I can't see beyond the end of my trowel lately and have loved being out of doors most of the time. I find myself going to bed when it gets dark, and waking with the dawn and wonder if this is a natural bodily response to being outside and doing physically tiring work.

Indoors I am gradually reviewing my paintings, deciding what to keep and what to sell.

If like me you move your paintings frequently this tip might be useful for filling the many small holes in the walls.  Most of my walls are white and rubbing a piece of white chalk over the hole fills the hole and smudging it with my finger blends the rest into the wall - almost invisible (and good enough till I next get round to redecorating).

I prefer rhododendrons in the vase rather than in the garden...

Isn't it lovely when the main news of the day is love and happiness?

I hadn't planned to celebrate, but at the last minute I made a few cakes

looked out a pretty cloth and that gorgeous tea set I found in the charity shop

made some tea and sat down and watched the whole thing.

 Dazzled by the smiles, the dress, the flowers- loved the flowers, the sunshine and the sheer happiness and exuberance of the whole event.

Did you watch?

I hope they will have a long and happy marriage.

and in every garden, you do from time to time lose some.

It's just a pity when it is a star plant and four weeks to Open Day!

But viburnum 'Davidii' a very handsome shrub, despite being weighed to the ground by snow more than once this winter is looking splendid by the front door. The flowers are followed by berries of an amazing blue and the evergreen leaves are beautifully veined. Unlike viburnum tinus which smells so awful I wouldn't grow it, this has no scent.

Viburnum plicatum 'Mariesii' I love for it's horizontal form. This was a beautiful specimen, so perfect that we spent some time clearing away other things from around it to show off it's form and 'honour it with it's own space'.

I had hoped that it was just late coming into leaf but since these few leaves appeared on a low branch it became clear the rest was dead. It took many years to grow to this size and leaves a big gap.

But I have an idea....

Planning my gardening day I sat here and heard a woodpecker, the wren which I think is nesting in clematis 'Freda' and I watched a deer delicately pick its way up into the forest through that patch of sunlight on the right there.  I imagined it's forest life so different from mine yet so close.

Jennie saw a deer jump lightly over the yellow gate early one morning. I guess it owns the place as much as I do...

Today's list under my four headings for garden work -

An Ongoing Job - weeding the lawn which is again and at last beginning to be worthy of the name after some very intensive care!

A Start and Finish Job - tidying the edges of the cutting patch and consolidating the ground (trampling it) ready for some better-late-than-never seed sowing - gypsophila, poppies, cornflowers, night scented stock, marigolds, nasturtiums....after a couple of disappointing seasons I am giving it one last shot...

A Job I Want To Do - I think I will plant up a hanging basket just with trailing lobelia. I've seen it looking very pretty and have been meaning to try it for years.

A Rescue Job - there are always things to be rescued here! Today I think it will be the space at the back of the shed. Having emptied the compost bins onto the cutting patch, it's pretty messy back there.

Meanwhile there are some pretty bits and pieces - some planned some just happen - like the self sown things on the greenhouse floor...

to gardener, plantswoman and writer Beth Chatto who died a few days ago aged 94.

She was an artist with plants and I loved her garden. After my first visit there many years ago I wrote to her to say how much I liked it and was surprised and delighted to receive a charming hand written reply to my letter.

She was successful on the micro level - her detailed descriptions of plants and flowers made you want to really look closely at every one, and on the macro level - her extensive garden is a  brilliant composition and all about the plants. In between in scale I saw one of her gold medal winning stands at Chelsea - a masterly arrangement of form and colour (a skill she cleverly describes well in terms of asymmetric triangles).

I've read all her books and trust them completely.

She has inspired so many people. Have you visited her garden or read her books?

Bear with me as they say, for I am still on about Venice!

I am passionate about Venice - it just happened. I did not need to try (I just needed to be there).

(Can I just add here that a friend who has been reading the comments recently said 'How did they all get to be so wise?')


