Oh my darling columbine

These flowers greeted a grieving child, the spring after she lost her Daddy, her home, most of her Mummy: the year she turned eight, the year life turned upside down. They have a special place in my heart

Petersfield was a long way away and in Hastings, in Ganna's house, life was utterly changed. Mummy was out at work all the time, but behind Ganna’s house, in the garden, that secret, quiet space, there were columbine and grape hyacinths, and space to heal.We have a new variety, self seeded, in our front garden. Such delicate tones

They give me great joy

things with meaning

I come from folk who save things. This could be called hoarding, but perhaps, for us, it is more about keeping connections alive. My grandmother, mother and I all experienced sudden loss of a parent/husband, coupled with the loss of our home environment in which that loved person once existed.

In Ganna's case, she and her two sisters lost their father when they were teenagers. In my case I was seven. Our respective mothers then had to reconstitute their lives without their husbands and with dependent young people. In Ganna's case, she and her sisters came from Ireland to St Leonards on Sea, leaving their old lives behind ands starting again. In my case, Mum and I had to up sticks and move to Hastings from our happy life in Petersfield. She went back to full time work and life went on, because that was what one did in the sixties, no grief counselling or even a sense that it was needed. I cannot imagine how hard that was for her. As life has continued, even those two loved women have become lost to me.

I wonder whether these losses have meant that remnants of that old life take on an almost talismanic power; keepers of the past. As long as these curtains, our dining table, that chair are here, then the past, which includes that lost loved one, isn't entirely gone. The article has known their touch.

There is a laundry basket: wicker, worn, much used. It may well be 90 years old, bought when Ganna was first married in the 1920s. In recent years the wicker ties holding the lid on have  creaked a greeting to me each time I pop another piece of laundry in. I have known it for most of my life. Recently, the final tie holding lid and basket together died. The lid became a separate entity.

I sensibly, if a little wistfully, ordered a replacement. The replacement arrived, but the old basket remained in the way, for weeks. I couldn't face ditching it! Then a thought occurred. I store upright things in my craft room, cardboard rolls, baking parchment, rolls of needlepoint canvas and the like. The basket is the perfect height to hold them.

So now a muddled corner has more clarity, the bigger muddle surrounding it has been rationalised. But most importantly, I sill have that battered, venerable old basket, which existed in different bedrooms through loss and moves, still with the touch of Ganna's and Mum's hands captured in its weave.

I expect I should have just broken it up and burned it, or taken it to the tip.

I'm glad I didn't ...

 

A little light tidying up

It is that time of year again; days get shorter, evenings milder, and things need a bit of a tidy up before winter gets here.

Yesterday was the escallonia hedge by the garage/workshop. Virginia Woolf had a fondness for escallonia, I'm not so sure. It has the most annoying habit of sending out great long bushy shoots with bee friendly clusters of flowers right at the very tip. It makes the car jump each time I park it. My preference would be for the hedge to evoke the smooth and rolling Downs, but I haven't yet found a pruning regime that encourages this (the Woolf's gardener at Talland House knew better, but I'll bet bees never frequented those straight tidy hedges). I tolerate the untidiness because oh the bees do love the flowers. My compromise this year is to take off shoots which were tickling the car door and bonnet, but leave those long ones at the top so the bees still have some nectar. I'll take those out once flowering has really finished and tidy it all up.

It does look much neater now, apart from the Fraggle Rock hairdo!

Yesterday the Japanese anemone in the back garden promised me good gardening weather. Today there was less sun, but it was also cooler.

First, another result of being too tolerant. There is a veritable forest of little fennel plants gleefully sprouting in the gravel. They smelt delicious as I plucked them up.

One of my favourite flowers, Love-in-a-Mist, popped themselves here from next door, much to my delight. I love the straight stems and contrast between the soft buff of the seedpods against the dark fence ..... but they really should come down

After that, I created a little bower where cyclamen peep out at the bottom of the tree, and black cats snooze. Can you see him?

Perhaps here?

Definitely here!

Happy cat

garden regulars

A couple of shots from the past two days.

This young fox has bee a regular in the past several months, sometimes with a sibling, sometimes with (we assume) Mum and sometimes with both. It is such a pleasure to watch them grow from the fluffy stage towards teenage sleekness I think he or she is assessing the water in the bird bath. Obviously popular as a couple of weeks ago we found the whole thing on its side on the path, and imagined with amusement the vulpine alarm as the thing toppled and spilled water everywhere! A quick hop, skip and scamper we suspect

And these avian folk are regular visitors. Columbus sits at the top of his tree with wife or child, awaiting The Man's delivery of breakfast. 

and the ring necked doves are often to be found sunning themselves on the back of the "cricket chair", always a pair, though we usually have a group of up to six wandering round, awaiting breakfast. 

