Over the Garden Wall

Hello Friends!

Yes, most of my contact with the outside world these days is over the garden wall, snatched chats with neighbours if we happen to be outside together.

While clearing an overgrown area the other evening, I spotted a bright yellow tennis ball.  It belonged to the little boy next door.  Two months ago I would have gently thrown it back.  Now, I called to his Mum to ask if it was okay to throw it back. How our lives have changed! She was happy so I carefully pitched it over the shrubbery.

I pondered upon this for a while, a little glimmer of what was once a normal behaviour, now changed forever.  Even when we are able to relax a little, in all likelihood Coronavirus Covid-19 will still dictate our lifestyle to us.  Unless a successful vaccine is found, like other diseases, in time it may be eradicated, but otherwise it's here for the duration.  For people with certain medical conditions {me, for example, with asthma} this means the current adaptations may be permanent. Whoa boy! Endless disinfection and hand washing.

Which got me to thinking: I hear the news channels speaking about "returning to normal", but what if you are like me and you don't want to return to that old normal, that which at the turn of the year we took for granted.  What, if like me, you can see the benefits of our situation?  The sky is bluer, the air is clearer, the silence is oh! so welcome and I am hearing birds sing, bees buzzing all day long. I am trying, arthritis permitting, to clear my garden in preparedness to grow fruit and vegetables again. If you try not to think about the dreadful and dire situation of the virus, everything else is so calm and peaceful.  As an introvert, the joy of not having to go out and socially interact is a huge relief and I am calmer and more content with my life. The planet is healing and beginning to breathe again.  She will relish this time to heal the devastating wounds we have inflicted.

I have seen a huge change in even my most basic day to day activities, and other than the endless disinfecting and cleaning processes, I am settling into the new routine well, and happily. How I cook and eat has changed; how I shop has changed; my focus on what is, and what isn't, important has changed; how much rubbish I am throwing out has decreased unbelievably {and I didn't throw that much out in the first instance}.  I don't want to go back to the normal that was before. I want this new normal, without the virus hanging over us.  If we don't all learn from this, then do we really deserve to be the custodians of the planet?

Okay, I won't go on any more about the virus, but I wanted to share my feelings. Thank you for indulging me and listening!

I am not yet happy to start walking about along the roads, but that time is coming, so for now all my photos are taken in my garden, and here's a few things currently blooming and growing in my cottage garden.

I could preface each of these with "it's my favourite flower", for I love them all!

Arum Lily in bud

Violets along a wall

Now, two Christmases ago, the first Christmas after my darling Mum died, I did not feel like doing anything to celebrate.  I did not decorate, but ended up buying a living tree which I garlanded with fruit and nuts, and birdseed, placed outside my cottage door.  The tree did not do well, and despite repotting it has not thrived.  The other day I decided to tip it out and use the giant pot it is in for something else, so imagine my delight to find it is suddenly sprouting tiny green buds all over!

Native fern

Aquilegia or Grannies' Bonnet

Libertia peregrinans or Wandering iris

offshoot! Free plants!

Aquilegia

I just adore the delicate colouring on this pansy

London Pride {I can just hear Noel Coward singing}

Pennywort or Navelwort

Native fern

Pennywort flower

There will be many pictures of flowers and probably very little else on my blog in the coming months, but with each new bloom comes a promise of hope, a promise of a future that we must not mess up. We're being given a second chance, let's not let nature, or ourselves, down.

Until next time
Deborah xoxo

Springtime and Gratitude

Hello Friends!

I hope you are all keeping safe and well?  These lockdown conditions are not easy for any of us, not even for one of hermit like tendencies such as me.  I hope you are finding ways to keep your spirits up?

Although there is a lot, and I mean an awful lot, of work to be done in my garden before it is properly back on track, I had hoped to get my raised beds in order this Spring.  They're new, so need assembling along with compost and topsoil to fill.  Can you believe that I missed getting the compost delivered by less than half a day!  With lockdown looking set to continue, the possibilities of securing some now look remote.

Thankfully, I found some bags from last year, but nowhere near enough to fill even one raised bed, so I must prioritise how I will use it.  My only way forward now is pots.  Not my preferred way, but if I can produce enough salad crops {leaves, beetroot, spring onions and radish} in a few pots, it will be a good thing.  I found a packet of watercress seeds.  Watercress is apparently very high in nutritional value, and I like it, so that is a priority crop.  I have a couple of dustbins that have soil in, so I will try my runner beans in those.  I also think I might empty the compost pile, for there might be something good in there!

