Not all rain...

 It feels as though it has been raining almost every day for weeks. Bits of my garden are so consistently wet I have stopped fighting it and made a wildlife pond! But looking back through the last couple of months photos, there have been a smattering of nicer days and blue skies. 

A surprise large pond tucked behind an old community hospital, so peaceful...

This was mid April when the fresh green growth was just getting going on the trees, giving them a splash of lime against the blue sky...

The plants in the garden are going crazy and the borders that looked as though they were underplanted suddenly look a bit overcrowded! I do this every year! I've allowed the forget me knots to take over a bit but I do love their frothy blue in every gap.

On the odd day when it has been dry enough and warm enough for a coffee in the garden, I love to look at it from a different perspective, through the alliums about to dazzle with their purple globes of stars...

And I am constantly amazed by natures ability to just 'inhabit' - this pond was wet mud 2 months ago. A bit of pond liner, a few old stones from around the garden, a wood pile behind a nearby shrub and a few bargain pond plants which are just getting going...and the frogs have already moved in! They sun themselves on the branch I left in the pond, or on the marginal plants or just chill out in the water, just hanging there. I have spotted five at once :-) and it has made me stop fretting about blanket weed as they don't seem unduly bothered and I think it will just sort itself out eventually.

I don't think it is possible to overestimate the positive impact this small outdoor space on my doorstep has on me. It is chaotic, full of plants that run riot, flop and smother their neighbours - definitely a work in progress in terms of the continuity of colour and form the garden design gurus tell you about - but it is undeniably a little community of living things that just get on with it, whatever I do or the weather does. And sometimes it just makes me stop to watch and listen and breathe...

S x