Keeping sane...

I think I would have gone really crazy the last few months without access to outdoors space. If I ever needed convincing that I really need a garden, I certainly don't now. It has given me a space to create, to watch things grow and develop, to just notice the ever changing light, sights and sounds and quiet place to try to relax. The 'garden in progress' is still just that but there is a sense of anticipation of the next phase, having just filled these beds with almost 200 bulbs for next Spring and Summer.

The snapdragons at the back are a throwback to the flower beds of my childhood and these plants rescued from the 'past it' shelf at the local garden centre for pennies have flowered on their floppy stems all summer, continuing to delight me as much as they ever did.

The nemesia were also unpromising looking specimens but, cut back after planting, have rewarded with endless sweet vanilla scented blooms that lighten the flowerbeds.

Ever favourite perennial geraniums strike me as 'workers' - the soil her is fairly awful even after lots of extra organic material but these were unchecked and just keep giving. What's not to love?

Earlier in the year I retrieved my very sad looking tomato seedlings from a neglected greenhouse. Most didn't survive and those that did struggled to catch up with the season being a bit late to flower and set fruit. Some got blossom end rot and I was convinced at one stage I would not get any ripe tomatoes but the last little surge of hot weather resulted in this surprise after a few days away. And they tasted delicious! Can't beat plant to plate!

And solace can be found in public outdoor spaces too. A combination of house hunting - in multiple locations across the county! - and a need to just walk for the sake of it sometimes, has seen me discovering  new places within a relatively small radius of where I have lived and worked almost all my life. And it is often the little things that can catch your attention and make you smile. Sharing a few crumbs with a robin in a park...

And a late summer wander round a city park (after the best bacon butty I've had in a while from the cafe in the park!) was a reminder of how to keep flower borders full of life, colour and texture even as the days shorten and get cooler.

And in the peaceful bluebell woods where my lovely mum rests eternally, the ferns are lush and green and, from ground level, these tiny mushrooms looked like a forest for fairies...

I am really looking forward to the day I am back in a home of my own and can step out of my door to breathe in the sky and the breeze...but, for now, I am learning to appreciate the grounding effect of the wider world.

S x

Still seeking stability...

When I locked the door for the last time on my little house on 27th January, waved most of my belongings off into storage and began a period of nomadic living until I could find my next home, I could not have imagined that almost 7 months later I would still be hunting. I thought maybe by Spring, early Summer at latest, I'd be in but no... Frustratingly, I had found somewhere and almost got to completion, then the seller changed her mind and pulled out. The English legal system is rubbish where house buying is concerned and the money spent on surveys and legal feels is meaningless if the other party lets you down. My personal view is that there should be some compensation - it shouldn't be possible for you to get so far down the line and then have to start again just because someone is a bit fickle. 

For the most part, I am living a 75 mile commute from work, thanks to the kindness of a friend, the rest of the time I am on my son's sofa bed so I can spend a bit of time with his little family. It has been challenging, not least because the pandemic has sent the housing market into some kind of madness, but also the lack of certainty about when I can finally settle down again. 

It has made me think about what really matters. With almost all my things out of reach, I am questioning how much I really need. Surprising how little you need day to day really. I miss my kitchen and my own bed but everything else? Not so sure. Perhaps I will delight in it again when I finally get to unpack. The things that have really kept me going - and I have felt pretty bleak at times - are the less tangible things... blue skies and sunshine, my grandson's first smiles, the kindness of friends. And always, running through like a thread, the constancy of nature. I think I really understand now how my Mum found solace in the garden - there is something very steadying about losing yourself in the physical and creative effort of painting with plants and then watching the bees, butterflies and birds appear, as if by magic.

Mum loved sweet peas and the first blooms were ready to cut 2 years to the day that she died. They will always make me think of her, with their delicate petals and sweet scent.

I renewed my National Trust membership and took a trip to the rose garden at Anglesey Abbey. The fragrance hung in the air and the photos don't do justice to these beauties.

In the 'resting bed' in the rose garden, bright cosmos with their feathery foliage...

The house I have been staying at was a new build 5 years ago and has the typical 'building site soil' with poor grass. My friend is, of her own admission, no gardener and was happy for me to turn her patch of weedy grass into a garden. This project has probably kept me sane over the last few months. From painting the fences...