Everything else, my berries for example, will now have to rely on what would normally be the supplemental feeding.  I won't get a lot, but I will get something and for that I will be grateful.

Here are a few flower photos from the garden this week.

Wednesday this week saw a full moon super moon, also known as a Pink Moon.  No, the moon did not turn pink, apparently it is so called after the many pink wild flowers found at this time of year.

I took the first photo on Tuesday evening, it was cloudy and shortly after this was taken the clouds covered the view.

On Wednesday evening the sky was clear, and the super moon, the biggest of this year, filled my lens and spilled out of the frame.

Quite a difference between two evenings, don't you think?

I have been puttering a little with some media.  Here's a little countryside inspired picture I made with paints and stamps.  Umbels and seed heads are a particular favourite of mine.  Just faffing about with no direction in mind, just playing with what I have helps take my mind off the frightening situation in which we find ourselves now.

I am trying to find my muse, slowly but surely it will return, in this I trust.  I am starting to bake bread again, and began yesterday by baking my Hot Cross Buns for this Easter weekend.  They were not that bad considering I used out of date flour and yeast, but I will not waste food if I can help it.  Flour and yeast are both in short supply right now, so the nation must be baking!  This can only be a good thing.

Each day on Twitter, I try to post five things to be grateful for.  I find this a positive and often uplifting thing to do, reflecting each evening on five things that made me happy or for which I am deeply grateful.  If you are on Twitter I am @BeingMyHappy.

Stay Safe, Stay Well, My Friends!

Until next time
Deborah xo

A New World

Hello Friends!

It's a new world, a strange world, in which we now live.  It's like waking up every morning into a reality of living in a B Class science fiction movie, and a new normal for each of us emerges as we disinfect the living daylights out of everything in an effort to destroy the hidden enemy, and we fight over toilet paper {does anyone know why?} and keep away from everyone.

In the midst of all this chaos, fear, and madness, the world still turns about us, though we may not notice as much as we did.  If we are lucky, we can still chat to our neighbours over the garden wall, strictly keeping our distance.

The clocks have sprung forward, the days are lengthening, and we cling with fervent hope to the day when this living nightmare will be over, but those days are a long way off.

My garden ticks and tocks the moments away, and although there is not much to show, there have been some moments.  Here are a few things in bloom.

Camellias, big and blousy, always boldly bright, and the pink are nearly over, the red just starting to take off

The Pieris gives a bright and bold depth of red to the border as the new waxy looking leaves grow and glow in the warm Spring sunshine

My beloved Pasque flower surprised me by suddenly opening this week.  You know I will wax lyrical over this in the coming weeks

A perfect, early Spring evening, peaceful, clear and crisp, in a darkening night sky.  The westering day fades in an ombre blue sky that seeps into shades of plum on the distant horizon.  Above our heads sat the new, crescent moon, smiling sweetly at Venus, the Evening Star, as she shimmers, a tiny and distant diamond of hope in the gloaming.

Of late, we are seeing more colour in our sunsets too, and the plummy shades tinged with mango and raspberry are delicious to watch each evening

I hope you are keeping safe in isolation.  Remember, you are not stuck indoors, you are SAFE indoors and that we are all in this together, doing our bit to help the NHS cope in the days and weeks to come.

Until next time
Deborah xo

Changes

Hello Friends

In stating the obvious, I have not been here in a while.  The reason is this: despite having comment moderation in place, I am having regular issues with spammers.  Comment moderation does not deter them, and I announced on my Twitter feed that I intend to delete this blog, as it seemed the only way forward.  However, several request not to do so resulted in Ragged Robin kindly suggesting to me that instead of deleting, why don't I just make the blog "private".  I didn't know you could do this, so in a few days this blog will be made "private".  At the moment I am not entirely sure what this means, or entails, but I hope you will bear with me while I work this all out!

I may start shorter, daily posts rather than the time consuming longer ones I usually do too.

What is it they say?  See you on the flip side!  I hope you'll still be there.

Until next time
Deborah xoxo

Vintage Handkerchiefs

Hello Friends!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Happy New Year!

