Absent from myself too..... have been 'under the weather' and unable to use my limited free time to do much other than sleep. Lucky I really like my bed. And tea, and reading. And I am a big sleeper. Oh yes. The Man is always astonished at the amount of time I can sleep, given the space to do so. I would happily sleep ten hours a night if the sneaking-into-the-bedroom-dog (yes I know, how annoying is that, she's 11 months now) or child/ren, alarm clock or early waking man let me do so. Oh sleep. As a student I spent more of my days sleeping than being awake. I did not think this a waste of time, in fact I thought it a marvellous a way to spend time. Maybe I was hoarding it for the droughts I sensed ahead.
I have been getting out and about to walk the dog, well it's necessary, and very lovely that a few walks each week are taken all alone. Esmé does two three hour stints at a little nursery and on one of these mornings Felix visits a friend. After the dropping off and sorting out, all in I have about two hours ALONE. Usually I just spend it walking the dog. They are good walks. I get to stride out at a decent clip and not lag behind at four year old pace (oh yes, she turned four! I'll do another post just for her). I get to stop and stare. I get to have trains of thought, uninterrupted. You will know if you have children that having your own thoughts play out at their own speed, length and to arrive unhindered at their own destinations to be the height of luxury.
I have been discovering some interesting fungus, which I seem to stumble across frequently, they pop up, and I have no idea what they are, but serve as a reminder of life in all of it's strange and amazing forms. The one with the bird house is in the drive way and over the last four years it has just grown and grown. There are pieces there the size of dinner plates.
I walked yesterday with my camera, for once, usually I am too dreamy and forget to take it. Plus I like my hands in my sheepskin gloves and I have bear-like paws with those big mitts on which isn't a good way to take photographs.
The little lanes around here are slick with mud. Lambs have started bleating and their sweetness echoes all around the hills. In the nearby lambing barn their seems to be no sign of lambs, but calves plenty. Once uphill it gets so quiet, all I hear are my footsteps and the birds and the dog nosing through leaves. Far off noises of farm dogs, cows, the occasional tractor or quad. The track I like to take was once a footpath up to a limestone quarry. The quarry is now grassy, hilly and a a protected area where unusual flowers grow. But once I guess workmen plodded up here, rain or shine (but being on the Welsh Border, I am reckoning on rain being a clear weather winner). I never see a soul up here. And I don't feel odd about it, like I used to feel when walking in towns alone. It feels right and good to be alone here.
My dog is a rubbish guard dog and wags her tail at the scariest of folk. Dandle her a sausage and she'd be yours for life, but I watch how she walks and when her ears cock or she stops alert to sounds or scents long before the source of which are visible to me.
The little tumble down cottage you stumble upon and a glance the other way and you'd miss it. I have hunted around and see no signs of a well, or water source to it but it's so overgrown it's hard to even see where the front door once stood. The magnificently made chimney breast though, stands still and if you dare to brave the crumbly lintels and overhanging timbers you can see a neat little bread oven in the nook side of the main fire. I like to sit and look and wonder at who on earth lived so far up here all alone, and why.
The house does not even face out over the views. Which makes me feel it may have been more functional and work like, perhaps some quarry minder's post. The lady farmer down yonder told me they tried to sell this ruin along with it's couple of acres of land, but it has no road access and no permission to make one. Which means at least a 30 minute trek on foot to your front door form the nearest 'road' (read mud lane, 4 wheel drive worthy only).
So it's still very much unsold. I cannot fathom how it could even be restored, it looks beyond that with giant trees poking it over. This is a great blackberry picking spot come late summer. And one we keep secret because it's wonderful to come here in the quiet and tangle yourself in warm blackberry vines up above the rest of the world.
