Diary Of A Wild Country Garden

So happy today as I stepped outside to go shopping I saw the very first snowdrop of the year in our front garden!!  I try to embrace every season but I do find Winter the hardest one to love! Snowdrops however always fill my heart with joy. I know now that nature is waking up and spring is not too far away. I don't see so many people growing Snowdrops in their gardens these days and I do not understand why. Snowdrops are undemanding plants and once planted out you can mostly forget about them. They happily multiply each year to give you a beautiful display, then once flowering is over they die down and that's it for another year until you suddenly find one on a cold January day to warm your heart.    I divide our snowdrops every few years simply so that I can distribute more around the garden. It also prevents them from getting too congested. Dividing them is easy, simply dig up a clump while they still have their leaves.  Separate gently teasing apart with your...

I just wanted to share these springtime photographs with you.  The weather here is grey and dismal and has rained, rained, rained for days. It feels like weeks with little sunshine. The hours of daylight are increasing gradually, but it is still dark early. This photograph was taken last year and I just love the life and colours and the beauty of the flowers on a lovely warm day. I can even recall how relaxed I felt, the fresh air, the scent of all the flowers, the gentle touch of the leaves and the rippling movement of the water- safely in the lake- from a light breeze. Amazing how a photo can evoke such memories and feelings. I do like to live in the moment and appreciate all of the days whatever they bring, when they are here, as they will not come again.  There is much beauty to be found in winter too. Today though I just needed to have the experience and memory of the spring colours!  So these photos are just a wonderful memor...

The garden, even in its total desolation, has a beautiful splendor... The morning sun gradually permeates everything, transforming black night to yellow hue to blue and silver, highlighting the glistening frozen dew drops. As it grows more vivid and exact you can detect dazzling, dancing ornaments and figurines in the snow. Birds awake to a wintry wonderland, feathers fluffed out, keeping warm as they can, looking for food. Like us they are waiting for Spring.  A million intricate icy shapes are unbelievably ornate and perfect. The snow takes on a life all its own, like the sea or the earth but secret and silvery. Hiding the landscape beneath, transforming the outlook to a new scene. Snowflakes, each unique and stunning. A short perfect life, turned forever upon fragments of its own self and destined to fruitlessness and silence. Crystals of infinite complexity living for nothing but to gradually dissolve their own perfect unique selves. Crystals growing slowly into each ot...