I am not going to write much today, I am feeling rather lazy having greedily devoured a surfeit of chocolate which now forms a large part of my blood group.  I am still not sure what day of the week it is, feeling as if it is the eighth or ninth Saturday since Christmas.  The days seem to run into one and I shall be glad when normality, whatever that is, returns on Monday.

The chocolate is eaten; the cheese is all gone.  Please send reinforcements, we're going to a dance. Or is that "send three and fourpence, we're going to advance"?  Can we survive without chocolate until Easter?  But wait, there's Valentine's Day soon, but is it soon enough?  I think the chocolate withdrawal is getting to me.

Recently, I found a box full of handkerchiefs, vintage ones, so really lovely things to look at.  Some have patterns woven in to the fabric {see the green check one, at the bottom} others have beautiful embroidery, drawn thread work, or lace adornments.   One is worked in cross stitch, and the back is almost as meticulous as the front {as good embroidery should be!}

I am laundering all I have found and thinking of what use I can make of them.  Some are far too delicate to use now, so I must find a way of preserving them.  Others, such as the green check one, are fine and sturdy so can be put to their intended purpose; there is something genteel about an embroidered, cotton handkerchief, and I do so like to use a proper handkerchief, relics of a bygone age and saving the planet one sneeze at a time.

Until next time
Deborah xo

A Cliff~top Nativity

Hello Friends!

It is cold out today, cold with a determined and brisk breeze, and grey clouds scudding across the afternoon sky, but at least it is dry, well, dry~ish, for there is a dampness in the air that seeps into our bones, the kind of bone seeping cold that thankfully only comes on a few days a year, and which even the keen westerly wind can't whisk away.  Despite this, I wrapped up warm in my new, insulated, long coat, I donned a warm hat, scarf and gloves, picked up my camera and set off out the door.

The back roads and paths are awash with puddles, and water is draining from the fields and running in rivulets all over the roads; the coast path is a mud bath!  Care must be taken with every step, puddle jumping the order of the day, but still I continued on for I had a single purpose in mind.

Near where I live there is a unique, quaint and tiny chapel, built in the 1930's, which sits atop the high cliffs that look out across Saint Bride's Bay and into the wild Atlantic Ocean.

It seats barely a dozen people, and I don't think it is used very often for services for the nuns live in an adjacent convent with it's own small internal chapel, but they care and look after this small gem of religious significance with great love and care as if it were in daily use.  It is a true gem, and only a few minutes walk away from the majestic {whopping mediaeval} St David's cathedral in the nearby inland valley. I think they make an awesome pair indeed!

My darling Mum was once a bridesmaid to her best friend who was wed here many decades ago on a cold and stormy winter day in February.  I remember her telling me how cold they all were in their bridesmaids' dresses.

To bring you some perspective, I am standing on the coast path to take this first photo; facing south east to the chapel, the greenery of summer along the coast is now dying back, but still brings heavenly colour by way of a rich, red, rusty brown.  I love it!

and turning left, to the south and west, this is the view over Beddau Non {Non's Grave} and St Bride's Bay, next stop the Atlantic Ocean just over yonder beyond the rolling brambles and crashing waves ~~~

As we approach the chapel inside the low hedge, the lawn is green and well tended, although there is evidence of moles, the little gentlemen in grey velvet!  I may return to the origins of that saying in a later blog.

Shall we go inside?

As we come to the door, these two signs bring great joy.  First that dogs are welcome, and second that the dear nuns have great compassion and consideration for the swallows that nest inside, in the rafters, during Spring.  How wonderful!

This is what I came to see today, the nuns have placed a sweet nativity upon the unique stone altar!  I think it is the prettiest I have seen in a very long time.

I lit a candle on the small stand to the left of the arch, you can just see it.  I find great comfort in lighting a candle in church.

This is a close up of the stained glass window that overlooks the altar.  I believe it commemorates the arrival of Saint Non, mother of Saint David, in Brittany.  There is a strong connection between this area and Brittany, through Saint Non who died and is buried there,  I plan to research and share in a future blog.

Returning outside, here is the view on a cold winter's afternoon from the chapel door facing west across the land to the Atlantic Ocean.  The coast path is just beyond the hedge.

Until next time
Deborah xo