I loved the cookery book Polpo as much for it's information about Venice as for the food and knew that I would want to eat cicheti at a bacaro (see the Polpo story here) - the kind of place Venetians will stop at on the way home from work, maybe with a colleague or meeting a friend, for a glass of local wine or a spritz and some delicious small snacks.  I was delighted to find that one of Russell Norman's recommended bacari was on the street right below our apartment!

I had also read somewhere about a cafe in a greenhouse (Serra di Giardini) and found it quite easily (Vaporetto stop Giardini). We enjoyed a lunch  and an aperol spritz there on a sunny warm day - so sunny they had to lower the wonderful blinds...

Neither place was expensive.

I am passionate about writing Live Simply Simply Live!

I asked some questions in this post and was most interested in your answers...

I think perhaps passion is in large part commitment, and hope that by choosing to commit I can revive the passion and enthusiasm I once felt for most things I did (teaching, patchwork and quilting, gardening and landscape design, painting..).

I am working madly in the garden having agreed to opening it for charity in a moment of nostalgia for the fun Barry and I had doing this over a number of years.

On my own it just felt like hard work.

Remembering that old 'act as if' adage, I wondered if I acted as if I was still passionate about it - that is if I did the things I did when I was passionate about it - gave it my full attention, did the research, sowed the seeds, made the decisions, tried different plant combinations, really loved and looked after the plants, put in the hours....would the passion return?

Bereavement it seems to me, takes away the extra energy, the surplus of energy a person needs to feel these feelings of enthusiasm.

I pay for help with grass and hedge cutting (must sell more paintings),  Jennie helps me plan and divide and plant, friends offer help and I accept gladly and slowly, slowly my interest and pleasure in it are returning.

Watch this space.

I am watching the dawn again! I was so tired from gardening I went to bed really early and here I am at 5am on what looks like being another good day....

Balancing the sorrows and the joys
The ugliness with beauty and goodness
The hard work with the rewards
I spent the day divided equally between the moss mountain

and the hammock

Well maybe I spent longer in the hammock, but it was hot and taking out two heaped barrowloads of moss was hard work..
I hope you found a happy balance in your day.

Thank you for all the interesting comments on yesterday's post. It's a huge and I think very important subject.

Could the current  'mental health crisis'. especially among young people, be about too much information? I have said before that I don't believe human beings are designed to cope with the world's bad news on the hour every hour 24/7. How do we decide who to listen to? And what information to trust?

I was very interested in what Madeleine Albright has to say in her new book.

It reminds me of this quote (attributed to Edmund Burke)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

It makes me feel I have to be engaged. Perhaps I too am an optimist who worries a lot!

Meanwhile I limit my news to once a day maximum, at a time of my own choosing. I find 'Beyond 100 Days' from BBC1 interesting.  I'll intersperse with regular Mozart days though...

Balance is everything and the point of balance is different for everyone. It's up to us to find our own.


(Thank you M for that link)

One of the joys of my Amazing April was that for weeks I did not hear about he-who-shall-not-be-named (and whose tweets I refuse to read any more) or Brexit.

I blithely choose to have a totally news-free day and listen to Mozart instead, but the issue of trying to be a well informed, politically aware citizen has never been more difficult to resolve.

How do I manage it and stay sane?

This must be why I woke so early..

 
Our village contingent of swallows returned today from Africa - a little flock noisily wheeling about then 'our two' diving straight into the nesting place above the studio window. Isn't it amazing that they can do that? It occurs to me I have just had the gutters cleaned and that is probably where they find the mud to mend their nests. Oh dear. Sorry swallows!

I could hear a cuckoo further up the glen, and saw the first butterfly - white, but too big to be an orange tip.

Gorgeous sunny day again and I've been clearing and weeding and dividing and planting and watering....

It is so lovely to have the doors and windows open, and Mozart wafting out.

And to think about the hammock and check if it survived the winter..

And a sundowner. Cheers!

Everything is better with sunshine and Mozart!

The odd shape on the grass is the evening sunshine reflected from the study window!

I have no choice about the sunshine - so beautiful today - but (and how astonished Mozart would have been) I can have Mozart whenever I like. I have plenty to choose from.

