Yearning for the beach

The weather has turned windy and rainy after six weeks or so with hardly any rain. On the warmest days, I would have loved to go to the beach, but what with the lockdown due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic, it hasn't been sensible to go there. I've missed the sensory pleasure of being there (although not missed the inevitable crowds). My yearning gave rise to this ....

Au bord de la mer

Hot bright sunlight on my face

Drying salty hair and lashes

Legs wet with sandy splashes

Feet tingle with shingle scratches

Cool wavelets’ sea foam catches

My skirt hem like liquid lace

Walk this way ...

There was a time, which now feels like another lifetime, when walking 5 km/3.1 miles was really no problem for me. Before I had a car, I used to walk a lot more, because there was never a bus going where I needed one to go to, when I needed one. Walking was free, even if I did tend to arrive a little sweaty. But as life and the demands of household, work and leisure got busier, using a car was the only solution. I would have had to take leave from work to deal with solicitors, estate agents and banks when I bought my first house in 1991, if I hadn't had a car. But with a car, I got lots more done, and walks were more scheduled events.

Even then, I had started getting pain in my feet from arthritis, although it wasn't formally diagnosed. My GP at the time told me it was gout and if I didn't agree with his diagnosis, we had nothing more to talk about. He also said I had to lose weight and should join WeightWatchers. I explained that all the WW classes clashed with my dance classes and rehearsals, I preferred to dance. He said I should stop the classes because of my gout. It was clearly not gout (he didn't even look at my feet!) Sorry, I digress. It's one of those things which still rankles after all these years.

So back to the present day, 5k feels impossible to me now. My right knee is still painful, waking me at night, giving me stabs of pain when I'm just sitting. The trouble is, I've started to feel my lack of exercise and I know I need to move. Just standing for 20 minutes to do things like cook and wash up leaves me ready to sit down again. My legs shake, my knee gives way, my feet hurt. I'm even starting to feel it in my hips. Bloody arthritis!

But managing osteoarthritis includes strengthening the muscles around the joints and keeping them strong, and pain does not necessarily mean more damage. I have to move or seize up entirely. Use it or lose it! I used to enjoy walking, if I could go at my own pace, in good weather, with birds, trees, water and preferably without many people.

It's the time of year when everyone is signing up for walks and runs, exercise programmes, diets, going vegan or teetotal for a month. I had previously investigated 'Couch to 5k' plans before, but there seems to be an assumption that it will be for a run and that you can already walk for an hour.  Then I found a 'beginners' couch to 5k walk plan and it sounded just about right. If I can stand for 20 minutes then I should manage the five 15 minute walks in the first week. It's about 10-13 weeks long, but although it would be great to be able to do it sooner rather than later, I'm not going to pressure myself into that timescale. I've been lucky this week, with high pressure giving lovely weather instead of the high winds and rain, some of it frozen, we've been having for what seems like weeks. Months, even.

Because the idea glimmered in my brain a couple of months ago, I bought myself some new walking shoes, and a running (walking!) belt which will  hold my (now new!) mobile, house key and hanky. It has an elasticated belt, so it fits comfortably and I can tuck the sleeves of my fleece in when I get hot. I took advantage of this week's lovely weather and did 3 walks, overdoing it on the second one because I got a bit carried away; the weather was so gorgeous and there were birds to look at and dogs and their walkers to greet.

Brunel Trail: The tantalising onward view at my 1 km turn-round point

I'm tracking my walks on Strava, which shows me little maps and motivates me to do more.

My knees and feet aren't really feeling any the worse for the exercise, but the other muscles in my legs, which haven't had much use since November, really ache. I was ready for a rest day today. Then I need to do two walks and have another rest day, and see if next week I can do five 20 minute walks. I expect I will plateau for a couple of weeks, but that doesn't matter.

I'm not looking forward to the next one as much - the weather is due to change, but hopefully so too will I!

Storm Callum and Dance Madness

My neck, arms, upper back and chest are all stiff and achy today, but not from the dance weekend we had planned. I'd been looking forward to it for weeks and had, I thought, put together a good running order for the show. In the event (ha!), it had to be cancelled due to extreme weather.

I am risk-averse to the point of being cowardly. I cancel classes when a yellow severe weather warning is forecast. I know from experience that it doesn't take much to block some of the local, rural roads with flooding or a fallen tree and have attempted to go out to events anyway, exhausting myself trying to find a way round or creeping along in the fog and heavy rain. Very few are as dance-obsessed as I am, so would not go out anyway, so it's just not worth trying to run the class.

So I was a bit wary when I saw the storm warning for the weekend of the Lampeter Dance Festival, but hopeful that it wouldn't be so bad. We had Serena Ramzy, one of my teachers and a very lovely person, booked to do workshops and perform in the Saturday night show. I haven't seen her for years, so was looking forward to my weekend very much. The show was all planned and I thought I had put together quite a good running order.

When severe weather is forecast, do you cancel/postpone your event as soon as you know, and risk the weather warning coming to nothing? Or go ahead, with the possibility that by the time it's clear the event should have been cancelled/postponed, it's too late anyway? So many times recently, the severe weather warnings have been updated or disappeared entirely, or I have been out in it and the local weather didn't warrant the warning.

By the time we knew that it was going to be bad, it was a bit late to cancel, so I packed the car and some lunch and tea-time food and drink, checked the roads and flood alerts for road closures (none found), made sure I had my phone and charger, picked up my friend Rachel, and set off in the blustery wind and lashing rain.
It wasn't until we were half-way to Carmarthen that we could see water lying on the fields. In Carmarthen, the level of the River Towy was alarmingly high and the road running parallel to the old quay was already flooded and closed. As we drove north, it became clear that it was worse weather in Carmarthenshire than Pembrokeshire. Water was coming off the fields, bringing stones and other bits with it and forming ponds on the roads. There were a few people out in the vile weather, trying to clear drains of leaves.

I'd left a little early and we were still on time, despite having to navigate deep puddles and the road completely awash at New Inn. We got as far as a place called Cilblaidd, just outside Cwmann, when the traffic stopped. A monster of a 4x4 with good ground clearance was coming from the other direction. The driver wound down his window and said that there was no way that cars would be able to get through on the bridge ahead, and we should just turn round. I relayed this information on to the car next to us, who had pulled in to a little lay-by. They shrugged and went on ahead, so I used the lay-by to turn around. As I drove off, I could see them in my rear-view mirror, stopping, and then reversing and turning around themselves.

I was a bit dithery after that. What should I do about all the stuff for the show? Could we find another way around? With the worsening roads and weather, should we even try?

Even before we got back to Llanybydder, there was a place where the flooded road was deepening fast and the car coughed and almost stalled, which would have left us in the water. Rachel was a perfect passenger, letting me know how things were on the passenger side of the car, doubtless as stressed as I was, but no complaints or even a peep when I gunned the engine and shouted at the car 'no no no no NO!' and got us going out of the flood. I considered holing up in a pub that we passed but pressed on to a garage to use the toilet and see if there were any updates on other routes. One of the staff was on Facebook, picking up videos of raging water and updates about fallen trees and closed roads. Along the route, the heavy rain was playing havoc with the phone signal and I couldn't get live traffic updates, or call my friend Rose to let her know what we were doing. Rachel took care of the phone, looking for map and Facebook updates, messages and texts, whenever patchy signal allowed.

We decided the best thing to do would be to go home, back to my place, where we could hang out with the cats, eat our packed food, watch the telly and generally vegetate for a few hours. We got back down the Carmarthen, where Pensarn trading estate, which was just heavily puddled on the outward journey, was flooded (a few hours later, the river overtopped the 8-foot high flood walls at Llangunnor).

Once home, we could get updates. It seemed that the Bridge and Co-op on the way into Lampeter were already flooding at 9.30 am, after I'd set off. Llechryd bridge, which is usually a problem, wasn't just flooded but the water was running over the top of it, just the tops of road signs visible. The amount of water coming down the rivers was incredible, and many places were flooded up to at least a metre. And there was a sad fatality when a bus stopped because of a fallen tree, and a young man got out to see what was going on and was caught by a landslip.

And the dance studio where the workshops were based in Lampeter had also flooded. The whole event was cancelled. Even though the weather on the Sunday was due to be fine, with no dance studio and many of the roads still impassable, it was impossible.

It must have been a moment's madness to think this would be okay; things could have gone so badly wrong! The tension from driving for three hours in lashing rain, blustery winds and negotiating flooded roads means that I'm still aching, a few days later. Next time I shall listen to my instincts.

Heatwave!

Blazing June really lived up to the name this year. Instead of the usual change at midsummer into a pattern of wet westerlies, the rain has been noticeably absent for over a month, until yesterday morning, when, for a few hours, it varied between drizzle and downpour.