Yesterday it was sunny, and after my solo walk I picked the girl up from nursery (she was in raptures over the necklace she had made from pasta and the game of musical statutes they had played outside) and we headed off to wander the garden centre. Me with a careful list, she with her own mini shopping cart in which we stashed our many many packets of seeds; chamomile, tagetes, pea, bean, nasturtium, chard, spinach, sweet pea, kale, yellow courgette, turnip, sunflower..... we bought a set of shallots and some giant giant hefty sacks of organic manure (I know, I know, I live surrounded by farms, I ought to be able to get some for free, but it's either not rotted down enough, and thus parasite rich, not mixed with straw or is icky cow manure which I don't want). I heaved it all over to my garden, dug it in, heaped it around fruit bushes and raked my beds smooth. Last weekend I enlisted the help of manly arms to dig and weed things properly and also to sort my crazy compost area out. I weeded, and we took stock of the greenhouse which had a tree fall onto it over winter. We think it will have to be remade..... and so to ebay I go. The garden is at that bare neat stage that fills me with excitement over what it might become. Esmé and I decided to fill the old wheelbarrow with herbs this year (she likes to be consulted). We added more compost to it, and daringly put out one little feathery chamomile plant which had such a lovely apple smell we sniffed and sniffed and pinched it for ages. Together we planted the shallots. She was most excited and wanted to get ahead of the season and do every sort of seed planting right now. I had to reign her in a bit for we need our greenhouse to be successful in the sowing stage. This I have learned (perhaps the hard way). I have never had good things happen when I sow direct in to the ground. I sow everything in trays now undercover in my greenhouse, and then prick out when they are big enough to survive the onslaught of slugs and snails that so thrive in our damp garden. My organic gardener friend does this and set me to the idea. It works fabulously, even for seeds on which the packet instructions say to sow direct such as carrot and what not. I am careful and barely touch them when I plant them out at a few inches high.
I spent a few happy evenings in bed last week (yes the thrills) with a
couple of
favourite veg books. I drew up my little plot in pencil and looked at my plan from last year and worked out where to best put everything I wanted to try this year. It takes some time. Rotating. It is quite a delicious part of the whole process for me. I am not bothering with leeks or onions this year, I get both quite cheaply from my veg lady and they are miles better than the ones I produce. Also my carrots were stubby curly-wurly things, a sign that the deeper my soil goes, the less rich it may be. The kale and chard and salad-y things were great, profuse and 100% better freshly picked than bought. Same with peas and beans. Beetroot is off the menu, we had far too much and I grew weary of it. The guinea pig is still feasting on the leftovers I stored (threw) in a bucket and when I clean out it's bedding, it's a very lovely purple squish of waste. One bed I shall have to abandon to flowers this year as the roots from a nearby tree make growing anything with root structures impossible. At this thought I became quite excited at the idea of having a flower bed! I am a person who makes/does/crafts with purpose and function and practicality in mind, not always 'art' for it's own sake. I grow calendula for oil making, sunflowers for child competitions and the birds. Wild flowers for the bees. But just for beauty? It's a very nice prospect. I remember the sunflowers grew very well in that root-y bed
a couple of years ago, compare to this past year when only one survived and it was pretty paltry. I have some wonderful poppy seeds I took from a friends garden, calendula saved from my own, and so we shall see what becomes of that part of the plot. Another newly dug bed seems ridden with ants and does not do well, my courgette plants became all powdery with mildew there, so I think this year I shall grow half of it with a green manure (what is a lovely fragrant flowery green manure?), hopefully after I dig this in it might improve the soil some what, the other half I shall stick my sweet peas, which seem to thrive any old place.
Are you asleep yet?
It's trying to hear garden plans I know, but I promise to show very exciting photos as everything grows. Surely you know that garden photos are indeed the height of interesting summer photos.
When ever I am back indoors, here is the cat. In the very same place as I left him. Sleeping 23 out of every 24 hours. I am half envious half humoured to see thus. But really I wouldn't give up the thrills of my outdoor life for a nap in front of the fire. Not
every day at least. Wow, I have moved on from my student days. I'll tell you a secret though, even as a university student I'd long for tiny baby clothes to wash and a place to plant a packet of seeds, a fire to tend, mouths asking for my cake. I wished so reverently for these things, not even knowing really what they were or what it would be like. It's nothing like I thought. Different, better. Even with less sleep. The fuller your hands become the fuller your heart too. No one tells you that.
