the back garden.

I'm thrilled that this photograph of the garden won photographer Andrea Jones 2nd place in the Garden Views section of the International Garden Photographer of the Year Award and appeared in this gorgeous book

The view was always fabulous but the garden when we bought the house did not inspire
...

I thought I would consider how it evolved as I start to redesign it...

I love doing something different each year with the large black pots.

This year it is going to be palest pastels, pretty and frothy... petunias, violas, nicotiana for some hieght, trailing lobelia and bacopa andpale sweet peas on canes painted white.

In this prolonged spell of lovely weather gardening has been such a pleasure. A few more days of it are forecast.

I hope it's nice where you are.

A bunch of mint makes a simple (chemical-free) air freshener - a little rub with your fingers scents the whole room....

I watched a robin take a long bath in this shallow dish of water this morning. As well as bathing in it, birds drink from it, the swallows need it to make mud for their nests, it brings the sky down into the garden and reflects things in it. You can also tell at a glance if it's raining. It's an important addition to any garden however small. (I am scarifying the grass - it always looks worse before it looks better!)



When I am trying to make a decision I still find What would be simplest? my favourite helpful question but here is a good one from Gretchen Rubin -

What is the value of what I'm going to get if I...........?

After yesterday's chocolate fun I worked off some calories today as conditions were perfect for gardening and there is a lot to be done here.

I sowed, pricked out, transplanted, weeded, tied in, edged, mulched, watered, pruned, deadheaded and planned some big changes and between times I sat on the porch in the beautiful sunshine and listened to Private Passions.

By the time I had dinner, also on the porch, the light had changed, slanting across the garden catching the about-to-flower cornus.

I hope you had a sunny Sunday

for £1 Thornton's do this little pack of 8 chocolates - perfect for the chocolate mindfulness trial.

The record was 7 minutes and 41 seconds and I could still taste it after 10 minutes (but my mind was all over the place!).

I am so lucky to have a bluebell wood across the road from my house.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I look our of the front door and see this

I have to go shopping for chocolate tomorrow...!

I just have to try this one out!

Dr Michael Moseley suggests putting a chocolate in your mouth and keeping it there for a full 10 minutes, concentrating on the taste and savouring it, putting all other thoughts out of your head.

My friend says that is impossible as chocolate melts at body temperature so it would not last that long. In the interest of science I feel obliged to test it :-)

For more sensible and serious advice from Michael Moseley there are lots of videos of his BBC TV programmes and talks on YouTube

 Re yesterday's post How To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint When You Fly is a BBC video that encourages us all to make tiny changes...

..that we will simply stop flying for holidays or to the other side of the world to see our families, or just stop centrally heating our homes if we live in a cold climate, or cooling them if we live in a hot one, or give up driving cars - and having one each, or abandon other modern luxuries that most of us take for granted and many of us imagine are actually rights. You just need to observe how an eco-tax can lead to riots in the streets...

Carrots, not sticks? Incentives, improvements, new inventions, efficiencies, information, optimism?

Less likely to lead to hopelessness, depression or civil unrest - or so I like to think..

I know It is anything but simple.

And that ways must be found.

.. I love flying. 

A few days before I left for New Zealand I was on the beach watching a gull effortlessly soaring high in the air and I thought I'd soon be up there with her, though to get me up there would take the efforts of thousands of people, millions of pounds, hundreds of gallons of flammable and polluting fuel, and systems so complex and amazing that they blow my mind. I've flown in a balloon, gliders, a sea plane and various small aircraft, a Hercules and the usual commercial planes, but this long haul flight was the first time I'd flown in an Airbus. Emirates Economy Class is pretty luxurious.

I always have a window seat ( I gave up learning to fly a glider when I realised that all I really wanted was to look down. I don't think I'd have made a very safe pilot!). My favourite feature of this comfortable and quiet aircraft with its 14 flight attendants speaking 18 languages, is the flight information panel (forget the zillion films). I am up here looking down on the earth. Real geography, maps come alive, names conjuring up history and memories as I fly over Europe including Dresden where my husband's father was born, mountain ranges and deserts, the flares of the oil rich gulf states in the darkness, place names which are familiar only because people there are at war.....

In the quiet and almost empty early morning airport in Melbourne, a family have made a little camp. Mother and baby lie on a yoga mat on the floor, equipment and luggage are spread out in an orderly way over 5 or 6 chairs and father is entertaining a toddler who has such a delightful and infectious giggle that I move a few seats closer to hear him better.