It was fine but still chilly at the end of May, the Lilac and the Ladies Smock a fortnight late. At the start of June, good weather was forecast and there was the usual rubbish reporting of temperatures in the high twenties, as if that were everywhere and not just the home counties. At the end of the first week of June, the warmth had begun to break through and it suddenly seemed as though we'd caught up after the late spring.

I don't remember any rain until the morning of 17 June, when there had already been a little shower when I went to empty the moth trap, and I finished that just in time before another light shower.  I have a snapshot of Xena sprawled on a bit of old wood in the back garden, surrounded by damp soil, taken on 20 June. I think that might have been the morning I found about 2mm of water in a bucket. I found this website quite useful as an aide-memoire, but it only shows humidity, rather than rainfall. Then no rain, it just got hotter and hotter until we had days and days of weather in the mid-twenties, too hot to work in the garden for long. This was cool compared to what the home counties had to endure. The poor cats spent all their time trying to find patches of cool shade to sprawl in, often in the long grass, under the hedge, in a shady spot on the patio, or flopped onto the tiles in the utility room.

On 29 June I was fed up with feeling as though I was melting and declared a beach afternoon. A friend and I went to Broadhaven, where we set up the UV shelter, covered ourselves in factor 50 and had a picnic and a swim as the tide came in over the hot sand. The water felt a bit chilly - reported on the lifeguards' board as 14 degrees. I'd found my pocket kite and took it along, but there was scarcely any wind, so it would not stay up.

Eventually, on Sunday 1 July, there was a yellow weather warning for thunderstorms. I watched the lightning maps for a while as the storm played south of Exeter and then made its way up to Somerset to give a Chard a bit of a show before it fizzled out. Anyone on holiday in Brittany and Normandy would have had to shelter from tremendous thunderstorms, the maps thick with yellow and red dots from lightning strikes! The weather warning here came to nothing. Another one for last Friday was cancelled too. Some showery rain was forecast, and I leaned on my fork in the front garden, sweaty face turned to the sky as the first drops fell ... and then stopped.

It feels as though I've spent weeks with sweat dripping down my back and into my eyes. Yesterday evening, a cool 14 degrees tempted me to put on a jumper. The forecast is still reasonably fine, cloudy with sunny spells and several degrees cooler, with another light shower due later.

There was a time during the winter/early spring, when the ground was completely waterlogged. I remember sploshing my way down the garden, with water pooling on the surface in places. Now, any dampness is locked in the baked clay soil. Worms have tied themselves in knots to aestivate deeper in the soil. Plants without tap roots and which like damp soils, like Primroses and Lady's Smock, have struggled and in some cases died. I'm not sure whether my new, expensive roses will make it, either, despite my best efforts to keep the pots watered. On the other hand, the brambles have loved it, sending up new shoots from their deep roots.

The Big Butterfly Count starts this Friday and schools break up for summer holidays next week. I wonder if decent summer weather will continue, or will the westerlies bring rain? We could do with a downpour to clear the air.

Time Lapse

My blogging has lapsed somewhat, largely replaced by doing. While the weather was good, I spent spare time out in the garden, (currently) marked by my last published post in August, although there are (quite) a few draft posts which get looked at and tweaked from time to time.

When at my desk, I'm invariably working, still editing the magnum opus which came my way at the start of the year. It's a fascinating book set in 1949 Ethiopia, but irritatingly wordy, with dialogue in five languages and occasional words in a further two. The typescript was an incredible mess of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors, which are gradually falling away under my relentless nit-picking. I keep reminding myself not to over-correct or change the writer's style, that it's not my job to fact check - but inevitably, I've picked up on some anachronisms which needed further research and discussion. It's still very long, the equivalent of five average-sized novels, so it's undecided yet whether this will be one novel or perhaps a series of three or more. I'm really enjoying the work (although the amount of work I'm doing is disproportionate to what I'll eventually be paid!) and loving the way my relationship with the author is developing. I am learning so much about language and editing, and more than I ever imagined I wanted to know about Ethiopia!

I have also received a PhD thesis to proof-read, started earlier this year and now in its final stages. I've also quoted for another. Both have been affected by the supervisors' requests for rewrites. I've previously seen this 'you get it ready to publish, then I'll make suggestions for changes', which has the potential to become a soul-destroying, endless loop of draft versions and self-questioning - am I/is my work good enough yet? The answer, at least in my opinion for the thesis I'm working on, is 'this is awesome and you are utterly amazing!', but I guess the rarefied heights of academia have a more jaded and demanding attitude.

A combination of changeable weather and the conflict of what else I 'should' be doing has largely kept me out of the garden. The days flicker by and only time will reveal the cumulative effects of barely perceptible daily changes, like the comparison of first and last drafts, or the start and end of a time-lapse film. 

Ravaging Hordes ...

I've had a break from doing much work in the garden for the past few weeks, due to changeable weather and a preoccupation with editing work, organising the preloved sales and technical side of the Cardigan Belly Dance Festival, and attending Joon Dance Summer school, of which more in other posts.

Before work and weather stopped play, the garden was slowly being transformed as I stripped away the grass and weeds and started to mark out the limits of the sections.
The vegetables section is the furthest along, with only a little more digging to do until it's all under cultivation bar a strip along the hedge. Providing, of course, that I can keep up with the weeding. I can't believe how much bramble keeps popping up, when I thought I had dug it out. As the original freestanding monster compost heap got to the same height as the compost bins, I decided to start building another turf stack/heap in the other back corner, where I had to dig out some bramble, and this is now a good size too. Compost bin #3 is looking ready to bag up, but there isn't space for a couple more bags behind the shed quite yet. Soon though, soon!

In the meantime, I've had all of the (first sown) Early Onward peas, enjoying them fresh from the pod, and the resown main crop peas have just become ready. I've also been enjoying broad beans, although sadly not the glut I was hoping for. Some of the plants have chocolate spot and others didn't seem to have any flowers! And then, there are some with big pods which look as though they should have beans in, but there's nothing inside. I'm not sure what that's due to; the weather has been quite changeable. Sometimes the rain is really only just enough to wet the surface and although under the surface seems quite damp, perhaps the moisture locked in the clay-based soil hasn't been accessible enough for the beans to flower and set pods
The runner and climbing French beans have started producing as well, although I was a bit concerned at first when the runner beans had lots of lovely scarlet flowers and no noticeable beans set (often an issue with runner beans). My neighbours probably think I'm completely batty, wandering around the garden telling the bees to go enjoy the bean flowers!

The sweetcorn and butternut squash plants look happy, although I wonder whether the sweetcorn will set cobs properly. Although they were all sown and planted at the same time, with the same conditions, some plants are more advanced than others and the male flowers at the top started producing pollen before there was any evidence of female tassels to collect it. Then last week, we had a day where it absolutely poured with rain - 37 mm! The roads were becoming rivers and ponds as I drove back from Milford Haven at lunchtime. It would have just washed all the sweetcorn pollen away. It's raining again today, due to be fine tomorrow. I might have to step in and pretend to be the wind!

The bush beans have been almost completely ravaged by slugs and snails, which have also been making inroads into the courgettes and have eaten the bush cucumbers to little stumps. I'm not sure, but I think perhaps my last remaining sunflower plant has also been nobbled. The cornflowers, aubergines, pepper plants and my salad leaves have been completely wiped out by the little blighters. That cut-and-come-again lettuce was looking so good and I was looking forward to it, then it all disappeared over a particularly damp and rainy night! The molluscs don't seem interested in the tomatoes. I wonder why certain plants seem to be irresistible, and others perhaps unpalatable?
I need to pay more attention to slug and snail control. I have been lobbing lots of  snails over the back fence, but started to wonder if they just come back. Perhaps I should mark a few snail shells just to see. I wonder if there is any research on this. Or maybe, since they seem to be eating all my veg, I should just eat snails instead?

I've been more watchful this year against the gooseberry sawfly which completely defoliated the gooseberry bushes last year and thought I was doing well, but having not been in the garden much over the past couple of weeks, I've found they've visited and wreaked havoc while my back was turned.

A few weeks ago, I called to see a neighbour, who very generously gave me lots of Welsh poppy seeds and offered me some strawberries too, but I assured her that I had some ripening nicely. The following morning, I went out to pick some and couldn't find any. A couple of days later, sitting on the swingseat with the cats and quietly enjoying my coffee, a terribly tatty-looking Mr Blackbird came down onto the patio pots. Speaking softly but firmly to the cats, I reminded them not to chase and they were very good, staying close to me. He kept an eye on us as he made his way to the strawberry pots and found a single, ripe strawberry, which he pecked and then pulled off the plant and ate. He looked at me as if to say 'Well, where are the rest of them?'. Poor lad, I think his need was greater than mine!

