welsh hills again

When I started this running lark in January I had no ambition to run real distances.  I didn't want to run a marathon but I did think I would like to run 5k, maybe, if I could.    Going from being unable to run at all to running for thirty minutes, using the wonderful Couch to 5k app, was amazing.  I never thought I could run for thirty minutes without stopping.  In the early weeks I was daunted by the idea of running for five minutes!  But I did it and a few weeks ago I found I was able to keep going.  I was astonished.  I was delighted. But I am slow, the original snail runner.  When I completed Couch to 5k a few weeks ago I could indeed run for thirty minutes (yay!) but I was running just over 3k in that time.  I have got up to about 3.7k  but I had never run for 5k (actually I think I might have once, when I was about twenty nine, so around thirty five years ago) when I arrived at Bodelwyddan Castle this morning to do my first park run.  To be honest last week should have bee

One of the things I love about having blogged for so many years is that I can look back on how things were and how things are now.  I know in my head that our garden was a field when we came fourteen years ago.  But it is hard to remember how it was.  What I see when I wander around has come about so slowly that I have lost the sense of how it was.  This picture shows the native tree bed at the bottom of our field.  It was planted first with trees and dogwoods about ten years ago.  In the picture above the bed is about three years old, with snowdrops beginning to spread and the dogwoods starting to grow. This is how it looks now, ten years on,  the trees large and shady, the dogwoods growing and the hellebores in full flower.   The trees tower above your head.  It is hard to think that they have not always been there. It is so easy to forget how things change.  This picture shows the newly planted orchard in spring 2009, ten years ago.  The trees were twiggy sticks.