welsh hills again

This is nearly two thirds of the way through!  That is amazing! Today younger daughter and her two children were here for the morning and for lunch.  As usual in the summer we spent a lot of time outside, feeding chickens, collecting eggs, swinging, throwing balls for the dog, hiding balls for the dog, going up to the farm to see the calves and then pretending I was the dog as Grace made me sit and wait and hid the ball for me to find.  All, as you can see, good fun but not what you might call relaxing.  It is lovely to be able to do it, for myself to build the relationship with the children and for our daughter to ease, just a tiny little bit, the relentless pressure of mothering two small children.  She handles this pressure with enormous patience, good humour and grace but it is still a hard job.  In fact both our daughters and both our daughters in law seem to mother small children far more easily and cheerily than I ever did.  I wonder if I woul...

Every day I have done a small thing in the garden, unless I have been away in which case I have tried to give it some thought.  The greatest difference it is making at the moment is to the way I notice it.  A peony opening, a bit of bindweed twining through the salvias, a tiny bluetit chirping in the hedge: there is something about the daily engagement which makes me see it all. Today I have put geraniums in the pots by the holiday cottage door and begun to seriously harden off the cosmos seedlings which I bought from Sarah Raven. I whisked through the side garden removing tiny heads of nettles which were poking up between the hardy geraniums.  Then I sat for a few minutes, listening to the garden, birds and pollinators and the distant hum of my neighbour's tractor. From my seat the alliums and the orange geum clash gloriously. Looking back towards the house, more alliums are clashing with the smyrnium and the side garden is only days away from erupting int...

When we moved up here twelve years ago now I did not really think about roses.  I like roses but I like all sorts of things and there was so much else to think about with the prospect of trying to make a garden in a nearly one acre field high on a hillside.  But that first summer I found that there were some roses here. Mainly they were these: wild roses in the hedges, simple dog roses, simple perfection. And there was this one, an undistinguished looking shrub rose by the gate through to the field.  I have no idea what it is called.  The flowers are small but the colour is deep and the perfume is one of the strongest in the garden.  The first time I walked by and was hit by a waft of the scent I decided it could be as ordinary looking as it liked, as long as once a year it smelled like that. And there was this one.  At the time it was struggling in the kitchen garden, growing between two posts and looking sad and straggly.  As part ...

Built a wall, whipped home and whipped out again down to Devon. This is the wall high up below Tryfan with National Trust warden Dewi on top of it, placing the coping stones.  On the last morning I worked with another ranger lower down in the valley.  Iolo was a silent man until you started to talk to him about dry stone walls!  I know enough now to have a go at repairing ours, if only I could find it behind the nettles and buttercups, hogweed and bind weed.  Might have to be an autumn project when all the weed dies down! I have been trying to sum up my experience of the dry stone walling holiday which is hard as it was a week of extremes.  On the one hand, I loved it.  The company was good, the walling was fascinating, being bumped out of my comfort zone and into the sort of communal experience I haven't had for years was interesting and probably good for me.  On the other hand, I discovered I was considerably less fit than I was a few years ag...

The dog went home and I raised my head from the world of dogfood, chewsticks and the downstay.  The cat came in again, somewhat crossly, and made its displeasure at its exile clear by sleeping in my chair instead of on the sofa. At the beginning of the week the garden was glowing in summer heat.  Even the roses were throwing a last glorious party.  By the end of it, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and the wind had flattened the cosmos, still flowering their hearts out in the cutting garden. Inside the stripy little Welsummer chicks were beginning to show their first true feathers. As the dog's owner returned, I disappeared off for a weekend with elder daughter, son in law and nearly two year old grandson.  Grandson makes me laugh all the time.  He is obsessed with cars and trains and all kind of vehicles and rides everywhere on his little trike, beeping slowly and carefully every time he goes backwards to show that he is reversing. ...