Best go chivvy The Man to his morning tasks

in the pink

The garden is rewarding us hugely at the moment, despite the incredibly dry season. Spring always seems to be very much about blue and yellow. Early summer in our garden brings a lot of pink in all its forms.

The roses are being remarkable

The paeony is just about holding its own

Then there are actual "pinks" starting to fade a little with lack of water

In geographical mood there is the deep magenta of knautia macedonica

and the wonderful gladiolus byzantinus by the pond, being admired by the little water boy - I love the way it sings with the blue of the geranium

More magenta from the lychnis, which always threatens to take over, but which was, apparently, my father's favourite plant so I allow it free reign in memory of him

and the self seeded opium poppy with its sculptural seedheads, much loved by the bees 

There are, of course, other colours out there, but I thought you'd enjoy a bit of pink

The weather has been incredibly dry, no rain for about a month, though there might be some in the next couple of days. Because we have the pond and several other drinking stations dotted about, we have had continuous activity from our local birds including this delicate little goldcrest taking an early morning bath

and the goldfinch who pours out his glorious rippling song from the top of the spruce

I was lucky enough to catch s flash of blue as the jay took off for the peanut feeder - a quicker shutter speed would have helped!

and there has been a lot of scampering under the garden seats by these two squirrels - now I wonder what that's all about!

I hope you have enjoyed a little snippet of garden colour from this hot and dry corner of the Sussex coast

Transition

The garden is evolving from the wonders of daffodils and tulips, primroses and other spring delights that were here a few weeks ago.

and robins are singing their courting songs, hanging around in the morning waiting for the Man to provide their breakfast, often within a few feet of his busy hands

It is in one of my favourite phases just now, where the maple, ceanothus and rhododendron create the most ravishing sequence of colours,

The forget me nots are in their final phase of flowering, challenging me to delay puling them out because there are still a few blooms, but also being rather thuggish about drowning out everything else with their ticklish furred leaves

the garden seat beckons, and the little water boy is guarding the pond with its conical cover very carefully. 

cornflower sparkle against the lime green of euphorbia

maple leaves and their flower sprigs catch the slanting sunlight

and in the front garden granny’s bonnets are nodding their heads as the sun sinks in the sky, 

and the iris are creating fleur-de-lis of light against the fence.

What joy

Japan's beauty

It has been a while since I wrote. In the between time I have been away on a great adventure, long awaited and much anticipated: two weeks on a textile tour of Japan. I must confess to some trepidation beforehand; a long flight, potential for being fed "squiggly things" (I am a food coward), potential for offending the Japanese folk through misunderstanding. All nonsense of course, the trip was just marvelous, and included a large and inspiring amount of textile related visits and workshops. It also included two breathtaking gardens; one at the Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi, and the second, the Korakuen Gardens in Okayama.

The first are advertised as a "living Japanese painting" and indeed they were. They are viewing gardens, rather than ones to stroll through. One walked through the museum of art finding numerous points in the journey to stop and take in the perfection and pristine presentation of these wonderful arrangements of trees, moss, water and gravel, finely crafted gateways and borrowed landscapes. I confess to enjoying the gardens a great deal more than the art on the walls!

The following day we visited Okayama Castle. 

Before climbing the hill to the castle itself, we spent far too short a time in the beautiful Korakuen Gardens just below, where we were allowed to stroll, stop and wonder. After an initial query about the lack of green, we were told that the golden brown of the grass was quite normal in early spring, and not the result of a dry winter, simply the way Japanese grass grows. Again, there was such harmony in the arrangement of carefully manicured trees, bridges, lanterns and water. The reflections doubled the pleasure of the view and of course, there were the flickering bodies of gold and silver koi moving beneath the ripples, one rather gorgeous terrapin and the stately, swaying trunks of bamboo. 

All too soon we were called away to visit the castle. A few members stayed in the gardens and I was almost sorry I hadn't done the same. While a marvelous trip, there were too few moments to just stand and reflect, so I am perhaps getting more pleasure from revisiting in my photographs than I did while I was there. I hope you enjoy then too.