A very apt card!

If you are lucky enough to have a garden, you will know what a busy time of year it is. I have planted out sweet peas and the greenhouse is filling up with seedlings and bedding plants.

I have decided that if I work really hard in April and in October I can keep on top of this garden. We shall see. I am reading everything I can find by Carol Bruce who gardens three amazing acres by herself!

The forget-me-nots planted on top of the tulips idea worked out really well - I will do this again.

..and blue blue skies.

We are having glorious weather!

What is the first lovely thing in your day?

We are havng beautiful butterfly weather.

This male orange tip obligingly waited while I went to fetch the camera.

I heard this poem on Radio 3 the other morning. I absolutely love the imagery, and have read it over and over. A new favourite!

One of the delights of this experience was the reaction of little children to the music and moving images.

Have any of you seen it yet?

Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes, and Liz, I hope you had as lovely a time as I did!

....in Van Gogh Alive in Edinburgh.

Taking a little birthday break.

Have a good weekend.

Very early this morning, I heard the first cuckoo deep in the forest.

..should be hung above every dentist's chair in the country! Would you agree?

See here

..so does the decor. Yellow Gate In The Snow has enchanted me all winter.

..

This one, called Freedon, will lift me up and remind me how fortunate I am to be free. I will never take it for granted.

Thank you Grace for drawing my attention to this exhition. I will definitely be going to see it. Meanwhile I am enjoying this litle film. I hope you do too.

(Click on View Films, then click on Lizzie Farey The Song Of The Willow.)

In a forgotten pot at the back of the shed...a pocket of perfection for today.

I remember someone pointng out that wherever you see an accident or disaster, you also see helpers. We may not be able most of the time to help the helpless, but we can usually help and support the helpers. The fundraisers, the charities, volunteers...

There have always been wars but we have not always watched then live in our homes.  I dom't think humans were designed for this! Watching war as it happens, beaming it into our lives. Is this intelligent behsviour? Moreover is it helpful?

 As well as helpers you will also see people at the scene of an accident who are there to simply gawp. Television footage from Ukraine makes me feel like one of those people. It's alsmst voyeuristic.
So I am switching off and switching my  focus to helping the helpers. The florist who is selling sunflowers wrapped in black paper and tied with blue and yellow ribbons who has raised £400 so far (my sister). The busy woman who finds time to raise £20,000 to help settle refugee families in her community - a house ready and translators and English lessons lined up (my daughter). The child who donated his month's pocket money (my grandson).

The world is full of helpers.  Maybe you are one. Courage, compassion, kindness and plain and simple goodness save us from despair, don't you think?

What helps you keep despair at bay?

..give me hope that this..

will once again look like this!

The trouble with 'meadows' ie just letting the grass grow in my case, which is what I have done with much of the garden the last year or two, is that it looks really really scruffy off season. This year the moss is about four inches thick.  When I pull handfuls of it out, the bare patches  are alarming looking. I am just going to sow them with the native red poppy and see what happens.  It could look wonderful with the red gate. Do you remember Gwendoline's 'When in doubt, muck it about;'? Thas what I am doing! I;ve put in foxgloves grown from seed and and ox eye daisisest which had self seeded elsewhere in the garden.

 Christopher Lloyd and Pam Lewis are the experts I consult, though they garden in very different conditions from mine, in gentler climates. Such skill, knowledge and commitment. And hard work. I have visited both their gardens and the meadows were magical.

Have you tried letting some of the grass grow? Have you had good results?

..when you just have to grit your teeth and spend some money. The old chairs lasted 20 years and will now be recycled,  as will the cushions which were so faded you wouldn't know they once had a pattern on them. They were sparking no joy whatsoever!

Breakfast outside on a sunny, if cold, spring morning is sparking joy! The tulips, Purissima, start out greenish, turn creamy  then white. They are also one of the very few which repeat in my garden.

Have you had any meals outside yet?

One crisp edge has given the whole garden a lift.  This is a principle that might be applied to other things...

How I do love my peaceful home.

To deter deer place slivers of leftover  soap or beter still, cubes of the cheapest, smelliest supermarket soap close to special plants and/or around the perimeter of your garden, or where you knw they are getting in. They don't like the smell. Works for me!

The vinegar trick. Vinegar will kill off the weeds n a gravel drive.

And the hose trick from Bath Chatto. To mark out curves lay out a (warm) hose and cut the line either side with an edging iron.  I am planning a metal strip along this edge.

.

Life is tripping over itself to get going, to get on.

Lia Leendertz    As The Season Turns

100 g each of butter, caster sugar, ground almonds and SR flour.

Beat togeher butter and sugar then work in almonds and flour. With damp hands roll into 20 or so walnut sized pieces. Bake 180C for 10 minutes. Sandwich together with Nutella.

Make on a wet and windy afternoon. Serve with good coffee and pretend you are in Italy.

I have just come across this wonderful phrase (which doesn't just mean living a quiet life in your garden as I first thought!...).

Focussing as I am on gardening, I found myself thinking 'Je dois cultiver mon jardin' as a kind of justification for ignoring the rest of the world for a bit. I knew it came from Voltaire's Candide  but little else, so I spent an absorbing evening looking it up  ('Google it Grandma' says my grandson if I ask him somehting he can't answer!)


I skimmed words by Julian Barnes, Thoreau, Wittgenstein and more, and landed on the site of  Austin Klein who linked to The School Of Life. Scroll down to see the short video here. All well and good I thought, but  didn't Plato say that if good people ignored public afffairs the price we  would have to pay would be to be ruled by evil people?

Everything is about balance and the point of balance is different for every person. Maybe we all struggle to find our own place, our own opinion and our own way to do something good to counter the bad.

AND culitiver notre jardins.


I don't intend to write  much about this topic here, but it seemed wrong not to acknwledge it, and writing helps me think thngs through. As do your always interesting comments which I really appreciate. Thank you so much for making the blog a conversation.

..what to write about lately. I know from the numbers that you are all still there, but you have gone very quiet. Undrstndably. You perhaps don't knw what to say either as the shock of this horrific war can make all else seem inconsequential.

As Susan in Dorset so encouragingly pointed out in yesterday's comments:

Negative intentions and actions spread out in  waves, as we are seeing, but so do positive intentions and actions.


I am thinking a lot about what I can do, who do I listen to, how much do I watch and about horticultural quietism (!).


The Estonian singer Mari Kalkun says 'We are all activists and must stand up for peace'.  I would add for all the things that are the antithesis of war. You can hear her about 3 minutes into the programme.

More soon.

My brain as well as my herat is hurting.

Yours too?

..through photographs I came across these - a random selection! Perhaps you will enjoy browsing them too..

That's me at the foot of the tree.

Did you find perfection? (See yesteday's post.)

If you can't spot it around you, create it. Listen to the perfect music for this day or this moment, make the perfect lunch or sandwich, find that perfect birthday card or present for someoone.

Here is my pocket of perfection for today. I find it helps me keep a balanced view of things and reduce anxiety. What use are we to anyone after all if we are overwhelmed and stressed?