welsh hills again

Today is a classic example of a British April day.  This morning started sunny.  Ian was going to Manchester to prepare elder son's garden for turfing.  We had been intending to go and work together but the forecast was for rain and showers and I was pretty sure that my improving cold did not need a morning digging in the rain.  So I stayed home and, contrary as an April day, the sun kept shining.  I decided to walk down to the river as part of trying to reclaim my pre-winter fitness.  It is easy to go down but a long old slog up and if I want to continue to climb hills I have to continue to climb hills. Over the garden gate the wind is blowing the sun and clouds about and the birds are singing. I walk down quickly, listening to birdsong, noticing the wood anenomes starring the sides of the path.  At the bottom of the hill the highland cattle are out, drowsing in the sun. By the side of the river, still fast and full, the kingcups are sh...

Yes, I know.  What happened to day 17?  Read on. We are in Devon looking after our two little granddaughters for a couple of days while son and daughter in law and the new baby have a small break elsewhere.  The girls are delightful, generally amenable (apart from occasional passing bouts of shouting from the two year old!) and we have been left food in the freezer and the usual pre-school sessions in the day, quite a few for the four year old, fewer for the two year old.  So this is probably about as easy as it can be to be responsible for two under fives and two dogs.  One of the dogs is at the vet's as she is not well.  The girls are good eaters and good sleepers.  And yet it is still quite full on and I am sitting on the sofa very near to drifting off to sleep! I had plans before we came of continuing the project by visiting a local and very good garden centre and buying some more plants which would contribute to moving the cutting garden ...

I think I went a bit off piste today.  This morning we went to yoga and this afternoon I decided that, before I did anything at all in the garden, I would walk down the track to the river.  Is this part of the 100 day project?  Well sort of.  I am sure that being aware of the seasons is a crucial part of connecting with the garden.  I knew that this is the time for the wood anemones to be out under the trees by the track.  It was sunny and blowy, not particularly warm but bright and breezy and full of spring. Over the stile, along the top of the scrubby wood and down through the big field.  Everything is greener than it was a week or two ago even if the trees are not yet in leaf.   Moel Arthur, the Iron Age hillfort on the horizon, is crisp and clear against the sky. The wood anenomes are holding their starry faces to the sun.  They are a slow spreading plant so a woodland with a lot of anemones in it is likely to be an old one...

Somehow I have rather lost the pattern of blogging.  Instead of that gentle insistence at the back of my mind that once a week is about right I have slipped to once a fortnight or even once a month.  There are plenty of great blogs which I like where the blogs appear about once a month but I know that for me a weekly blog is what feels about right.  It means that I get into the habit of sharing things and that I don't sit down thinking that so much has happened since my last blog that I don't quite know where to start.  I think this shift is partly down to having become fond of using Instagram.  It is so quick and easy and such a supportive and engaged community.  It is really easy to use little bits of  time to Instagram things and then feel that the longer time which you need for a blog is something you can't quite find.  But I don't want to stop blogging and I think if I don't give it a shake up and find time to blog a bit more often I might fi...

Suddenly the garden is full of spring.  Life has been so full of driving and journeying and worrying about both my father and my father in law, both failing in different ways at different ends of the country, that I don't seem to have looked at the garden for a few weeks.  Last time I looked the beds were empty and covered with sticks and old leaves, a mute reproach, not mulched or weeded or showing signs of having had any loving attention.  Wandering around in the sunshine a couple of days ago I found that all sorts of things had emerged and filled out and burst into flower, quite without assistance from me or anyone else. Erythronium Pagoda is flowering with a graceful beauty that makes me feel I need to wash the whole side garden with it.  It took a long time to decide that it was happy here and for two or three years my three plants sat quietly, throwing out the odd flower spike but certainly not colonising or establishing in a way that looked permanent. ...

OK, that's enough now.  It has been beautiful and hard work, not quite in equal measure, but just tipping the scale on the side of beauty.  But now I have had enough.  I want to be able to go out without fear of slipping and sliding on the snow.  I want to see green instead of the endless stretch of white and black. On Wednesday it was sunny and we made it up to the top of the hill.  Snow and blue sky is a lovely thing but even so, time for a slightly easier life I think. When I am cold it is hard to remember how it feels to be warm and when the land is bleak and empty like this it is hard to believe that only last year there was colour and light and warmth and growth.  I have been looking back through my photographs.  Even last year when it rained so hard for so long, sometimes the sun did shine. There were primroses. There were pulmonaria and red tulips and the great fat upsurge of old fashioned peonies. There were tulips, in...

This box full of delight brought to me by mountainear has been  keeping my spirits up for a week or two when I have been drinking my cup of tea in the wooden greenhouse.  I have kept sticking my nose outside, smelling for spring but it has been so cold only the snowdrops have replied. But today we woke to clear blue skies, a sharp frost down in the valley but up here on the hill the day quickly became one where the you could feel the season on the turn.  I went hunting for flowers and found one of my hellebores had burst out of its fat bud while I had my back turned.  Tip her head up and look into her face. This morning was spent making bread and sowing seeds in the still chilly greenhouse.  This afternoon it was time to lift our own heads up from the list of things to do and get out onto the hills. The catkins are hanging on the hazels.  This is a cobnut we planted in our field, shining with spring. Up on the ridge just below Penycloddiau there are s...

The snow has gone and the hens are out and about again.  Here is one of the cockerels at the base of the side garden wall.  Somewhere along the foot of the wall snowdrops are just beginning to show.  I shall not be impressed if they are scratched up but mostly at this time of year the hens are good garden companions and will probably not bother with any good sized clump.  It will be another couple of months before we start the frantic seed sowing which means that every bed needs to be protected until the plants get to a decent size. Here is the little white Wyandotte, still my favourite hen even though she is not as good a layer as the others.  She is so small and fluffy and looks like a chicken from a children's book.  Because she is a bit smaller than the others she has to run to keep up with them and is often to be found flurrying down the garden , a few yards adrift of the flock, trying hard not be left behind. But I do also love the brown hens...