I didn't have a camera with me when the blackbird came, nor did I have one close for another highlight. A bee landed on a spinach plant which had bolted (the beets, spinach and chard have not been a success this year), very swiftly cut a semicircular piece of leaf and flew off with it. A little while later, I saw her enjoying the garden thug campanula flowers, a female leaf-cutter bee! These bees don't strip all the foliage; I don't mind the little cosmetic damage they cause and love the idea that there may be a nest close by.

I treated myself to a few cheap plants. The poor things are still waiting to go in, but at least they seem to be surviving the ravaging hordes!

Oenothera (Evening Primrose) Sunset Boulevard, I think

 

Dolphin Day 24 June

After an extremely last minute flurry of emails and organisation, it was with a great sense of excitement that I drove up to Fishguard to join a Sea Trust Dolphin Day, to look for cetaceans and other interesting marine life on a Stena Line ferry trip to Rosslare and back. It's something I'd promised myself I would do, even though I was a little daunted by the idea that I could be a lonely, know-nothing newbie in an established group.

My small rucksack lay unused for the past few years and all but one of the zips had stuck. With some white vinegar, patience and lip balm, I managed to unstick all but one (on a side pocket), which was so corroded, the zip pull just disintegrated. Some of the elastic fastenings have also gone, but I like this rucksack because it seems the right size for me and has a raincover. Into the rucksack went a packed lunch, sunscreen, binoculars, camera, purse, phone, keys, coat, long scarf, mitts and sweatshirt. I had a late breakfast on the patio, the cats begging a share as usual, and hoped that the forecast for a slight sea state would be right. It was a bit grey, but mild enough for a T shirt. Time to go - I shut up the house, locked the front door, and it started to drizzle on me. Typical!

Only a couple of miles down the road I joined a long queue of traffic into Haverfordwest, which seemed to have no cause. Halfway to Fishguard, I started to see heavier traffic and a number of Irish lorries. The ferry was obviously in, but I still had plenty of time.

I had no idea where I was supposed to go at the ferry port, as I couldn't see a sign for the long stay car park, but I saw someone else zoom past and used the 'follow someone who looks like they know where they're going' method, ending up where I needed to be. After that, I found the group quite easily, and everything was friendly, relaxed and well-organised.

The ramp up to the ship and the three flights of steep stairs up to the deck were hard on my knees, but I soon forgot that in the fresh air. There were Cormorants, but no sign of any dolphins as we left the harbour, and I soon put on first the sweatshirt and then the coat in the damp wind. It didn't look promising as we headed toward Strumble Head, the lighthouse eventually flashing out of the murk.

Thankfully, it wasn't foggy at sea. Standing on deck with a foghorn sounding and no visibility would have been horrible. There were quite a few of us, so we divided into three groups. I was in group 2, and we spent the first and third hours on deck, and the second in an area next to the bridge. The initial greyness lifted and we sailed on into Irish sunshine, despite the wind which had us all lined up against the port side rail, as the buffeting on the starboard side was a bit much. No dolphins or other cetaceans, but the Manx Shearwaters and occasional Fulmars, Puffins and Gannets kept us entertained. Attempts to capture some of the beautiful shearwaters flying close to the ship highlighted the limitations of my little point-and-click camera. All I could see in the back screen was my face. It seems I saw a Cory's Shearwater (not that I knew it, at the time, just noted it was bigger and greyer). Occasional gulls over the ship kept an eye on anyone with a sandwich as we scanned the sea for feeding seabirds, splashes or other possible tell-tales, difficult to discern amongst the glitter and occasional white wave tops. By the time we got into Rosslare, there were still no sightings.

Tuskar Rock lighthouse

We didn't disembark, but had an entertaining quiz and a meal to while away the time. The quiz was fun, but I really need to mug up on my seabirds and cetaceans, because there were very few questions to which I knew the answers. Sorry, team, will do better next time.

I also saw some terns, but couldn't pick out enough detail to identify them, even if I'd know what I was looking for. ('Use it or lose it' applies to knowledge too!) Oh, for more powerful binoculars and a camera with a viewfinder and more zoom on the lens! I caught a Turnstone skittering away, but missed lots of other birds. That wasn't all I missed. Although there were no sightings on the way out to Rosslare, there were some on the way back. A report of a possible Risso's dolphin, too distant to be certain, generated some excitement, and a little while later, a couple of pairs of dolphins came up to the ship, and then under it. For the first pair, I was looking in entirely the wrong direction, and for the second, could see nothing but glare from the perspex deflector (a problem of being a short person!) Then nothing for ages, with Cliff of the Sea Trust groaning 'Come on, find me some dolphins!'. Eventually, I needed to find the ladies' (or perhaps that should be the heads, since we were on a ship), which was aft and 2 decks down, quipping to Cliff as I went that he was bound to see something while I was gone.

Sure enough, I got back having missed all the excitement, and Adam Tilt showed me a couple of shots on his camera which you can see (and read his post on the day) over on his blog My Life Outside. You can also see more photos and another post on the Sea Trust blog Whales in Wales.

After that flurry of activity, there were no further sightings and we arrived back in Fishguard as the light was fading. Stiff and achy from standing for the best part of six hours or more, I staggered back to the car and was back in my house by 10.15, to the relief of my fretful cats.

So, I was perhaps the only one not to see any dolphins on the trip, but so what? I had a really enjoyable day in good company. It was affordable and good value for money. Stena Line staff were stellar, and Sea Trust interns Rens and Laura were outstanding for their organisation and quiz.

I paid for it the next day! I was only a little wind-burned, so the factor 50 did its job, but found my hands were stiff from clutching my binoculars, my knees and feet were on fire from all the standing, my back hurt, even my fringe was tangled, and I felt dehydrated. Evidently, doing anything productive was going to be a bit difficult. Some serious rest was in order, something to bear in mind for next time, along with finding my Buff (the scarf was a bit too warm and cumbersome).

Yes, next time; I want to go again! So, when's the next one?

Too Much and Not Enough

A drier and sunnier than average April (although only slightly warmer, and it didn't feel like it!) gave way to a drier and sunnier (and slightly warmer) than average May.  I have a 'farmer's tan' - forearms, face and V neck. I love it when my face goes freckly!

I'm still removing the blasted brambles. The patch I'd cleared about a month ago for the main lot of broad beans and peas showed a new bramble shoot the other day, so I dug it out. It was at least a foot long! I was sure I'd got all the roots out of that area, but at least it was easier to remove from the worked ground than the stuff which is coming up through grass, the shoots only noticeable when they scratch me as I walk through. I  fold and squash the bramble into and old compost bag, and then weigh it down with a brick so that the top isn't open to light and moisture. The bag is now full, because it doesn't die easily, even when it's been left to dry and wilt in the sun. Thank goodness for my big hide gauntlets!

The cats have loved the sunny, dry weather, sprawling in the grass, on bare soil, on the patio in the sun and then in the shade under the swing seat. Greebo has been poorly; he came in limping one day at the end of April, the right hind swollen and hot. He was uncomfortable rather than in pain, but I ended up taking him to the vet just in case, after he transferred the limp over the following couple of days to his left hind, then left fore, then left hind, then right hind, then left hind again. He had anti-inflammatories, and I discouraged him from jumping anywhere for a week, but he seemed happy enough limping around the place. No sooner had the limp disappeared, than he came in one morning, threw up and a couple of hours later, was miserable with abdominal pain, lethargic and growly (always a bad sign when he growls at me and won't eat!). A dash to the vets the same afternoon saw him pumped full of painkillers, anti-emetic and broad-spectrum antibiotic, in the hope we were dealing with enteritis and not something potentially nastier. A follow-up appointment the next morning saw him still a bit lethargic, but eating, drinking and purring again, so he had a week's antibiotics. He was very good about the tiny, 'palatable' tablets, daintily taking them from my fingers as if they were sweets. One morning, I was a bit slow about getting the tablet out of the blister pack and he miaowed impatiently at me. He seems fine now, although I think his old injury of his left hind when he was young (a subluxed hip and/or knee) has led to osteoarthritis, as he now sits and lies unevenly, favouring that leg.

I meant to record butterflies, but forgot, and just enjoyed seeing the first, fresh large whites, female orange tips and once, a small copper, gleaming in the sunlight. This was sometime in mid-May, I think. Since then, they have been conspicuously absent. I have also not done any moth recording. A poplar hawkmoth came into the bedroom one night, and the cats went mad trying to catch it before I managed to get it back out of the window.

The Bunyard's Exhibition and Express broad beans are flowering and are being visited by at least 2 different species of bumble bees, neither of which are Early Bees. There are plenty of those too, working over the various flowers including the thug campanula. They're not nesting in the compost heaps this year, but presumably there's another nest around somewhere.

