Category: Outdoors

A Little Early Morning View From Outside My Garden

Thursday 7 May 2020. 11:50am

I’m getting up very early at the moment in order to water and tend the troughs and tubs that are outside the front of my garden. They border the pavement, and as the road is very much a pedestrian thoroughfare, particularly with the footpath to the little shop at the far end, I don’t feel safe to be out there during most of the day or evening.

With the limitations on being able to look after them, and of course no money to spare, I haven’t added any colourful bedding to the front troughs and pots as I usually do, but am letting them do their own thing with the perennials that are already there, and the odd things that have self seeded. I’m a big fan of self seeding plants!

The stocks along the outside of the hedge are sort of semi self seeded, having had a little assistance from me by shaking them along the border over the last summer and winter as they produced their seeds. I’m aiming to get them growing all the way along, and have just shaken some more in the remaining gap, so fingers crossed they’ll be popping up later this year.

With my garden very much my focus at the moment, I’ve been giving thanks for all that I’ve done over the years to give it as much of an air of seclusion and privacy as possible; so important at this time. I’m going to be running a little series of posts for my Patrons, looking back to the very start when all that was out there was a couple of very tiny strips of open grass bisected by a short straight concrete path from the pavement to the front door. I’m digging out old photographs, and drawing up ‘floor plans’ of the various stages of the garden’s development.

If you would like to follow the journey that my garden’s taken over the past 25 years or so, hop over to Patreon and sign up. I’m opening the posts to all tiers, so whatever you feel you’re able to give will unlock them.

Meanwhile, here’s a little excerpt from the Patreon video I made first thing this morning, showing some of the pavement side of the garden, before the rest of the world was out and about.

Blowing The Cobwebs Away

Tuesday 14 January 2020 17:30

After three days of sitting indoors hunched over my iPad getting this all set up, I very much needed to get some air this morning.

We’re on the edge of the current UK storm, with very strong winds and lots of rain since late yesterday, but there was a bit of a lull mid morning, so I headed out.

I’m very lucky here to be less than five minutes’ walk from the woods, and just another five minutes through there to the canal. It was raining a little, and quite chilly and windy, so I didn’t want to pause for long, but I did clip my lapel mike inside my jacket just in case there was a chance to do a little video to test it out, and in order to see how well video can be added to the blog. (I thought it worked a treat directly uploaded to the site, but there have been reports of problems, so I’m trying again using Vimeo)

A swan came gliding up to me not long after I joined the towpath, but quickly realised I had no food for it, so paddled off again! It occurred to me this may very well be one of the tiny babies that I saw last summer.

Going for a fairly brisk walk along the canal, and across the adjacent fields, is going to be very important in the coming months. It’s a great way to clear my head and come up with ideas, especially for the story that’s based along its banks. I have several routes ranging from about half an hour to an hour, and I’m well equipped for all weathers. Winter walks are my favourite and as the saying goes: there’s no such thing as the wrong weather, only the wrong clothes!