I think I will have a Mozart day tomorrow.

All day.

Loud.

No news. None.

Divine.

..indoors and out.

My birthday lilies are still scenting the house but outside there is a wonderful scent all around. People look for blossom, but it the new leaves of the balsam poplar which scent the air. I can smell it at my back door although the two trees, in the centre of the photograph are at least 50 mtrs away. I often cut a few little branches but there are thick brambles underneath, and the house is full of scent anyway so not this year.

Meanwhile the greenhouse is filling up nicely...and tulip 'Purissima' is changing from a deep cream to a purer white, as it matures.

It's 3.47 and the cloud hasn't lifted all day.

Are you getting some sunshine?

..I love it.

Spotted from the bus somewhere between Fort William and Loch Lomond..

..but exquisite facsimiles of wonderful books dating from the 1400's.

In the Scuola Grande di San Marco is a display of very convincing facsimiles of famous and beautiful books which you are allowed to handle and leaf through.

The illuminated manuscripts made into books (codex) were owned by families such as the Medici, d'Este, Rothschild and Duca di Berry and handling them in their bejewelled and embroidered covers we got a sense of how precious books were, and how valued.

Any bibliophile would be thrilled by this exhibition (Barry would have loved it).

I think it is on until September but it will surely travel to other venues in Europe. I am so glad to have experienced it.

In the larger room with it's magnificent ceiling and paintings by Tintoretto, are printed books from the 1500's and the Museum of Medical History (the building is part of the hospital).

To see these originals, which were of course in glass cases, as the originals of the codices would also be, brought alive the concepts of the Renaissance for us.

Theophrastus is known as the father of botany and is a bit of a hero of mine.
The medical instruments on display were in Heather's words 'a chamber of horrors', especially those associated with childbirth, but we spent a couple of hours in this quiet museum and I would certainly visit it again.

..of every day.

The spring garden is about the small things for me. One swallow, tiny plants in small corners  quite forgotten for the rest of the year, listening for the first cuckoo (late this year) and watching for the first orange tip butterfly.

Apart from daffodils I don't have swathes of spring flowers. I have to go and look for them, and sometimes they move themselves to spots more congenial. I love having little patches of celandine 'Brazen Hussy' with it's glossy dark leaves (named by Christopher Lloyd who found it in a woodland near his home). It has seeded itself in the lawn.

From Strachur House where Jennie and I used to garden came this little primula which I call Pin Dot. It has a delicate charm which I find touching somehow.

narcissus Jenny is being bullied by alchemilla mollis and must be rescued before it disappears from the garden altogether. It's recurved petals remind me of Piglet. So sweet.

Some things just appear from nowhere....I am sure I never planted this, but it is very welcome.

Viola labradorica seeds itself in the gravel.

What is your favourite time in the garden? I do like spring, but it is the abundance of summer that I love most, which is what I am working towards now. Tomorrow I collect 106 plug plants of Cosmos Purity!

What are you enjoying now and what are you planning?

 ..not only that it still exists, but that it works as well as it does.

Venice that is.

Deliveries, ambulances - yellow with blue flashing lights, rubbish collection - steep fines if you get it wrong! Repairs, sewage, I was aware of working vessels on the canals day and night. Washing hanging out to dry. One of the nicest sounds was the voices of children going to school in the mornings in the street below our apartment.

This issue is one of the most contentious of all..

We saw a swallow in Venice, and yesterday I spotted the first one here. I wonder if they will nest with us again...

A lovely gardening day. Warm and sunny (though raining now as I write). Perfect for dividing and planting and moving established plants. I am simplifying - trying to be less 'fussy' - more of the things which do best and a sad farewell to some old favourites, but they are going to good homes in a local community garden, so not too sad....

,I planted lots of daffodil Thalia in pots to fill some gaps and although they are flowering at slightly different times this year I think they may flower in sync  next year. Geranium Patricia is ready to fill the space when the daffs are over.

