Luminous evenings
This springtime-into-summer part of the year - April to June - is my favourite. The evening light in particular after a long dull winter. And the freshness of the green, in that evening light. Though it shouldn't surprise me, after so long here, it still does surprise when the sunlight hits the side of the apple tree and the end wall of the garden, late in the day, being so high in the sky now it can reach areas shaded all the rest of the year.
So evenings become luminous, and extend gently into nightfall. Dusk in the garden and I'm wandering with nothing in particular to do, having done the most important tasks, and forgetting the rest, not caring really, because birds are gently singing the evening away. Inside, the radio mutters about politicians and their moats, trouser presses and chandeliers, but outside, in the garden, such things are left behind, as a blackbird demonstrates an impressive vocal range from his position on the chimney top.
And a robin flits past me and lands on the tray of bird food close by. Thin legs look too meagre to hold him up. Perfect tiny thing, turning his head to one side, checking for danger, checking for food. He eats, looks around, flies off again, over the fence, away. He seems to have taken any cares with him, and so sitting out here for a little longer seems appropriate, rather than going back inside to do the washing up.
About time I looked at things properly, rather than rushing around. Woodland Corner looked sadly sparse and pathetic last time I paid proper attention, but is now a happy tangle of green, with a few white flowers. That late sunlight reaching over the house roof certainly helps.
Above, the swifts, and their jubilant calling, high up, in a sky still blue.
posted - Monday, May 18, 2009
All is buzzing
Having just posted all about garden-related hardware etc (see below), I thought I should also mention all the green loveliness and the insect buzzy-ness. Bumble bees of various types are hovering about the place, bumbling into the kitchen and being rescued from the kitchen windowsill. Pairs of birds are all wing-trembling high-voiced excitement. Dunnocks, blackbirds and robins have all been seen collecting twigs and moss for nesting, for nests hidden deep in the ivy.
There are 'Red Emperor' tulips just finishing their flowering, and other tulips budding and colouring. The delicate epimedium is a mass of pale yellow flower and just-opened green leaf, soft at first, rippled by the spring breezes.
When the breezes subside, and the air is still, scents too, from dwarf narcissi and hyacinths.
posted - Saturday, April 11, 2009
Make do and mend
I've at last clambered out of a pile of sawdust and wood offcuts and managed to locate the computer under the general 'in the middle of spring sorting out' mess around the place. The sawdust and bits of wood are a consequence of having to fix two garden benches and build a compost bin. Or rather, I didn't have to build the compost bin, but I did have to fix the benches, before someone sat on one and ended up on the floor. Both benches should have been repainted and checked for rotten bits last autumn, or at least have been brought in for the winter, but I didn't, and they weren't, and so two benches with severely rotten bits was the result.
I'm no carpenter, but studious analysis of how they were put together already, and copying the dimensions and drill holes of the bits that had collapsed, plus some clueless wandering around the timber section of a DIY shed, meant that eventually the benches were safe enough to sit on again.
And the compost bin - well, having only recently completed this unexpectedly long-winded project, I think I'd go on about it at even more tedious length than I just did about the benches, should I begin to attempt to describe. And perhaps I should wait to see first if it all falls to bits, before I start showing off about it. But it did start from the desire to reuse some abandoned wood, so I guess I can feel smug about recycling, at least.
I'm also in the process of trying to reuse an old plastic water tank - that for some time was used as a planter - as a water tank again. In this case to collect rainwater from the shed roof. It looked rubbish as a planter. It will still look rubbish as a tank collecting rainwater. But at least it's then performing a useful function, and I don't have to feel so guilty about not having a proper water butt. Of course, in order to try to make it a planter I had made a big hole in the bottom for drainage, which I've now had to fill in again, and am waiting to see if it sets into watertightness. Since it came out of the house when a new boiler was put in some years back I've felt this thing shouldn't just be dumped in landfill - so I hope this latest scheme works. If water holding is achieved, there's still the clueless wandering around the DIY shed's offerings of water diverters and drainpipe connectors.
All this activity is a result of realising how much stuff I've kept in the shed in the hope I could recycle it into something, while getting increasingly irritated at all the junk I kept having to move when I wanted to retrieve a paintbrush or a seed tray. That some of the miscellaneous timber has ended up in the garden bench and a new compost bin is very satisfying. The next challenge, having discovered the old submersible pump also kicking around the shed, is to try to make a water feature that isn't too noisy/too ugly/too contrived/too much sounding like a toilet cistern.
Thankfully I don't have a toilet to recycle. Though it might go nicely with the old bath and old sink already out there.
posted - Saturday, April 11, 2009
