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...

What a difference sunshine makes.  Today I worked for longer in the garden than I have for months and months.  The sun shone, the birds sang.  I dug up what felt like tons of creeping buttercup from the bed by the metal greenhouse.  I can't honestly say that the work I am doing in the kitchen garden is making me fall back in love with that part of the garden but I do think the repeated being outside and being in the garden is giving me a renewed sense  of connection. We planted the clematis montana and the honeysuckle by the field shelter, from now on to be known as the Sedd Maes (the meadow seat in Welsh).  Thank you veg artist.    I sat there in the sunshine, enjoying the pattern of the hazel and the tiny new leaves budding on the dogwoods.  I am glad we have the "windows".  I like the sense of sitting right inside the garden. I opened up the shepherd's hut and sat in there to drink my tea and read the paper. And finall...

Today I have had a quiet day, quiet and still and mostly outside in the vivid green of May sunshine.  It has been a frantic few weeks with change on the cards for both my father in law, who has moved to a residential home nearby, and for my father.  It has also been my father’s eightieth birthday, celebrated with an afternoon tea party in the village hall in Devon where my sister lives, crammed to the gunnels with family and friends.  There has been much visiting and much whizzing up and down the motorway.  It is too early to tell how these new arrangements will play out.  Time will tell. But today Ian went into Manchester to work on elder son’s new house and there was nobody here but me, a garden full of birds and the blowing sun.  I sat for a while in the side garden with a cup of tea and the unopened newspaper on my knee. In the trees behind the garden a heavy woodpigeon flapped to and fro, repeatedly crashing back into the top of ...

I expect heat in summer.  That is daft really.  I don't live in the South of France or Italy, I live in North Wales, but somehow an adolescence spent in New Zealand where the sky is reliably blue for months and the natural colour of everyone's skin is a light tan has left me with an expectation that in summer the sun will shine and I will eat breakfast outside and walk in bare feet and seek the shade.  The last few summers have been so wet and grey and cold as to be non existent.  I don't think I had realised quite how much the absence of sun had got to me until the temperature soared and the sun was hot on my skin and every morning I woke to sunshine and warm wind.  I find I have relaxed deep down inside myself.  The brightness of the light has made me smile.  Walking around with bare feet has made me feel young again although the green valley is bleaching with the sun. Our house is great when it is really hot.  The old stone walls create a ...

Today I lay on a rug under a tree.  It was a huge sycamore which stands in the boundary hedge of our field. The sun was so hot I was driven off the garden and into the shade where the grass was cool.  I dug an old check rug out of the bakehouse where we keep outside things for the holiday cottage and spread it out.  I brought out my book and a big glass of elderflower cordial and lay down and looked up into the tree.  It soared above me like a huge green cathedral. When did I stop lying down on a rug in the garden?  When I was a child I loved eating outside and a cheese sandwich, a packet of crisps and an apple was immediately transformed into a picnic by eating on a rug.  As a teenager I spent hours lying in the sun, seeking the perfect tan.  I remember trying to revise for my A levels on a rug in the garden and eventually giving up as I squinted in the sun and my papers blew about in the breeze and snoozing for half an hour before going rel...

Sometimes it is the simplest things that make you feel good if only you can slow down enough to really notice them. A still clear morning, trembling with dew.  That stillness and sun has all blown away now in a gusting cold wind, but it was there, for a day. A visit on Monday from some blogging friends, mountainear , snailbeachshepherdess , bodran and bluestocking mum - tea, cake, more tea, even more cake and vast amounts of talk and laughter.  Things have not been easy for everyone over the last year or so and yet there seemed to be nothing we couldn't talk about or laugh at.  It doesn't happen more than twice a year but it's amazing how easy it is to catch up and how our lives intertwine. The sight and size and gentle furriness of the quinces which Felicity brought for me.  Aren't they beautiful? A full log basket and a fire in the woodburner. A full glass. Three perfect eggs from the Light Sussex hens. A video of my two year grandson sitting ...

This morning the sun rose over the misty valley.  It was so perfect a morning I went out with my camera in my dressing gown and slippers.   I didn't walk on the grass, heavy with dew. The house shone in the sun. The kitchen garden glowed. I wanted to get dressed and walk out into the view but there was a birthday cake to make for my much loved father in law's ninety second birthday.  What a morning to be alive in.  What a place to live in.  What a day.

This morning it was clear and sunny, cold but vivid.  The stubborn patches of snow that have clung to the north facing sides of the hills up on the ridge have almost gone.  You can just see a paler smudge which is the last of the snow on the north side of Moel Arthur, the highest point in this picture. The sky behind the twisted willow was unbelievably blue. The very last blooms cling to the witch hazel like shreds of bright tissue paper. I moved some globe artichokes which I had grown from seed in the autumn.  They languished looking very unhappy for a while but today they seemed to have shaken off their uncertainty about their new position and were shining in the sun. Even the bark of the big sycamore looked strange and beautiful in the clear light. I wonder how long it will be before the oak trees leaf?  I always do this, watching and waiting for signs, longing for spring.  Perhaps I should remind myself that in its way that is w...

Today has been a day of total perfection: the light was pure and clear, with a pale golden glow like a glass of wine. I have spent all day in the garden, with three wheelbarrow loads for the burn pile to show for my efforts but remarkably little difference showing in the garden. I love echinacea and I am stupidly proud of the fact that I grew these from seed. I love the way the petals curve back from the cone and way they hold their heads to the sun. I am going to have a go at taking root cuttings from this one. The cosmos has been flowering its heart out for weeks and weeks. I spent a happy half hour deadheading a dozen plants in the hope of keeping them going until the frosts. This year lots of cosmos had self seeded in the cutting garden (posh name for a big bed in the field). I suppose I had better not be too thorough with the deadheading if I want it to the same again, which I do. It is so exciting to find little seedlings busy pushing up in spring without any assistance from the ...