I wrestled my bird feeder stand out of the shed several weeks ago and set it up near the pile of hedge prunings, more in order to provide a dish of water for the birds in the dry weather than to feed them (although the feed dish has been a handy receptacle for soil pests, heh heh! There you go birdies, grub up!) I put out my last net of peanuts and fat balls, more to support the nesting parents. The blackbirds didn't nest in my hedge, nor in next door's shrubbery. Mr Blackbird seemed to disappear off to a tree somewhere in the vicinity of the garages at the north end of the terrace. Mrs Blackbird was very much more elusive. Wherever the blackbirds were nesting, they came back into the garden to feed and preen, shouting at the cats if they were around. Still, Mr Blackbird is now using the hedge and the lilac as a home base to feed 2 chicks, and presumably Mrs has a chick to feed too, somewhere. The net of food didn't last long; a few of the rooks found it and one tried very hard to unhook it, pulling it up and then standing on the end to pull some more with his beak, turning and yanking it to try to get it off, but I'd made sure it would be hard to remove. The jackdaws in my chimney have fledged in the past week too. The house sparrows beat everyone to it; their first chicks must be at least a month old now. The alpha male was strutting around importantly for about a week, while guiding the chicks around. I was quite worried for him, as he was so pumped up that he almost had no fear of me or the cats, and sat cheeping with his wings spread and tail cocked, at arms length from me as I worked in the garden.  I've seen him taking bits to the nest in the corner of my roof today, so I take it there are more chicks on the way.

The buddleias from under the washing line survived their move, as did one which had grown down into the gravel bed and then fallen over, breaking its root. One of the fuchsias has still got its leaves and is putting on new growth and I thought the others had had it, but another two have sprouted strongly from the base. I'm still trying to get the washing line to stand upright. despite wedging the spike in with bits of rubble, it somehow works loose and the line itself ends up listing. It's driving me mad. No wonder people set the spikes in concrete, I might have to do the same!

The compost (presumably my own rather than the shop-bought) has volunteered some tomato seedlings and they have been growing away strongly. I've no idea what they will be, bush or indeterminate, cherry or beefsteak, but they look happy and healthy plants so apparently they're happy outdoors. There is a tray of tomato seedlings in the growhouse, but none of the various pepper seeds have germinated. I didn't really expect the older seed to germinate, but the new little tester packs of mixed sweet peppers and a couple of different chillies should have been okay. Maybe the temperature in the growhouse is a bit too variable. Too late to resow now, as peppers really need a long growing season; I might have to buy in a couple of plants. The germination rate on the runner beans was low too, but that's okay, the germination rate on the French beans (bush and a few climbing from older seed) was great. The maincrop peas also completely failed. The seed was Hurst Greenshaft from 2 years ago, and it should still have been viable, but it just rotted, so I had to buy some more seed, (Ambassador and Vivado, since the local garden centre had sold out of Hurst) and the second sowing is just sprouting now. The earlier peas have some flowers on. The courgettes, bush and climbing beans and sweetcorn are all hardened off and waiting for me to clear some more ground, the brassicas ready to grow on, and there's the problem. The monster freestanding compost heap is at least a metre high, everything is growing like mad and the longer it takes me to dig the over the space, the more compostable material there is. Soon there will be nowhere to put it. Until, of course, it has rotted down to a beautiful rich loamy soil, and then there won't be enough of it!

As is traditional for the late May bank holiday, it poured with rain. A couple of days later, there was more rain, and spectacular thunderstorms. I lay in bed, cats snuggled against me, watching the light show outside while watching the lightning strikes appearing real time on a map (courtesy of LightningMaps.org). Since then I've only managed another couple of gardening sessions (although one was really just trying to get more bramble out rather than clearing space), it's been too wet to work. Then, last Monday's torrential rain (two inches in 24 hours!) gave way to a yellow warning of high winds on Tuesday (5-6 June), since when it's back to a spot of unsettled weather. The occasional fine half-day isn't enough to dry the soil enough to be able to work it. We needed the rain, but it's a bit all-or-nothing!

Compared to what I was used to, this space feels really small, so I shall need to get smarter about interplanting and catch-cropping. However small it feels, it's taking me forever to clear and prepare the soil. I think I've managed to clear a third of the veg area so far (because I'm also attacking the area for the flowers and herbs, which is roughly the same size, plus a 2 metre wide strip which is currently a gravel bed)

A good digging session will see about a square metre cleared; the turf taken off the top, deeper weeds dug out, hard pan broken up a bit and the various stones and bits of glass, plastic and other rubbish (most recently, the remains of a shoe!) taken out. On average, I think I manage about half a square metre at a time. But I shall clear the area, half a square metre at a time if needs be! Hopefully, it will stop raining for long enough for the soil to dry a bit and allow some more digging time!

Too much and not enough seems to be a theme at the moment. Not enough rain, then downpours. An area to clear which seems enormous, until the plants go in and eat up the space. Too much compostable material, taking a long time to create compost which will disappear across the space in no time at all. Even the cut-and-come-again salad crop doesn't come again fast enough, but I have really enjoyed being able to add my own crops, including some herbs and radishes, to my salad bowl, and love adding a mixed handful of home-grown chard, spinach and rocket to wilt down with pasta.

First garden salad of 2017, 25 May

Spring Flowers without the April Showers

The April high pressure settled in and only gave way to rainy weather a few times, so it's been a dry, cool month. Ideal gardening weather, but I had to mostly sit it out for a couple of weeks to rest my back.

I gingerly planted the short rows of pea Early Onward and broad bean Bunyard's Exhibition, grown from small 'sample packs' of seeds, creating pea supports from some of the privet branches I'd stacked after hacking back the hedge in February. I found the back pain very limiting. The slightest bend, twist or stretch and my right quadratus lumborum (QL) would go into spasm. I did some seed sowing - more broad beans, peas, a trough of cut-and-come-again salad leaves, a cauldron of rainbow radishes, rainbow chard, more sweet peas, and resowed the beetroot, which hadn't germinated from the first sowing (probably too cold, and old seed). As I pottered, I reflected that if I was out of action for long because of my back, I wouldn't have the ground ready for any of this to go into.

Bed rest and gentle exercises seemed to help. I treated myself to a cheap 'growhouse' - a tubular metal frame with shelves, topped by a transparent plastic cover with a zipped 'door', it probably gets warmer in there for anything needing to be sown 'in heat' than if I put it in the house (even if I had the space on the window ledges, which I don't). Courgettes were the first of the tender seeds to be sown, along with some sunflowers and nasturtiums, more sweet peas, more broad beans and some peas.

A friend from Saundersfoot offered me a massage to help with the back. I hadn't seen her for a few years while life got a bit busy (although we keep in touch via Facebook - love it or hate it, it is good for that sort of thing!)  She was brilliant, finding and releasing lots of painful trigger points and making sure I was comfortable. What an angel! Although I still felt a bit sore for a couple of days, it really helped. Nearly a month after injuring myself, I still get the occasional twinge, but I thought I would be out of action for a lot longer.

25th April was quite a windy day when I went to Saundersfoot, and just as I was leaving, I heard a crash from the patio, and could see the growhouse had fallen over. Later, I found it had impaled itself on the buddleia. I put it upright, but it wouldn't stay up in the wind, and each time it flew a few feet and fell over, it landed on a different pot or shrub and the cover tore again. I left it for a few days (it rained hard on the 29th and was still a bit grey and drizzly on 1st May, despite a weather forecast for dry weather!) This past week has been quite nice and dry again, so I sorted out the growhouse, put it back together, mended the cover, re-potted the spilled and now sprouting seeds it contained. (Almost everything was okay, except for the peas, of which there was no trace at all!) Then I found some bubble-wrap to go around a paving slab, which I put in the centre of the bottom shelf. To hell with whatever the weight limit is supposed to be, try falling over with that weight in the base! It was tested by the extremely brisk easterlies a couple of days ago and stood firm. It now also contains sweetcorn, French and runner beans and Florence fennel.

During the couple of weeks I was 'resting', everything seemed to burst into bloom. The dandelions, which I had been persuaded to leave as an important nectar and pollen source for bees, flowered and burst into a sea of dandelion clocks with scarcely a bee visiting them. So much for that, the smart bees know there are much more interesting flowers to visit. The Clematis montana and the lilac look particularly gorgeous. The bugle I propagated last year has beautiful flower spikes. The aquilegias, which I had been digging up to pot on, suddenly put up flower spikes, and I realised how many had self-seeded across the back of the garden. They would completely collapse if I tried to move them now, and are in the way of the difficult terrain near the back fence, so it seemed like a good idea to go with the course of least resistance and clear some ground from the centre of the garden instead.

