welsh hills again

Day 26 was a busy one.  A quick coffee this morning followed by a meeting of the tourism group of which I am a member.  I hate the way at such meetings no one ever wants to take notes (me included).  Everyone avoids the chairman's eye.  There is an uncomfortable silence until somebody gives in and agrees to do it.  So this morning I volunteered up front to get it over with.  It was a good meeting, covering lots of ground and my writing got messier and messier as I raced to record it.  I came out with a banging headache and whizzed straight off to another meeting.  We got home about half past four and the thought of engaging with the garden was the very last thing on my mind. So for half an hour I didn't.  I drank a cup of tea.  I flipped through a magazine.  I thought seriously about not bothering today.  But the whole point of the project is to do it when I can.  Next week there will be a couple of days when we are away...

We are not on top of the garden.  The garden is firmly and cheerfully on top of us, like a toddler giggling and sitting on your face.  I have decided that this will just have to be the way it is this year. When I look at our diaries and see how much of this spring and last autumn I have been in Devon and how much Ian has been either totally committed to looking after his father or in Manchester working or building a kitchen it seems fairly extraordinary that there is anything out there looking even faintly like a garden.  This much land gardened in this way needs time and it has not had that sort of time.  But it is June and things are flowering and growing and glowing with life so we are going to choose where and how to look. Look this way at the glory of the chives and the mint garden, where spearmint, applemint, basil mint, common mint, lime mint and peppermint jostle for space.  The more vigorous mints, the common mint and the basil mint being the worst...