Urban Garden

Buttercups flourish and geraniums roam.
Rogue dandelions lurk in swaying grasses.
Wild birds sink to the left and to the right.
Dogs are barking, making their presence 
felt in the town. Motor bikes squeal
as they weave their way
through the cars that roar
down the unseen road. Overhead 
the whirring buzz of

a helicopter,
circling in search
of a boy with a gun.

Mary's Garden opens for Marie Curie.

Even buttercups find a place
 in Mary's garden.

I had a great treat on Saturday afternoon organised by the Bishop Auckland Branch of the Marie Curie Organisation - part of their national series of Blooming Great Tea Parties 

 Mary Smith - an original  member of Wear Valley Writers - opened her exquisite garden to raise funds for this excellent charity.

 I went at the invitation if my Room To Write friend Gillian Wales who also has an exquisite garden which she will open for the National Gardens Scheme on July 6th.

Another treat in store...
 

The garden meanders down a slope
is structured around mature trees originally
 plated by Mary and her husband/

The hostess - a gifted gardener and a good writer 

The garden is planted to surprise you with
contrasting colours and textures  

Achemillla Mollis tumbling onto the path.,

Symbol of the Marie Curie Blooming Great Tea Party 
- made from a beach ball.

Tender contrasts

Home made cakes for the Blooming Big Tea Party.

This reminds me of a fairy dell.

A poppy leads the eye.

Dramatic perpendicular scene 

 The afternoon raised more than £350 for the Marie Curie Charity.

 Planting for colour, direction and contrast

Delicate mixture 

Pergola on a green pathway.

Pink flowers like stars.

Large pool, elegantly postioned,
perfectly planted.

Wild planting by the small pool.

Thank you Mary. It was a privilege to be there. Wendyxxx

Ghosts in my Back Yard

I often feel ghosts around me.  As I lounge

Perfect Design 

 on the couch reading a book I sense people coming through the door with the edge if my eye. I feel the ghosts inside me as I go about my daily life mimicking repeated gestures and actions from a thousand years of imprinting.

I planted new plants in my high walled my back, now a sheltered space for drinks around the table and modest barbecues. Not wanting my plants to dry out I unwind the hose and water my plants. Then I use the hose to swill the old blue cobblestones, laid there when the house was built in 1870. A perfect example of functional Victorian design, these bricks are in varying shades of blue and grey. They are laid in a brick pattern towards a central line which is laid the other way, making a perfect channel for dirty water to swill down the drain.

In no time the yard is shining clean, clear of all the compost and the detritus of weeding. My plants are looking perky. 

Herb Corner 

As I wield the hose and the yard brush I am  filled with the ghost of another woman with brawny arms: the queen of the back regions of the house, who has her own back staircase which she climbs at night. up two flights  to the attics where she lives in her designated space.

Looking perky 

A Writer's Afternoon in Very Early Spring.

Afternoon light in my garden

These flowered through winter into spring

 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile.
(As You Like It, 2.1.12-16) 

Snowdrops insisting on their earlu presenc, always come first.

I am longing for some sun and some heat.

Yesterday I dashed out to get the papers and in the sleety rain and the raw wind I was a miserable, cold soul.

I came inside and sat on a long sofa by the fire, turned on a powerful spotlight and read a book from my pile of must-reads. (Adele Geras' Facing the Light)

Warming up. I pulled out a notebook and wrote a list of all the things I have to do this spring, I stopped at fifteen and thought I must try to whittle it down.

I pulled out my drafting book and pored over my sketches for the forthcoming book. I wondered whether it should be a novella. This literary form has been much on my mind lately.

Then I looked  outside saw the dark afternoon light. \My heart sank..

So I went outside and my eye settled on the primulas which - against all odds - have flowered through this damp chill season.

And I knelt down to see the snowdrops insisting on struggling through the detritus of a garden winter.

Hope,  then ...

Chelsea and The Accidental Gardener

The lower bank. If you leave this land alone at all
 then bluebells sprout up everywhere.
(More pictures below...)

Walk around my garden with me...

I spent some coffee times last week enjoying the elegant and perfectly coiffed perfections of the Chelsea Flower Show. Debora   was there, as was gardening friend   Gillian. My friend Avril  was going to go but did not quite make it.                                   

 I did not envy them, as for one thing I don't like crowds; for another I am merely an accidental gardener. Oh and there's this third thing - flower names do not drip off my tongue like honey. The only one I remember is Alchemilla Mollis because its name scans and because it holds drops of rain like tears in its exquisite leaves. And it thrives in shade and my garden has lots of that . Oh, and I know Forget-Me-Nots and Love-Lies-Bleeding from my childhood fascination with the names.

Many years ago I did plant and grow things fairly successfully but once  I plunged myself into the compelling career of writing it totally engulfed  my planting, growing and making instincts,my hot-housing  and propagating energies. I stopped sewing too.

More then thirty years ago we bought this house in the middle of a small market town,  Built in 1870, the land on which it was built was carved out of a bit of ancient woodland. So  apart from a useful  lawn, our garden is  mostly trees and a long lumpy  bank. And it cannot be tamed; it  can only be gardened by accident.

I have featured the house - in various guises - in several of my novels but only this year in my new novel has the garden appeared as a significant part of the story. To do this I had to imagine this plot of land 1600 years ago when this area was a forest. That was fun

Extract: (Elen) '... No wonder they call this Oak Place. I walk and walk and the trees open out making a green space on each side of a trickling spring which steadies itself in a pool then spouts down the hill to join the bigger stream that I’ve just crossed.  Around the pool is a low wall cunningly built without joining mortar  - a thing they do very well in these parts. In one place the wall widens into a shelf lined with golden stone. Here are wilting flowers crowded together and already smelling of decay;  three finely crafted clay jugs;  two glittering bronze bracelets and in the corner  a sheaf of barley. I add an offering from my mother for whom this pool holds happy girlhood memories: a silver pendant set with green glass. As I set out on this journey she told me she hoped Branwen would be here at the pool to meet me....'                                                  Work In Progress,

Walk around my garden with me ...

Last year we cut down this giant tree but left the base as natural scuplture.

These grow wild right at the bottom of the garden, beside the long wall.

Companion growing - bluebells and well behaved dandelions

Forget-me-nots tumble onto the curving path

Bluebells are promiscuous. They go with everything/

Bluebells against the long bottom wall. I think the deep blue says these come from seed through several years, not from old bulbs. Here and there we have white flowers which I think suggests ancient bulbs still flowering.

The bottom bank. There was an old apple tree here once, but we lost it,

Glorious greens with Love-Lies-Bleeding

Dandelions mingling with buttercups and bluebells.

Champion campions keep the bluebells company

Trees dominate the garden,

Forget-Me-Nots and bluebells near the bottom path.

And more trees 

Neighbours through the trellis in what is, after all, a town garden.