I started by digging up yet more blasted bramble, and just randomly dug around. As the dry spell continued, it has become easier and easier. The soil is still stony, so I'm still met with the 'thunk' of fork tines hitting stone, but there isn't so much of it. There are patches of hard pan, which needs a bit of work. There is also quite a lot of pea gravel, so it has been improved, probably by the original owners who were keen gardeners. Although the soil is obviously fertile, it is also obviously clay-based and could do with further improvement. I'm amazed by the amount of broken glass in the soil. I had expected to find greenhouse glass, as I'd been told panes were broken when they removed the old greenhouse with its warped frame. There is quite a lot of bottle glass too. I've also dug up more pendulous sedge, this time apparently planted with a bin bag around its roots, and there are all sorts of bits of plastic. But, on the bright side, no bones, bits of asbestos sheet, lengths of barbed wire or rusting chunks of farm machinery. Also, no stone axe heads, spindle whorls, coins, or buried treasure. But I have found a jingle-bell (which doesn't jingle, as it's full of mud), a blue seed-bead, a button and a bit of clay pipe-stem. Treasure enough!

While digging, I've been thinking about my technique. I used to be good at using both sides of my body evenly, standing square to my fork and not working to one side or twisted. Obviously I lost the knack in the few years when my knees were really badly painful and I stopped working the veg patch on the farm. So it has been good to do some mindful digging, reminding myself to correct my alignment, to use both hands. Between improved technique, less back pain, taking frequent rest breaks and lighter soil, I've found I am clearing the ground quite well. The area to be cleared still seems quite dauntingly large, although I know once I start planting, it won't seem big enough. Broad bean Express has lived up to its name and has now been planted out.

The problem with digging up all this turf and weeds (not to mention still trying to root out brambles) is that the freestanding compost heap is now a complete monster. I've been using turves to build walls to it, while loose weeds and kitchen waste go in the middle, adding accelerator every few inches.

The swifts arrived sometime around the 5th or 6th of May - I forgot to note the exact date, although I remembered thinking as I heard their excited squees as they scythed through the blue sky that they were a month later than the swallows. I'm making the most of the fine weather while it's here; I have a feeling this might be our summer!

Backbreaking Ground-breaking

The Spring Equinox arrived, and I really hadn't done much in the garden, nor been able to. Trying to hasten the end of the vile cold, and take advantage of a few fine, sunny days (high pressure and a chilly easterly wind, before the prevailing westerlies brought more of unsettled, grey, rainy weather), the garden called. Oh, the pleasure of being able to go out every day for a little garden fix! In the recent rainy weather, I really started to miss the polytunnel we'd had on the farm, where I could sit and sow seeds or pot up/on seedlings, warm and cosy while the rain came down outside.

I'd decided that, since I can't afford to deal with the structural elements of the garden, the main planning and framework could wait, since most of what I wanted to grow more or less come under the heading of annuals - in other words, vegetables. And for that, I would need to clear some ground of the weeds, omnipresent brambles, dandelions and a dense thatch of grass. Which meant that the compost heaps would need to be dealt with, ready for the mountain of grass and weeds to come.

The compost seemed like a big job, so I put it off in favour of a little light digging to clear a patch ready to take sunflowers, peas, beans, courgettes and whatever other vegetables I manage to grow. Working back from the rear fence seemed a good place to start. This is the area which was formerly under a Leylandii (probably)-topped earth bank, although you wouldn't know to look at it now and I wondered how long ago it had been done.

I found another couple of purple crocus had popped up where I'd removed a few previously, so I lifted these and potted them up for safe keeping and replanting. Last year, I'd found some gold-painted pebbles close to the patio and path, (where I'd also found a broken plastic label buried a few inches down which read 'Happy Mothers Day') and was amused to find another gold pebble with the crocuses.

A big clump of pendulous sedge came out easily enough, and appeared to have been planted with a plastic bag around its roots. Everything else was hard graft, and after an hour I had only managed an area approximately 1 x 0.5 metre. This is a heavy, stony soil, so I'm not digging in the usual sense, using a spade and making decisions about whether to double-dig or not (I wish!). I could scarcely get the fork in 10 centimetres (four inches) before hitting stones and it soon became clear that it was not just natural stone. Bits of concrete, broken brick, glass (lots), tile and pot, odd bits of plastic - basically, household and building rubble, which I removed as I found it, separating the glass from the rubble into a separate pot. Oh dear, it is going to be a long, hard job.

The last Sunday in March, when the clocks changed to British Summer Time, spurred me into a flurry of garden activity. I bought a load of bagged up, 'bare root' style perennials very cheaply from Lidl, bought bags of compost and potted them up. Then, since I had already had a few attempts at getting the buddleias out from under the washing line, I had another go at them, determined to get them out before the weather broke, as the soil would get wetter again. The soil is so claggy, it sticks to everything and seems to pull against the thing you want to dig up. It has been getting drier and easier to work, but it was hard work just getting the smaller of the two buddleias out.

After much digging and cussing, I wrestled the larger buddleia out, leaving broken bits of root somewhere in the depths of the earth. I had to cut the roots back further to get it into the enormous pot I'd prepared for it. It remains to be seen whether the buddleias cope with the move.

I continued to tackle the ground-breaking in small steps, gaining less than a 50 centimetre square patch for an hour's work, ending up with more by way of weeds, rubble and glass than seemed possible for the area cleared.

On 2nd April, I decided that the compost really needed to be done, so most of bin 3 was emptied into 3 empty compost sacks and a selection of pots, ready for use. The contents of bins 2 and 1 went into the emptied bin 3, and then bin 1 got a mix from the top of the free-standing heap, while bin 2 got mostly slightly older stuff from lower down the free-standing heap, which cleared most of the heap, but left a layer of perhaps 20 centimetres. Oh my, the number of worms in the heaps now is wonderful! (I even disturbed some making more worms, oops, sorry wormies!)

7th April: the first week zipped by and I had still not got some good clear space to plant the first batch of peas and broad beans. I had another go near the back fence, then tackled a large dock in the grass nearby. despite dry-ish weather, it was like digging into a wet sump. I didn't manage to get the whole root out, but hopefully enough of it to put it off growing again.

The weather was lovely, and it was a pleasure to work outside with the occasional peacock, small tortoiseshell or orange tip flitting by and a red kite flying over for the second time that week, much to the disgust of the local seagulls. I potted on and tidied up the lemon and olive trees, taking off the first two lemons and reflecting that small things like that make me so happy.

I dug up and transplanted the fuchsias which were coming up out of the grass. Where the wet grass had lodged against the main stems, the bark just sloughed off as I tried to separate them from the grass and bramble which was coming up through them. The three plants I thought there were turned out to be five, though whether any will survive the move ...?

I keep finding bits of plant label for the garden thug campanula. (How many of the wretched things did they plant? One is more than enough! The same goes for the crocosmia. I'd toyed with the idea of interplanting something with crocosmia in the front garden, but I can see it doesn't grow like that - it spreads to form dense patches. Anything planted with it wouldn't stand a chance, even the campanula!

All this exertion called for a sit down with a glass of water, and I watched Mr Blackbird attacking a pot's contents. I went to have a look at what was so interesting. The primula in the pot was not looking well, and there was no sign of the hyacinth which was supposed to be in the pot with it. Emptying the pot out revealed several vine weevil grubs, which were duly squished and left for the birds to clean up, should they so desire. Blasted things.

I went into the front garden to have a dig there. I started attacking an area of old grassy thatch and peeled back the 'turf' to find loads of grubs and caterpillars. Each bit of grass I got up revealed more. It looks like I have an infestation of vine weevils and cutworms, with the occasional chafer grub thrown in for good measure. Much as I love moths, this number of caterpillars is excessive and between them and the weevil larvae, nothing would grow. Something will have to be done.

As I tidied the tools back into the garden cupboard, I wondered when the swallows would return and though my mind might be playing tricks when I heard 'chi-deep, chi-deep!' I looked around, but saw nothing. Then again, an excited 'chi-deep, chi-deep!' and a couple of swallows tore past. They're back! Poor things, it's still quite cold.

A couple of days later, and some more digging up near the back fence, slowly but surely a couple of metres by perhaps 1 metre, large enough to put the first few peas and beans in. Such slow and heavy work, my back really ached and I had to have a hot bath and early night. Around three in the morning, I awoke in agony, my right quadratus lumborum, (the square-ish/rectangular muscle which connects the top of the pelvis to the bottom of the ribs at the back between spine and waist) was in spasm, and I found I was doing involuntary hip lifts as the contracting muscle lifted my hip up to my ribs. I'd obviously strained it while digging and reaching mostly with my right hand, and it was rebelling. Cursing, stretching, massaging it and doing some mindful breathing, accompanied by concerned, purring cats, got me back to sleep again, but it's been a really painful three days of rest since then.

It looks like gardening might be unwise for a while, just when a spell of nice April high pressure, dry, sunny, cold weather is forecast. Perhaps I should somehow find a catapult, collect some of the vine weevil and moth grubs and fire them into the air for passing swallows, although they haven't been much in evidence since their appearance last week, because with the cold wind, they could surely use the extra food after their long journey back to us.