I love the lime green foliage of geranium Ann Folkard and its magenta flowers and nice habit of lightly sprawling over other things without harming them. I have about 6 or 7 if these scattered throughout the garden.

This quite well-behaved bamboo (sadly I have forgotten it's name) was growing up through the horizontal branches of viburnum Maresii and spoiling it's form, so Jennie has moved it to nearer the yellow gate and given it it's own space. To make room we took out three veronicastrum which had the unpleasant habit of the dying of all the lower leaves while the flowers were still looking good. It had to go to the compost. Looking at the photograph I see that it looks rather scrappy but there are lots of new shoots at the base.

The new foliage on the Cornus controversa variegata is a delight (and the deer left it alone this year thankfully.

Geranium Rozanne is a great performer though I have noticed some of my older plants dying out in the middle. I may buy a few fresh ones to fill some gaps. It's the longest flowering of the hardy geraniums here. It's so exciting to see all the new growth.

I have five pots of white violas already looking summery on the front steps. Planted from a couple of 'six packs' they are a very cheap and easy option which will probably last for months with a little deadheading and not much else.

I am hoping the white lupins will be in flower by Open Day. The plan is to have five or six areas looking close to perfect and hope that I will get away with the in-between bits! We shall see!

Do you have a garden? Ot do you enjoy other peoples' gardens?

It really is a wonderful time of the gardening year - so full of vigour and promise.

 
We did not shop in Venice, except for food. until our last morning when I bought some Murano glass gifts and Heather bought a beautiful little bag, but do come  window shopping with me - what windows! What style!

Do you have a favourite place to window shop?

I go for a walk in tne forest of Fontainebleau. I get green indigestion. i must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to rid himself of feelings and visions.

I've always liked this quotation (and have quoted it before I know).

I am paraphrasing him when I say I visited Venice. I must process the feelings and sensations. A writer writes to....

I plan to write more blogposts about Venice and alternate with posts about gardening, which is grounding me nicely, and becoming somewhat urgent. Open Day is seven short weeks away. This morning was warm and sunny and I planted seven white lupin 'Noble Maiden', pulled (most of) the not-so-black leaves from the ophiopogon nigrescens and admired the primroses.

There is a 'back story' (if I am using that term correctly) to my Venice trip which newer readers of Live Simply Simply Live may not know of..

My husband Barry and I had planned to spend a month in Venice in February 2016 and had done lots of research and planning and booked an apartment which was very Venetian. We wanted to know we were in Venice and didn't want to stay in a place which could have been anywhere. So the one we found  had a canal, a bridge and a private terrace with a view of this 15C church! You can see the apartment here.

When Barry died unexpectedly the owners of the apartment said they regretted they could not refund the deposit but would hold it indefinitely to be used by me or anyone I cared to give it to, and it went to the back of my mind for many months.

As you can imagine it was with mixed feelings I went to Venice without Barry and to the apartment we had so carefully chosen. I know Barry would have been as thrilled as I was that our lovely Heather came along. She made it fun and a very healing and happy experience.


Last night I watched a production of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. In it, towards the end, Winifred tells Vera, who has suffered devastating losses at a very young age,

'All of us are surrounded by ghosts. Now we need to learn how to live with them. You must start at the beginning. Get up, get dressed, eat. Spring is out there, waiting...'

For me, Venice was out there, waiting, and I'm very glad I went to meet her.

..everywhere for my birthday yesterday; cards and gifts and delicious food.

What could be nicer?

(Thank you everyone.)

The tulips which are on the porch and out of reach of the deer are looking good too.

April has been amazing.

..in Venice which is still a living city of some 57,000 people.

I had read of this tradition to announce the arrival and the sex (blue for a boy, pink for a girl) of a new baby by attaching a ribbon to the door.

Graffiti on the hoarding around the Accademia Bridge which is being restored.

I had planned to visit the church of SS Giovanni e Paolo on our last morning but a funeral was taking place.

I have been following this blog about Venice with interest for a few years. The writer Steven Varni, wrote a post about the very funeral I mention above.