Coddled Eggs

Coddled Eggs

Saturday 19 July 2014

....Another huge day in Paradise

No need for "much a say about anything" as it was all about toil today.
Hacking snipping cutting mulching and raking ....and only one garden completely tidied....




and believe me it was freezing 

 The smell coming from the mulcher was a blend of sweet cypress and woody vine.
It was such a fresh smell it cleared my sinus or was it just the inhalation of ice cold air....maybe the blend ....either way it was wonderfully refreshing.






Decided to prune  the roses....


even the fish took their time coming up for a look.....

"Of all the ingredients we employ in the creation of a garden, scent is probably the most potent and the least understood.  Its effects can be either direct and immediate, drowning our senses in a surge of sugary vapor, or they can be subtle and delayed, slowly wafting into our consciousness, stirring our emotions and coloring our thoughts."-  Stephen Lacey, Scent in Your Garden, 1991




I have no idea why I love The Garden so much.My parents certainly were not gardeners.
I have always loved gardens and can remember as a little girl walking past a garden in Derwent street that grew beautiful flowers .I remember wishing our family had a garden with flowers and trees and berries.
One of my fondest memories of childhood was making a sand saucer with little  blue matchheads or as they are also known grape hyacinth (Muscari neglectum).
I carried that saucer home  from school so lovingly and sat it on the windowsill beside my bed.


I can remember telling myself "One day I will have a lovely garden filled with blue flowers."

I recently purchased Mascari neglectum alba . Which is the Grape Hyacinth only not blue but white. Alba meaning White.
It was a generous  clump planted  in a little bucket.
My son, whom is also a keen gardener now has the clump which I do hope spreads quickly and a few come back to me.
I love that about gardens.

Nomenclature in my garden is not just confined to Latin or common names but also there are plants that are named after the names of friends or people that have given me plants...
Like Olives Clematis or Jeans lille snowdrops, Karens Solomon's Seal  or a special friends Peony called The Maroon bugger.
My dear friend Jean M Young gave me so many treasures for my garden including a little clump of Violets that smell like grapes.
I got lots of little pieces some of which I have now lost but something I will never lose are the beautiful needle point herbs that Jean so lovingly stitched and then left for me after she passed away.




I would garden with Jean for hours .We could talk about anything and everything.
Sometimes Jean would sit on her porch. Whilst I gardened she read to me.
My favourite was Kipling


                             The Glory of the Garden



OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.


Sow.... on that note I will finish this post and leave you all with pictures of the end product of another
day, when the garden occupied us and busied our hands and quieted our minds.
The best smell of the day though had to be the hot buttered toast and coffee we had , 
sitting in the garden being thankful for the strength we still have to work hard.




Till my next post ....go have some fun and if you can't do that try Yoga.....







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