To the first few trips to the nurseries...

Marking out the design...

Then hours of digging out the beds, shifting sacks full of builders lime, adding topsoil and well rotted manure (I have never dug a garden before and not found a single worm!) and finally beginning to plant up.  The plan is to provide some year round interest and some height to, eventually, shield from the overlooking windows.

Amazing how a little splash of colour begins to make it look like a garden...

Summer sunshine saw the cheap and cheerful bedding plants come into their own and the beginnings of a flower bad taking shape...

And as summer, sadly, draws towards its evening, the grass, deliberately filled out with white clover, looks greener and healthier, the perennials are beginning to spread and the trees are slowly filling out.

It's a long way from 'finished' (what garden ever is?) and I have stopped adding up how much I have spent! There is always space for just one more plant and as the seasons change, I'm sure we will want to keep adding to it. Next plan is Spring bulbs, need to plan and order those, then plant in a month or two. It has kept me looking forward, when there have been days when the future feels a bit pointless and we joke that even when I have my own garden again, I will have to come back every so often to keep this one tidy!

Nature has been therapy in so may ways.

S x

Seismic shifts...

A  momentous few weeks...the arrival of my first Grandchild.Which makes me feel ancient and privileged in equal measure. And immensely proud of my son and daughter-in-law, who have had to go through challenges I wish I could have saved them from. If only my Mum could have seen him, she would have loved her Great Grandson.

This gorgeous girl was responsible for my bedraggled look in the pic above but, in fairness, rather saved my sanity over the last few weeks and has made me think maybe, just maybe, when I finally get a home again, maybe I should think about a furry companion...

She got me out, in all weathers, and allowed me to appreciate early morning dew, golden buttercups and ethereal dandelion clocks...

And when we have had blue skies...a chance to just breathe...

Life changes. Sometimes imperceptibly, at other times it feels like the earth has shifted beneath your feet. There have been a few of those in the last couple of years. Ready for some stability now. 

S x

 

finding new footpaths...

I am currently 'between homes' - rather in the way that actors refer to being 'between jobs'... in so much as I actually have no home of my own at the moment. The last two years have proved unsettling in ways that I could not have envisaged and I had found myself increasingly longing for a proper bit of garden, easier access to the countryside and a reason to go home from work. Of course, I had forgotten what a trauma selling up and finding a new home is - and this time, I am conscious that I really don't want to be doing this again. Not least because it is so expensive to move, but also because I have to face the reality that this is probably it for me. The last couple of years have hammered home the unavoidable truth that life is finite. And at pushing 55, on my own for almost 10 years now, my options are undeniably narrowing. So this feels like a huge life step. Again. I have debated long and hard with myself about what I want and need, what I am just settling for (and there absolutely is a resigned element of that) and what my future looks like. I have no idea if I have found any of the answers yet or if I ever will really but I knew with certainty that I needed to move on from my little house in the city. It was right 7 years ago but not any more. I still struggle with not really having anyone to bounce ideas off - friends help and offer advice, sometimes very sound and rational, sometimes giving away their own preferences and insecurities. But they don't have to live with the decision and I do feel a little sad that life has not worked out for me so that I have someone not just to share the decisions with but also the dreams, the pleasure and the prospect of just 'doing nothing' with.

But it is what it is, so in the meantime, having sold my house very quickly and failed to find somewhere new, I am staying in a variety of empty houses while I hunt. It is giving me an opportunity to walk in new places and lots of thinking time...

Woodland paths with early bright flowers...

Daffodils alongside gentle streams...

And crossing a particularly bleak and blustery field, sudden movement ahead as a family of deer ran across the footpath...

A full rainbow over moody skies, which I wasn't quite quick enough to catch at its most vivid...

And today, though we started with a sprinkling of snow and the blue skies belie the bitter chill of the wind, it was good to get out and feel the sunshine. The hedgerows are frothy with blossom...

And, although you can't really see it here, there is the beginnings of fresh green in the branches...

The church looked striking against the sky...

With beautiful Easter flowers at the door...

Trying to just breathe and live each day...

S x