Still, I have fresh lemons for my favourite drink, so it could be worse.

Impatient to Get Gardening!

What do you do when it's too cold, dark and wet to go out into the garden and Gardener's World hasn't started yet? (It starts this week, so I won't have withdrawal symptoms for much longer!)
Do some garden planning, perhaps?
My preferred way to do this is in a hot bath with a mug of herb tea, a notebook and pen, and a stack of seed catalogues, but I don't seem to have received any catalogues at my new address, despite sending change of address information. It looks like paper catalogues are now by request, which is sensible, and I failed to request them, which is not.

Despite my lack of planning, I'm feeling impatient to get out into the garden again. There were a couple of mornings with sunny spells recently. On 24th February (or 23rd, perhaps?), I even ended up in my T shirt at one point, and could hear a bumble bee somewhere in the hedge. The cats thought it was great, sprawled on the patio or the swing seat in the sun. I was transplanting aquilegia and crocuses which had popped up in the grass. I found a bag of compost leaning against the shed, and wondered where I'd got this wonderful, rich, dark brown, crumbly compost from. Then I remembered - this was the bag I used to hold the almost-ready compost from one of the bins last year! Oh my! It's now possibly the best compost I've ever made! I only managed to transplant half of the aquilegia and ran out of appropriately-sized pots, so need to buy some more - and some more compost. The more I dig in the garden, the more I realise how stony and claggy the soil is. It could do with a lot of improvement. And in the meantime, I also have various roses, buddleias, fuchsia and whatever else needs saving, to dig up and plant in pots while I sort out where things are going to go, and create some dug-over soil for them to go in.

Having run out of pots, I had another go at some brambles and retreated indoors just as it came over all cloudy, in time for lunch. And then it started raining. Again.

March 1st - St David's Day - saw me cutting back the buddleia which needs to come out from under the washing line (I started trying to get a garden fork around and under it, but that will be a big job!). Mrs Blackbird decided that nest-building was the order of the day. Mr Blackbird just posed around on the top of various sheds while she frantically chucked leaves and bits around, taking beak-fulls of grass, small twigs, moss and so on back into the hedge. I think she might be in a bit of the privet hedge behind the camellia near the patio. She went crashing through the camellia several times when I was out there, despite the fact that I was working just a couple of metres away. I warned the cats to leave her be and they happily complied. I think they sensed that if they got too close, she would just go berserk and attack them. She carried on nest-building in the pouring rain the following day too, and I haven't seen her since, although Mr Blackbird has stopped posing so much and now just sits on the hedge or in the lilac, singing away. A dunnock has been providing some competition. He has such a lovely song.

Since then, I haven't managed a proper gardening session. I managed to prepare a couple of pots and made first sowings of beetroot and spinach. The sun came out the other day, and I got my shoes, gloves and coat on, only for it to start spitting as soon as I got out there. Within half an hour, it was coming down really hard, leaving standing water on the horse field on the other side of the garden fence.

The spring flowers I have in pots are really pretty, and the hellebores, which appeared as seedlings in the edge of the gravel 'bed' the year I moved in, have large, dusky pink flowers. Buds are breaking out all over - the first of the camellia flowers are opening, it won't be long before the Clematis montana flowers, and I can see colour on the tips of the lilac flower buds. I want to get out there, but there's little point when it's so wet. The birds and flowers are putting me to shame - they're getting on with the business of early spring, whatever the weather!

January in the Garden

Some relatively calm, fine (but cold) weather recently saw me out in the garden for the first time in possibly a couple of months. The soil is too claggy to dig, it's rather cold to be potting up the last few plants from the ex-lawn. I didn't have the energy (or the bare soil) to turn over the compost heaps, so just had a look into them to see how things are going. The worms seem happy, and I'm happy to see lots of them. One day I pulled out a couple of tub-fulls of weeds, dead fern fronds and leaves. The free-standing compost heap is now cascading everywhere. On another day, I contemplated what I might do with the out-of-scale lilac, to bring it under control without just cutting it down to a level where it can regrow (still working on that one; internet research hasn't brought up any suggestions, either). For the time being, I contented myself with using it to support a netted string of fat-balls and peanuts, to see if I could attract more birds into the garden and stop the blackbirds pulling my potted plants to bits. If it works, I might even do the Big Garden Birdwatch this year.

Besides, the thing I perceive as the main obstruction (in my mind, at least) is the need to remove the privet hedge (and probably the old concrete posts and rusty chain-link between them) on the north side of the garden and replace it with a sturdy fence (the north side and back are 'my' boundaries). Which will need money I don't have (at the moment, at least). I decided I could take some steps towards this by cutting it back, so I could at least see what work will be needed, and that I should do this before any birds get the idea of starting nests in there. The local jackdaws and collared doves have been pair-bonding for a while. A pair of blackbirds, who were nesting in the hedge the year I moved, but nested somewhere in next-door's Kilmarnock willow and surrounding shrubs last year, I think, have been back and forth between our gardens. I hope they nest next door again, as my cats would be only too happy to break my stern injunction against bird-chasing, if they thought they could get away with it.

Top-heavy and tangled, the hedge sprawls drunkenly two metres or more out from the true fence-line, reaching out towards the sun. There is some fence towards the end of the garden, but discounting the patio, the hedge runs for about two thirds of the length of the garden on that side, reducing the width of my garden by 20%. A fifth of the width! It also protects the omnipresent brambles. I've also been digging out bramble again in the garden. I'm 8 inches down in one spot and still can't get the root up. No wonder it springs up all over the place. I had to give up when rain stopped play, but the blackbirds have been delighted to peck around in the hole once the cats and I went back inside.

I've had a couple of goes at hacking back and clearing up, punctuated by a bit of grooving to next-door's radio as the son of the house worked outside and chatting with him through the thinned portion of the hedge to catch up on some news. I missed being yapped at by their little Yorkshire terrier. She had cancer and they had to let her go late last year. Apparently, where the hedge gives way to fence panels on that side, there was an earthbank across the end of the garden, on top of which there were tall trees, which were removed and the earth dug away so that the back of the garden could be fenced and used. No wonder the soil at that end seems so thin and stony, and I've dug up rotten tree roots. I'd heard before that there was a Pembrokeshire bank along the back of the houses, but I wonder if it was, in fact, just an earthbank created by levelling the site when these houses were built in the '50s.

Also chats with the neighbour on the other side; they've been having some work done on their patio and side passage, and having had the back end of the latter demolished, found that the wall between us was on a thin raft of concrete and, not keyed into the buildings, was wobbling precariously. I had thought that there were walls between all the houses, because the walls on either side of my space were identical, but it now seems likely that the people who were in my house built both walls. The workmen have taken it down and replaced it with fence, but there's currently an uneven edge to the concrete where the wall started on my side, and a void beneath the fence panel through which I can admire my neighbours' new patio paving, which appears to be at the same level as the main part of my patio, but which is probably 20 cm/8" lower than the area outside my back door/side passage. Work was done to extend and renovate 'my' side passage in 2005 (?) and there are a couple of shallow steps up to come in through the side door at the front, as well as a height difference at the back, so I suspect it has to do with the drainage for things like the walk-in shower.

The sight of a flock of lapwings against blue sky also interrupted my fight with the hedge. The largest flock I've seen this year has been around 100, same as last winter, but (unlike last winter, when there were lapwings around earlier) although I heard a few at night in December, I didn't actually see any until January.

Now it's February. I've removed roughly half the hedge, but it's still a twiggy, untidy mess, still plenty to do. I really need to finish up and create some space to grow veg, but the weather has turned. Every time there's a clear spell and I put on work shoes and gloves, it starts raining as soon as I go back outside. It may be mild, but I would rather not work in the rain.

Hedge hacking in progress

No wonder everything is so green! Some of the campanula on the patio has had occasional flowers throughout the winter, and there are now flowers on some of the primulas and rosemary. I thought I had a pot of snowdrops, but couldn't find it the other day. However, the many muscari (grape hyacinths) have little flower spikes just waiting to shoot up, and the ipheion next to the front porch has a flower on it too.

A friend commented that it was 'such a lot of work', but I like it. All I need is some better weather so that I can do a lot more!

Season of Mists and Musings

It's the start of October already, and 'tis the season for dark evenings, finding the winter woolies and snuggling in front of the TV to watch Strictly Come Dancing! The Autumn Equinox came and went, and with it a review of my quarterly To Do list, which is as long as ever. Will I ever achieve my goals? The project to reclaim my sewing desk and sort out my sewing notions has been ongoing for a few months now - nearly there! But I'm still getting cross at the chaos, and particularly since there are items I still haven't found (and some bits which I unpacked before I had a place to put them, and now I can't find them again!)

