Saturation Point
When I was a teenager, there was a TV programme called Ground Force, where Alan Titchmarsh and team would descend on a small garden for the weekend to spring a makeover on the surprised resident. An instant garden, revealed with a flourish in a format designed to provoke a flood of grateful weeping from the owner of the garden. Watching other people cry happy tears is apparently good telly. In reality, and in my experience, making a garden is a much slower process, and because it is something alive, it is always changing. We moved into our house over twenty years ago and it has taken time for me to feel confident that this is really my patch. For several years we lived with the garden as it was, mostly grass, a narrow pinched bed at one end with some explosive leggy Hebe. Several tall dark conifers and a tatty garden shed lurked in the sunniest part of the garden. It took me several years for me to feel brave enough to have the conifers cut down, and then to ignore the protests of my husband and demolish the shed. The patio installed in its place is my favourite place to sit and eat breakfast as soon as the weather permits. In the summer it is surrounded by scented flowering plants, busy with bees.
On Sunday I slipped out between rain showers, appropriately dressed for the damp, not with any particular task in mind, more a surveying of the plot. Plenty of crouching down and investigating. Mentally marking items for consideration. In the herb bed, amongst last year’s dry stalks, fresh new velvety bundles of catmint leaves, tightly pursed. There are flowers in winter too, delicate lilac blooms on the rosemary. I tended that plant from a single sprig from a friends garden, now it embarrasses with abundance. I spotted a plant nestling in the strawberry patch that looked almost like a strawberry plant, but not quite. My fingers slipped into the cold wet earth to wrestle the impostor. This of course led to spotting dandelions with their tenacious taproots squatting between the roots of the plum tree, these needed careful attention to winkle them out, as they were jostled up against green crocus spikes nosing their way into the air. We have planted two trees in this garden, both fruit bearing, one apple and one plum. They were part of the “One Tree Per Child” project about ten years ago, in which the local council gave away free fruit trees to families and schools. I like to think of them as our small part of the virtual orchard.
It has been a long wet winter, and the earth between my fingers is sodden. Like many people I try to garden for wildlife, minimise cutting back, not be too tidy. This means that the main bed is now a mass of deliquescence, squelch is the word. There is a faint cidery smell in the corner, there were so many apples last year that neither I nor the squirrels could consume them all. Some were bagged up for cider and dispatched to a colleague of my husband who owns a cider press. A good friend to have. Despite myself, I do a little clearing, telling myself that I am making space for the spring bulbs that are bursting through, tulips and alliums. But then I discover a few overwintering ladybirds and decide enough is enough. I also find a jar of ceramic shards that I had been collecting. This harvest rises to the surface every year, these fragments of Victoriana a reminder of others here before us. I gather them up as a gift for my daughter, her current GCSE Art project is on the theme of ‘Fragility’ and she is interested in the Japanese technique of Kintsugi, the art of visibly mending ceramics with gold. Sadly no gold on offer this weekend from my flower beds, just raindrops on (prim)roses.
The damp has also penetrated the birdfeeder, a clump of mouldy seed so waterlogged at the bottom of the plastic tube that there is even an individual heroically germinating. In the words of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park “Life, uh, finds a way”. It was however a very satisfying job to dismantle and clear out the mouldy mass, scrub and disinfect everything with my RSPB approved spray, dry, reassemble and refill with fresh seed. Within a minute of rehanging the feeder had been discovered by the noisy sparrow gang. I felt successful. I can’t smash the patriarchy or solve the climate crisis, but I can feed the birds. That will have to be enough for now.
Comments
Post a Comment