A Metaphor for Life

Hello Friends!

I don't want to dwell on the damage to the garden caused by Storm Hannah, so I will tell you that I have freshly potted the uprooted fir tree and pretty much cleared away all the damaged plants, and although this leaves some peculiar gaps, it looks a lot better out there for a tidy up and removal of all the blackened and burned foliage.

I am happy to say that, despite losing foliage, buds that were just starting to emerge seem unscathed, and this morning the apple tree is turning quite pink with bloom!  Time will tell, but I am very hopeful now.  It might not look as good as I had hoped, but plants can recover quickly; all is not lost.

I wrote a short, reactionary piece of prose after Storm Hannah rampaged through and calm returned; I then found a suitable photo to accompany it.

My fellow blogger and online friend Martha Ellen {whose very lovely photos and words you can find here} said, when she read the shortened version on Twitter, that it sounded like a metaphor for life. She's correct, of course, although I didn't originally consider it as such as I wrote it.  I have taken her words to title this entry.

So, this is what I wrote:

In the heart of the storm the wild west wind hollers and howls; the sea rages; it roils and it boils; it hisses and spits; a bubbling cauldron of confused chaos and mayhem. Ominous black clouds roll in from the horizon robbing the day of it's light; you are battered; you are pitched and tossed at every turn; you are flotsam dragged wherever the wuthering winds and the treacherous tides take you. You bend to the will of the storm and survive. Slowly, surely, the storm rolls on, leaving you behind, and with unwavering certainty stillness returns; all is calm; all is well; and you sail on into calm water, in perfect peace and harmony, across a clear blue sea under a clear blue sky.

and this is the photo, taken a few years ago on a very early morning walk as the sun rose gently on a warm summer morning; all was peaceful and the blue ocean was millpond calm as it reached to seamlessly join as one with the cloudless blue sky above.

Until next time ~~~
Deborah xo

Storm Hannah

Hello Friends!

Sometimes the weather throws us a real curved ball, and as some of you are aware, indeed some of you may have felt the impact, of Storm Hannah as she barrelled in from the Atlantic Ocean this past weekend and wrecked havoc with winds of over 80mph across parts of Wales and England for over a day and a night.

We see big storms often, in fact we are seeing them more and more than we ever used to, and we are, in a weird way, starting to get used to them.  I don't plant out much in the way of vegetables or tender annuals until well into May now to prevent having to start again.  Usually, the hardy annuals in the garden survive, maybe a little battered and bruised, but nothing too severe.

However, Storm Hannah did her worst and when I looked out at my garden on Sunday morning, while Hannah still rampaged about, I found, with heavy heart, that I had many pots overturned, including one big 100 litre pot with a fir tree completely out of the pot. That was bizarre, as only the day before I had moved it to a sheltered corner, so to find it upturned and spilled was annoying.

Roses, hydrangea, aquilegia, my prized pasque flower, a copper beech to name but a few horribly blackened and burned to a point that I don't know if they will recover this year.  Neighbours are all showing the same signs, some worse than others. One neighbour is distraught as she specialises in roses and does not have a single good leaf on any of her many established and prized shrubs.

Here's some of the damage:

My dwarf camellia, which had been doing incredibly well and I was looking forward to a spectacular display, but it is shrivelled and burned. Some of the buds look okay, so we shall see.

I can hardly look at my much loved pasque flower without crying. Yes, a few of the shorter stems survive, but anything that had already bloomed is gone, the stems cruelly snapped in two.

The same goes for every aquilegia in the garden

A close up of the copper beech leaves. Overall the tree looks black and the leaves hang ready to drop.

Roses are like this all over the garden, some green survives, so there is hope.

The same for the hydrangea

And my poor fir tree, it just isn't getting a break at all.

Mostly the damage is blackened and burned leaves {mostly roses and hydrangea} and the broken and snapped stems of aquilegia and my precious pasque flower, and upturned pots. Others have suffered uprooted trees and broken branches, fence damage, and such.  We've all had to wash our windows too, for they were mightily dirty with plenty of gritty deposits carried in on the salt laden winds!

I hope your garden survived!

Until next time ~~~
Deborah xo