Summer flew by in a whirl of belly dance festival, covering LIFT classes, summer school, gardening, planning classes and workshops for the Autumn term and an absence of beach time, because whenever I was up for it, the weather was not. Most of the time I seemed to be either dripping with sweat (having exercised/danced/gardened) or feeling a bit chilly.

There have been comments on Gardeners' Question Time and Gardener's World about it not being a very good summer, weather-wise (again!), which is some consolation - it's not just my imagination. There's a tub-trug in the garden which I haven't been using for weeding, instead leaving it to gather rain water so that every so often, I can dip plant pots or my watering can into it. It got down to a quarter full before it was topped up again, and is now brim-full. I've been loving the hour-long Gardener's World programmes, and shall miss them when they finish for the season.

The pink rose is definitely a keeper, just not where it's currently growing. The scent is better than I thought and it's growing strongly. It sends up shoots nearly as tall as I am, which bend over, and then new shoots 'break' from the stem in the style of some of the older roses. It's rather sprawly and would probably grow up and through another shrub. I'm still researching what it is, while wondering why that matters to me!

The Buddleia under the washing line obviously got its roots down this year and grew terrifically, in some places over two metres of growth in one year. This is without any feeding, so the soil must be quite fertile (everything in the garden soil grew quite lushly this year, must have been a bit of relative warmth and wet). Some of the flower spikes were roughly half a metre long! In mid to end August, the flowers were frequently covered in butterflies; beautiful fresh Large Whites, Small Tortoiseshells, Peacocks, Red Admirals, and Painted Ladies. I so enjoyed having a cuppa, sitting on the swing seat to watch them, or standing next to the flowers and listening to the butterfly wings as they fluttered around. Sheer joy!

The Buddleia made so much growth that it was summer brittle, with shoots breaking every time there was some wind. The last blow brought down one of the very large main branches; split at the base, and is now wilting drunkenly across the patio. I suspect the way it's been growing means that transplanting it may be difficult, but I'll probably pot it up for the winter just to get it out from under the line, as I really need to plant out the herb bed before it gets too cold and wet. Some of the marjoram, thyme and the fennel rotted off in their nice, free-draining pots this summer. I already have a bag of horticultural grit to work in, and some stone to top dress as well. While I've been digging it over, I keep coming across pockets of richer soil with pea gravel, presumably where things have been planted in the past.

The other thing blocking progress of the herb bed is the Crocosmia. I had seriously considered putting the whole lot on the compost heap, but a couple of friends said that they would like some plants of that and anything else that was going begging from the garden. Then, I saw it against the purple Buddleia, and the bees going in and out of the tubular flowers, and decided that some can go in the front garden.

The bit of digging I have done in both the front and back gardens has revealed stony clay soil, not the easiest thing to work with. I rather like doing a bit of digging (or perhaps it's weeding and turning over, considering that I have to use a fork!) and find I can manage an hour before really needing a sit-down. But that's when the soil's not horribly wet from rain in the preceding days. It makes me wonder how plants which like a nice root run, such as the roses, will cope. My plan to have raised beds for vegetables now seems like a necessity.

The mellow fruitfulness is a bit lacking. The young gooseberry plants were completely defoliated by sawfly larvae which I didn't notice until they had done their worst, as if they appeared one day and stripped the plants overnight. I've had some good courgettes, but many seem to have suffered from some kind of blossom-end rot and the ubiquitous slugs and snails. The aubergine had trouble flowering, because every time it grew one, its stem was bitten through by the marauding molluscs. The first few 'snack size' cucumbers were surprisingly good, since when the molluscs have devoured all the developing fruits. I didn't get any spinach or lettuces. Other gardening friends have commented on the apparently huge numbers of slugs this year. Something will have to be done! I've picked the French beans as they've been produced, but the plants weren't very bushy or floriferous. The outdoor tomatoes have had real trouble ripening and it looks like I'll have to pick the remainder (which is most of them!) while green and see if they'll ripen indoors. At least the plants haven't succumbed to blight, and the ripe tomatoes I've had have been wonderful! Only a couple actually made it back into the kitchen! I'll have to look up the variety of the yellow cherry tomato, the flavour was superb.

I was awoken at dawn on 1st September by a skein of geese honking overhead. Misty mornings, shorter days, a new school term and fat Garden Spiders Araneus diademata crouching in the centres of their dewy webs; all signalling the change of season. There has been a noticeable drop in temperature in the past week, and today's east wind combined with no sunshine means the house is fully 5 degrees colder than it was. I'm wearing layers in an effort to delay putting the heating on.

The swallows have gone, of course. I was aware of them leaving for a while, feeding as they went. Each time I saw them, I wondered if  it was the last until they return next April. In fact, the last time I saw some was nearly a fortnight ago on 24th September (the latest I've ever seen any), silhouetted against grey clouds and blown sideways if they dared to deviate from their course in the hope of catching an insect. Making wishes for their safety, I watched them as they flew east over the fields, until the black specks merged with the sky .

The Hawthorns are loaded with berries. I've heard several people speculating that the berry load means that it will be a hard winter. In the past few weeks, there was a day when the media (including the BBC) was full of headlines stating that it was the 'hottest day of the year' (and there have been a few very hot days this year). Well, it might have been for London and the home counties, but it was pretty miserable, overcast and a little chilly here. I went out and drove back in heavy rain, so I stayed in the car, listening to the radio for a few minutes, (complete with swearing at the 5.00 pm news headlines 'It's the hottest day of the year!'), waiting for the downpour to ease off  rather than get drenched in the few metres between car and front door. The water was coming off next-door's roof in a sheet. I scurried into the house and up to the office, to find friends in the West Midlands and north west England posting photos of flash flooding and talking about dramatic thunder and lightning.

Here are some garden highlights from mid August to early September, as a reminder of the warmth and colour; Scented Geranium flower, Crocosmia, Red Admiral on Buddleia (the colour difference on the wings is because one is a little back-lit), Evening Primrose, a cluster of at least 35 buds and flowers on the pink rose mentioned above, Small Tortoiseshells on the Buddleia, the Campanula posharskyana flowering again (I cut it back after its first flush of flowers to tidy it up), a fuzzy buzzy bumble bee in a Campanula flower, and one of the long Buddleia flower spikes against a blue sky while a flock of Jackdaws swirled around.

Bye-bye Summer! Welcome, Autumn!

Gardening Therapy

With the EU referendum resulting in a Leave majority (by less than 4% of votes cast, which shows just how divided the country is, and doesn't seem like a good basis for a major decision - but then, I voted Remain and doubt I would have said that had the vote gone the way I wanted!), it has been an emotional and eventful end to June.

It's a shame the weather is so changeable - it normally starts to rain at midsummer here, but it started early this year. The occasional fine days are interspersed with several days of showers and rain. When the sun comes out, I have been getting in some gardening therapy. I am slowly clearing the grass and potting up plants worth saving, some for a couple of friends to add to their gardens. As the fine days are few and far between, they are also laundry days, which makes working on the herb-bed-to-be (partly under the washing line) a little challenging.

Since my last post only a few weeks ago, the garden seems to have gone completely rampant and looks like an ungrazed meadow, which is essentially what it is. That cats have been loving sitting or lying in the long grass as I work, creating tunnels where they've been hiding, which turn into great, lodged sheets of grasses in the rain.

I have had to start a free-standing compost heap which is at least the size of one of the compost bins now. The plan is to dig out bin #3 into the top of bin #1, turning and aerating it. I'm just (still!) waiting for both bins to settle; they don't appear to have done much in the past few weeks. When I dug out bin #1 in May, the top went into bin #2 and is roughly the same age as the stuff at the bottom, but there is a filling of more recent stuff in the middle, so that will benefit from being dug out and turned into bin #3. I've just started to use an accelerator in the bins and the new heap, hoping to speed things up a bit. Then some of the free-standing heap can go into bin #2. As things are going, I'm going to have to start a second free-standing heap very soon!

Before tackling the compost bins, I was waiting for the Early Bees to finish with their nest, which they did a couple of weeks ago. A lack of buzzing and visitors made me take a look, and all that was left was a matted handful of composting grasses and soggy pollen. When I first discovered the nest, I had to wait a while to spot one or two bees visiting flowers. A few weeks ago, it was easy to see three or four at a time. Now I can sit and count half a dozen or more at a time working over the clumps of Campanula portenschlagiana and C. poscharskyana (I decided it wasn't C. garganica, based on the height and length of the sprawling stems of flowers) which they are completely mad for. It may be a garden thug, but the bees just love it. The odd honey bee and a few other bees visit as well, including one of the white-tailed bumble-bees. Their gentle buzzing lulls me into somnolence as I rest on the swing-seat between bouts of digging and potting-up. Despite the noise from neighbours' lawnmowers and various power tools, it's been lovely just to sit and watch, as I follow the advice to 'sit down before I need to' so that I can work without too much pain. Drink in hand, planning my next spot of work, watching life going on around me, is all very relaxing.

