Garden
About January’s Garden
From Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ in the The Merchant’s Tale, about January’s garden – such lovely words and I agree! He made a gardyn, walled al with stoon; So fair a gardyn woot I nowher noon. The whole section where these lines appear. This noble January, with all his might, Honourably, as does […]
Big Garden Birdwatch
This is a Dunnock, perching on the edge of my trailer. This bird became the star of my Big Garden Birdwatch last year. This afternoon I’m getting ready for the 2014 watch, filling up feeders and making sure the birdbaths are topped up with fresh water. I love this dedicated hour of watching my […]
Cabinet of Curiosities
Sometimes as I garden, little treasures pop up out of the soil, or occasionally they are washed down in the beck and stand out because of pattern, colour or shine. These are recent aquisitions, and will join my other rows of comforting curiosities. I have quite a collection now and I love to […]
Knotty Brambles
I’ve spent time this weekend clearing brambles. The area where they grow, down the side of my workshop, used to be a hedgerow, there are ash tree stumps and it is a place I tend to leave to grow naturally wild. The geese have made nests and laid eggs there in the thick […]
Cut flowers for the house
Cut Cardoon to be accurate, and these flower heads never seemed to actually flower. Maybe this variety is not supposed to, but I had waited and waited for tufts of colour or thistle type petals to emerge, but they never did. Cutting was a tough job even for my secateurs! However, what beautiful heads […]
Frosty Start
A frosty, foggy start this morning – stone in the workshop was cold to handle and chisels icy. In no time though the sun had burned through and I was shedding layers and working outside. The roof of the workshed steamed. Everything looks magic on mornings like this.
Apple Picking
The stormy weather of rain and strong winds over the last few days has brought down lots of my apples – so today in the pouring rain I collected them up and picked others ready to fall from the tree. I’m impressed with the harvest – it is only the apple tree’s second year and […]
Snail Sculpture
A sculptor by the name of Nerio Festa made these little snails – as soon as I saw them I made a note to myself that I must be more creative with my offcuts! After moving to San Francisco in 1994, Nerio Festa began creating natural, artistic pieces with steel, recycled metal, stones and paper. […]
Letter Blocks in Stone
Alphabet blocks are traditionally a children’s toy, and learning aid – and making these brought back early memories of pushing a little cart round the garden, full of wooden blocks with a letter painted brightly on each face. I built with them, toppled them and made names in a row. These stone ones are playful […]