On the way home we follow the night. Fourteen hours of dark is challenging but I get this shot of sunset on the wing over Sydney

We are not going to stop flying.

It's not going to happen.

More tomorrow...

Such good advice,,

Compare Yourself To Who Youe Were Yesterday And Not To Who Someone Else Is Today.

 (Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules For Life.) I hereby promise to stop comparing myself to Matisse and just get on and paint!

 I hope to have more time to review the next interesting rule - Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them.

Regular readers will know I like motivational books (The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo - loved them both.)
You may also remember I don't like to call them self-help books because I fear that makes me sound too needy though I expect I am just as needy as the next person :-).

Anyway, I have used this one in the past, working on it with a friend and finding it really useful. The idea is to look back at your achievements and disappointments over the last year, see what you have learned and make plans and create goals for the year ahead.

It focusses the mind, and I'm enjoying answering the ten questions nd sharing my thoughts with the friend who is doing it too.

Do you like self-help - oops, I mean motivational books? And are there any you would recommend?


If you would like to live a more poetic life you might find motivation here with my friend Lynne in her new venture!

..with myself.

Best china and linen napkin, good food and wine, real coffee, chocolates, a card of two marvellous women and a good book.

I am reading my way through all the novels by William Maxwell. This one is So Long, See You Tomorrow.

Have you been on a special date lately?

Or read a particulary good book?

Flowers to match the spring pillowcase make me smile.

It's the little things..

What can you put on your bedside table that will make you smile?

The swallows have arrived!

Sunny and dry for the first grass cut of the year - front, back and the path to the shore,  deciding which bits to let grow into mini-meadows (you can change the shape a little each year which I like to do), edging and general tidying, getting tid of some rubbish, some minor repairs - a very satisfying gardening day.

Tonight a heavy shower to refresh it all.

You can see the trees which screen my view of the felling in the forest, and clematis Freda is doing it's decorative thing around the study window...

I hope you've had a satisfying day, whatever you have been doing.

..one of these trees hit the forest floor the huge CRUMP reverberated through the house.
The larch trees, some infected by phytophthora, have been felled in the last couple of weeks. They are opposite the house and it is quite a shock to see them gone from the skyline as they were 80 - 100 feet tall and I really liked them, as did the crows, red squirrels and siskins.

I'm really glad that there are a number of deciduous trees between the house and this area of the forest - beech, willow, sycamore, horse chestmut and holly screen me from the scene!  More felling is planned. It is commercial forest...

We'll probably get more bluebells.

At Benmore Botanic Gatdens today there was almost as much blossom on the ground as on the plants. Wonderfully pretty.

I am astonished that a building can make me feel like this!

What makes you feel like this?

Do share..

On the way back to the Metro we chanced on Le Sequoia and splashed out our last euros on a lovely final evening meal.

Perfect.

Architecture has power.

Agree?

Disagree?

 ..to see these two buildings in Paris was mindblowing!

We saw Sainte Chapelle in the morning and Frank Gehry's Fondation Louis Vuitton building in the evening.

Neither building has anything to do with shelter from the elements!  They are about power, wealth and status, poetry and spirituality, and skill and daring and large egos - and they are both exciting to see.

Both buildings are outrageous in their own ways, in their audacity and extravagance. I think that's what we respond to...

I want to know more. It was built in only seven years, it was built to house holy relics brought from Constantinople as it then was, many ordinary people were living miserable lives in Paris in 1248, it employed skilled often itinerant engineers and craftsmen some of whom worked all over Europe. Literally awesome!

Awesome could also describe Frank Gehry's Fondation Louis Vuitton, which is a gallery and concert hall.

In a (rather grudging) review in The Guardian Oliver Wainwright said that Frank Gehry 'doesn't know when to stop'. The same may well have been said of Louis 1X.

Here are Heather and I reflected on the skin of this extraordinary building. It was open until 9pm, not busy  and there was a beautiful sunset.

Tomorrow LOTS of photos of this building....

..flowers for cutting is one of my greatest pleasures. Having a garden just big enough to be able to pick from it without leaving a great gap is a joy. Currently I have daffodil Thalia, tulip Purissima, forget me nots and blue camassias and I've had several small arrangements without spoiling the effect in the garden.

I happened to move a small lamp and find the way it lights the flowers is quite dramatic...

The travel bug that is!

Did you go away this Easter?