Snow – the garden equaliser
Posted by admin in December, Garden construction, Snow on December 22, 2009
These photographs were taken today as the snow was falling. The garden is very much a work in progress. The bundle of snow covered stones will soon become a wall with an arched entrance to the greenhouse, cold frames and a potager / herb / viola garden.
These rose hips are from a wild rose that self seeded and is now scrambling up a self seeded cherry tree which is now about 20 feet tall. A clematis has also scrambled up to the top of the tree. This was once a flat flower bed dug out from the lawn about 28 years ago. The cherry tree self seeded in 1984.
I suppose this gardening blog will be looking forwards from today as each corner of the garden progresses and backwards too with some photographs of the corners of untamed wilderness.
The summerhouse still has no heating installed so The Christmas Turkey has been put in there for safe keeping. It’s a fresh turkey that will probably be a frozen one by tomorrow.
The upright green pole in front of the summerhouse is a long-handled fork frozen into the ground. I’d left it there after planting tulip bulbs the day before it snowed.
Photo taken with iPhone. Photographer me.
The sunrise
The first day of freedom was not much fun!
Retirement was not going to turn out to be a wander into a peaceful sunset. I knew that. But there was going to be no lull at all. There had been a red sky the night before, but in the morning I woke up to a beautiful sunrise. You can’t have it both ways. They say:
“A red sky at night is the shepherds delight,
A red sky in the morning is the shepherd’s warning.
I don’t suppose this is true everywhere, but a red sky in the morning is always a sign of bad weather in my corner of the world.
By lunchtime the rain had started. By mid afternoon it became a downpour. There was a peal of thunder. And then the phone rang.
“The dog has escaped into a pen with cattle. She’ll get kicked to death. I can’t get her to come out”
Bad news.
It is probably not advisable to go into the details of the conversation that followed. “Someone” was supposed to be looking after that dog but took a risk. Suffice it to say that the language was unrepeatable as the tension mounted. Daughter and I jumped in the car and made our way into the country not knowing what injuries the dog would have. She was a young dog, not yet wise and she would be terrified because now, there was lightening as well as thunder and the rain was coming down in buckets. The cattle would be terrified and so would she.
We managed to get her out of the cattle filled pen.
She was glad to see us but her tail was between her legs.
She was covered from head to toe in sodden cow dung.
We bundled her into the boot of the car. When we arrived home we hosed her down a bit in the garden and then headed straight for a warm bath. She was walking OK but we couldn’t see through the mud and dung if her skin was injured. There was no obvious blood. She offered no resistance when we heaved her into the bath.
It is just as well the smell of dung reminds me of my childhood. Cow dung is not nearly as pleasant as horse manure though but much more tolerable than pig manure. I kept thinking of how the smell of manure reminded me of the happy days of my childhood spent in a house with a garden made fertile thanks to a recipe of well rotted horse dung and straw. The association stopped me retching. Well, just about.
It took two hours to get her clean.
There was no evidence of any injury at all.
She wagged her tail and put my hand in her mouth which is what she always does when she wants you to know she loves you.
That was day one of The Freedom that comes from a peaceful retirement.
The sunset
Posted by admin in Retirement, Sunset on November 26, 2009
Well, that was it then!
This was the way it looked the last time I walked away from the place I had worked for about 35 years. Funnily enough, I had not one twinge of regret that night although a year before I would have considered myself not ready for retirement and had planned to work for a couple of years longer.
Then one morning, I woke up and suddenly decided I didn’t want to work any more. Instead there was an irrepressible feeling that I had to get out and get a taste of what others would have considered to be a normal life. I could start off with proper reading, proper cooking. Even ironing and tidying cupboards were all self indulgent novelties for me.
There were other things too. I like collecting things (hoarding really). The hoard was desperately in need of organisation. Maybe I could get rid of some of it and make room for new things. I would look out my stamp collection and all the paraphenelia associated with it. And I would paint in water-colours and oils. I might knit and sew. I would learn about the stockmarket and the economy and history and politics and philosophy and……..
I might travel a little but not too much.
I of course I would be able to spend more time with my family.
And then there was the garden. I love gardening but there was never enough time….
There was so much to do in the garden….
The garden had become a wilderness……
During that last hour of my last day at work, the sky became red as I walked to the car for the last time.
I felt there should be some regret, some sentimentality.
But there was none.
I was looking forward too much to a brand new life of freedom.
I didn’t know what freedom felt like.
It seemed as if I had not been free since the day I started school at the age of five.
And I realised it for the first time that evening.
Photo taken with iPhone. Photographer me.