Tag: garden

Come into the garden, Maud…

Apologies for the dearth of posts this past week or so.

We’ve done a bit of travelling and are now heavily involved in a village event coming up at the end of May.

The weather here in Dorset is absolutely splendid and it’s wonderful to get out in the garden and soak up the sights and sounds. Flowers are bursting forth from lush green foliage, bees are buzzing and blackbirds are singing their dear little hearts out.

I made the mistake of watching some of the Chelsea Flower Show programmes on the BBC this week.

One was probably enough, to be honest.

I mean, I love seeing the incredible gardens and plants on display but there is only so much I can take of grinning presenters we are clearly meant to know (their names only appear in the credits at the end) and celebrities I have never heard of.

Grayson Perry described Chelsea along the lines of being Middle England’s ‘Glastonbury for people who wear linen’, and he’s not wrong.

There is no way I could cope with all those crowds. I get slight agoraphobia just by watching it on the telly.

So this spring bank holiday weekend, I’m looking forward to spending time in my own glorious garden -small but on the way to being perfectly formed – as the sun beats down from a clear blue sky.

Enjoy the weekend, where ever you are.

Mr Blue Sky

The sun came out yesterday.

It was such a momentous sight and feeling – that blue sky, the light bringing pizzazz to the flower border and the warmth chilling even the coldest of hearts.

The daffodils seemed to be laughing with joy. The hellebores were positively gloating.

The roses said ‘prune me, prune me!’ and I managed to fill up the garden waste bin with ease.

The dogs chased each other round the garden and then lay, exhausted, on the chippings on the path, Edgar popping up only when he thought I might have a biscuit to share (I didn’t).

And, then, today, we’re back to normal, with grey skies, driving drizzle and worldwide horrors taking centre stage.

It’s the kind of Sunday- in this part of deepest Dorset at least – to listen to the gentle tunes of Cerys Matthews and Guy Garvey on BBC 6 Music.

Ian Dury’s just struck up Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, which has to be a good sign.

According to the weekly weather forecast, Wednesday’s looking promising.

In the meantime, I’m putting off putting away the winter woollies to make way for the palette of spring, which was one of my jobs today. It just seems too soon.

Anyway, have a great week.

Love, Maddie

How did you use that extra hour?

It’s the day after the clocks went back and it’s one of those Sundays that seems to have gone on and on.

I was up early and did all the ironing, fed the dogs, order a dog harness, water bowl, poo bags and three motion sensor lights for the landing, made a pot of tea, scored eight on my daily popquiz – Popquizza.com – and finished an episode of The Rest Is Politics US before the clock showed seven-fifteen.

By eight o’clock, I’d walked the dogs and was ready for breakfast.

I’ve managed to tick loads of things off my to-do list, although by three o’clock this afternoon I was flagging and the dogs were doing circles because they were so hungry.

Mr Grigg has dug up four lots of leggy lavender for me to replace, and there is more planting to come.

I’ve also gone mad with the bulbs again, ordering with gay abandon from Farmer Gracy and then bricking it when a massive box the size of Matabeleland arrived on the doorstep with a smug look on its face.

It’s half term in Dorset this coming week but no doubt the weather will be dreadful, so the chance of me finding room for 90 narcissi bulbs is pretty remote.

Two years ago, I ordered so many tulips I had to enlist the support of Number One Son and the tiny grandson who waddled around in dear little wellies and was armed with a lethal dibber.

We managed to plant them all but, of course, I was away when they flowered, so I missed the lot.

With just five days of October left, it’s been a busy month.

And now the nights are darker, it’s time for slowly simmered stews, log fires and a ridiculous binge on all four series of Stranger Things to remind myself of the plot and premise before the new one drops at the end of November.

I’m going to try to pull my socks up and blog at least twice a week, but as my late mother used to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That’s about it.

Maddie x

A taste for the grotesque

I’m partial to garden statuary, particularly things which are tucked away and surprise you as you wander around.

I love the way that stone – even reproduction stuff – weathers and how it looks against the colours and textures of blotchy yellow lichens, luxuriant green moss and glossy ivy.

Here in Dorset, my garden includes a quiet courtyard where you’ll find numerous faces peeping out at you.

These faces are properly called ‘grotesques’ although in Somerset they’re known colloquially as hunky punks.

Years ago, I remember my mother telling me that an eye-level hunky punk on the west door of our village church was a former choirboy turned to stone. The thought terrified me so I religiously went to church every Sunday to sing with my four older siblings in the choir.

These days, I’m no longer frightened of hunky punks but I still make a point of singing loud and proud whenever the occasion calls for it.

According to Wikipedia, in architecture, a grotesque is a fantastic or mythical figure carved from stone and fixed to the walls or roof of a building. It includes the chimera, which depicts a mythical combination of multiple animals – like the centaur, with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse, and the griffin, which has the body, back legs and tail of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.

Grotesques in architecture are different from gargoyles as they’re purely decorative and don’t have a water spout.

Some scholars think grotesques are reminders of the separation of the earth and the divine.

They’ve been key elements of ecclesiastical architecture since medieval and renaissance times and are said to protect what they guard, such as a church, from evil or harmful spirits.

Despite the plethora of grotesques in my garden, their presence doesn’t seem to deter the slugs, which have made short work of my newly-planted marigolds.

The arrival of Spring

There are rooks flapping overhead, twigs in their beaks and heading for nest-building central.

A pair of male blackbirds are sparring vigorously, spiralling in an upward and downward dance which goes unnoticed by drivers on their way to work and children who are late for school.

The daffodils and narcissi proclaim ‘we are here‘ and the tulips emerge from the soil, ready for their chance to shine further down the line.

In Lush Places, someone has mended the church clock. It’s been stuck at the same time for ages and its chiming of the hour has been a thing of the past.

But then, on Sunday morning, I passed by just as it struck nine o’clock. It was if I’d suddenly been hurled into the present, the bell an aural reminder of the arrival of Spring.

After a sunny day here yesterday, with garden clearing a priority before the waste bin is collected this morning, the weather has turned grey and dismal. A meh sort of day.

But still the blackbird sings his joyful and mellow song, ostensibly to impress potential lady friends but, in our world, causing us to stop, close our eyes and soak up the sounds of nature.

In the garden, the hellebores are doing their thing, which is truly wondrous.