Mr Blackbird has been neglecting his preening as he feeds a chick. The Jackdaws in my chimney fledged. The first two chicks came out and begged for food from next door's roof. A couple of young Magpies joined them, evidently not bothered about who fed them, although the Jackdaw parents were not about to do any such thing. There were confused looks all round (if it's possible for birds to look confused) until the Magpie parents came and called their two away. The youngest Jackdaw chick emerged a few days later. A terrific rumpus from several Jackdaw families alerted me to the chick which, unable to fly very well, was hopping and fluttering around the patio, trying to gain some height. I rescued it from the curious cats and went to let it out of the landing window so it could fly off with the rest of the family. Having calmed down, it perched very happily on my finger while I gave it a quick check over, stroking and speaking softly to it. Even once the window was open, it just sat, sharp claws marking my finger as I tried to cajole it onto the window ledge. As I murmured sweet nothings, it watched me with its aquamarine eyes and cocked its head from side to side. The family came back onto the neighbour's roof, calling, and it flew off to join them. The sparrows squabble and twitter, teasing the cats, until Greebo could stand it no longer and caught a chick, which I then rescued from him and released into an inaccessible part of the privet hedge. On another day, a Sparrowhawk descended out of the sky and crashed into the other privet hedge to catch a sparrow. No warning - no alarm calls or mobbing from the other birds, it made the cats and I jump out of our skins. One of the neighbours told me there was a Sparrowhawk around, but it's the first time I've seen it.

The other poppy also turned out to be red.
The Geranium from behind the shed looks like G. macrorrhizum 'Album'.
I found a label constricting the base of another rose (planted too close underneath the lilac) which identified it as Scarlet Queen Elizabeth. I remember it being a bright vermilion-orange-pink last year, so the label at least makes sense!
The rose near the patio is definitely not R. glauca. It has clusters of small (5-7 cm) semi-double, flowers, mid pink in bud,  the heart-shaped petals opening to show golden-yellow stamens in the centre and fading almost to white as they age. There is little scent, but with so many flowers open, there are wafts of light rose scent on the breeze. I've looked at all of my rose books and on a few websites to try to identify the rose, but it seems to be having an identity crisis itself. It seemed to be low-growing, but there are also a few metre-high, red-stemmed shoots, one with darker, matt leaves, one with lighter, one quite red. These look like suckers, and there's a flower coming on the tip of one of them. Depending on how tall the shoots grow, whether they are from the same rootstock, and whether I can free the plant from the encroaching grass and brambles without digging it up, it could stay where it is.

The bramble bashing I did last year seems to have stimulated growth, with small shoots coming up all over the place and growing fast from roots deep down.
The first wild strawberries are ready, their small, intensely-flavoured fruit a real treat. The other strawberries are showing a flush of colour; with this wet weather, it will be a case of racing the slugs to see who can get them first!
The rain has flattened the Alchemilla mollis (Lady's Mantle), the Chartreuse green froth of flowers flopping untidily across the path and needing to be cut back. It's only a matter of time before I cut back the sprawling Campanula, as well. They're both lovely, but the thought of all the seeds!

I brought some Common Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) with me from the farm, and found a Water Figwort (Scrophularia auriculata) growing in the gravel bed. (See, the soil really is damp!) Taller (1.5 metres/5 feet high!), with bigger clusters of larger, dark red flowers, nice, broad, green leaves on red, winged stems, it looks 'garden-worthy'. It makes the Common Figwort look like a weed, and I've found a few nurseries who actually sell a variegated form of the Water Figwort. For some reason, the bees aren't attracted to the flowers at all, but wasps are. Neither fit with the plans for the garden, so they can go.

The amount of rain we've had recently meant that I did very little digging on the last fine day we had, because the soil was so wet. Investigating strange sounds like someone trying to break into one of my next door neighbours, I found that they had decided to lift their patio.  They were happy for me to 'reclaim' some of the paving, rather than have to take it all to the tip themselves, so I stacked 10 dozen x 12" (30 cm) square concrete paving slabs on my drive ready for reuse in my garden. The slabs are heavier than they look, so I really feel as though I've worked out, and it feels great to be able to reuse a load of paving for free, so I owe next door at least some beers!

According to a recent report from the BBC, there is a 'growing body of research that suggests gardening is good for both physical and mental health' and that 'pilot schemes for GPs to prescribe gardening are under way'. I would have thought it's obvious; gardening provides exercise, relaxation and an outlet for creative expression and being close to the beauty of flowers, plants and garden wildlife feeds the soul. In these politically uncertain and economically volatile times, we could all use some gardening therapy!

Seasonal Update

Time is doing its thing and I haven't written much yet this year - busy with other things, I suppose.

We often have a period of cool but fine weather in Spring, but it doesn't seem to have happened this year.

It was a mild winter, but although there were only a few frosts (probably because I'm now closer to sea level and the sea), it has been a relatively cold Spring. Storm Imogen in February damaged the garden shed (and those of my next-door and next-but-one neighbours) and tossed an empty compost bin across the garden. Storm Jake at the start of March continued the shed damage and tossed the compost bin across the garden again. We missed the worst of Storm Katie at Easter (an early Easter this year, soon after the equinox). We've had some other very windy times which have not been named storms, although with yellow weather warnings. The Met Office criteria for naming a storm is where there is expected medium or high impact of high winds. The vicious easterlies in the first week of April should have qualified, but strangely, not so. Apart from being very cold, it was also strong enough to move the garden store cupboard, turning it 180 degrees and tossing it onto its side a couple of metres from where it normally stands against the wall of the extension. Fortunately, only one of the ceramic pots stored in the bottom was smashed, although others now have chips in them. At least it didn't take long to pick up and return the rest of the scattered contents.

There were a few fine days in mid March, when I was training as a LIFT leader with Age Cymru and was either inside or otherwise too tired to do much else. One day after training, it was much too nice to go home straight away, so I went for a little stroll down 'Fortune's Frolic', a path by the River Cleddau between Haverfordwest and Uzmaston. It was a sunny but still chilly evening, with happy, smiley people walking happy, waggy dogs. As I got to the first viewpoint, there were a pair of Small Tortoiseshell butterflies flitting around, and a flash of blue as a Kingfisher disappeared up Merlin's Brook.

The river Cleddau is tidal here. It was quite low as I walked to the end of the level riverside path, and sat on one of the benches to enjoy the river. A pair of swans made their way upstream, and a group of 50 or so ducks descended out of nowhere and started to preen and dabble near a shingle bank further downstream. Without binoculars, I couldn't see what they were; I wondered if they could be Widgeon, but they were more likely to be Teal. There was also a pair of Mallard, just getting on with business. Unusual ripples in the water close to the bank below me attracted my attention. The shallows were seething with small fish; the last time I had seen so many was in the river Cèze, in the Cévennes.

April brought a few more sunny but chilly days. I happened to be out and about on the 9th, so took sandwiches down to Gelliswick Bay and was rewarded with the sight of a very low tide.

It wasn't as warm as it looks in the photo! At tides this low, the wooden remains of some wrecked boats can be seen (although not from this photo!) on the rocky point just in front of the oil jetty on the right of the photo. I didn't walk out that far, not having brought footwear (let alone knees!) which could deal with the mud and rocks. I'm not sure what the angular concrete block, whether it's a gun emplacement left over from WWII or some sort of mount for some other bit of ship-related kit. Some visitors use it as a bird table, dumping a pile of stale bread on it and retreating to a safe distance while the gulls descend in a mob to squawk and squabble over their bounty. The other (east) end of the beach has the slipway and yacht club and is overlooked by Fort Hubberston. Built in the 1860s and last used in WWII, it is now disused and derelict. The tide was still retreating when I arrived and after a couple of hours, just before it turned, a JCB with a block and chain in its bucket trundled down the beach to a small cluster of people, and proceeded to put in a new mooring buoy.

Pottering in the garden on the 13th, I saw Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and Orange Tip butterflies, one of each just passing through the garden, since there's still nothing much of interest for them here. I also saw my first Swallows, although I'd seen a post from a garden centre the other side of Haverfordwest that they had seen their first the week before. Poor Swallows, arriving back in such chilly weather! It occurred to me that perhaps the first sighting of birds, butterflies and so on each year could just be a matter of luck; they happen by when you happen to be looking.I didn't do the Big Garden Birdwatch this year; every time I looked out, there were no birds to be seen!

Where did May go? Ah, yes, I picked up a vile cold in the last week of April and was still trying to get rid of it in mid May! The weather picked up a bit throughout the month, and various boats and yachts have come out of their winter quarters and onto moorings and marinas. It's all starting to look quite summery. Suddenly it's the end of May. I've now been in my 'new' home for a year. And I am STILL gradually unpacking, cleaning and sorting out. Incredible!