A garden is always a series of losses set against a few
triumphs, like life itself. – May
Sarton
I have just noticed that I
wrote my last post on W.H. Auden in December....
I have
suffered rather a fallow time in between then and now, when darkness has been my
enemy – particularly last winter on short winter days. But now I have
turned to the light to find restoration and a cure.
I have
begun sitting, reading and working in the large bay window that faces my
garden. From here I can see the grass and the circle of trees that crowd around
it. Peering through my trees to a nearby garden further down the bank I can see
to tall silver birch trees. These slender trees stand tall and still when there
is no wind. When the wind blows they bend and sway in a supple fashion, new leaves trembling on fine branches. When there is a storm these trees are
whipped from one side to the other. But never break. They speak the language of
the storm until it fades away and when they can they stand still and graceful yet again.
In the months when I spent a good deal of time looking out of my window I got to calling
them The Two Sisters.
Now
the year has turned and the sun has been shining, spilling bright light day
after day into the house and across the garden. Now I have even begun to sit outside and
look around me to see, smell and feel the garden - the trees, the shrubs, the plants and
flowers and to listen to the birds who populate the old trees,
Although
from necessity the borders have been neglected in this year, instead of feeling
guilty I relish their very life and extravagant creativity. The borders are
brimming over with perennials split, planted and trans-planted last year in the
optimistic times before I landed up in hospital.
My
rewards this year are the crowded green borders not tricked up with the noisy
colours of bedding plants. Instead I am enjoying the fulsome green energy of
the perennials threaded through with rogue bluebells here and there. Someone
once told me that if you live in on ancient woodland then when you leave it to
go back to nature then bluebells will pop up everywhere. This seems to be the
case here. Normally at this time of year far end of the bar the garden, down
the bank -- the more consistently neglected part of the land - is dense with
bluebells. But they rarely appear in the more attended to edges and borders.
Not so this year. They are in every border, popping up like random commas on a
scribbled page.
One
challenge of all this growth is the brambles that run riot in the
spaces that have been neglected. These are prickly, wily plants, weaving their way
through all the borders - great sinewy snakes that shout danger from the side-lines.
So, I’ve been looking out my leather gloves and secateurs to do battle with
these invasive monsters. Unlike the bluebells they are not welcome here. You can see that I am now motivated to get out into the garden to try and control the
brambles. So that is real progress for me.
But
most important of all I have learnt again to sit in the garden with a cup of tea or
a glass of wine in my hand enjoying the seventeen shades of green interspersed up by
the occasional Canterbury Bell or the striving rose or the odd insistent Azalea
My good friend
sitting here with me lifts her glass and says, ‘Let’s call it a woodland garden
this year and celebrate its natural beauty.’
I’ll
drink to that.
If
you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
********************************
A special note for you: As well as tackling the brambles
I have also been motivated to re-structure and relaunch my website, now called
There are significant changes. If you have a minute, take a look
