We’ve spoken often about our back garden since moving in, surveying what we have and talking around plans to ‘improve’ it. It looks as though we’ve fallen in love with it much the way it is and that, apart from tidying it, taming it a little, and removing a couple of over-grown shrubs that are not to our taste, we’re likely to leave it be.
The killer has been this past couple of weeks when a large spread of a pink-flowered shrub (don’t know the name of it) outside the two bedroom windows has been in full production, attracting the close and busy attention of a crowd of bumble-bees. You can’t help but love a garden that’s friendly and attractive to wild life and we have a variety of insects, birds and small critters that would bring joy to any naturalist, amateur or professional.
But, busy, buzzy bees are special:
| I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. |
—
It’s the ‘bee-loud glade’ that I take as my image of course. I have no ambition to build a cabin now, nor plant my own beans. And I have little need to live alone.
So, then.
A day spent getting the house ready for Graham’s departure. And getting him ready. And getting me ready. Dolly the mega-cat is as ready as she’ll ever be, not that she’s going anywhere.
I think we have our plans and our approach pretty well mapped out but I’ll document as we go along rather than sketch the unsketchable.
Graham has already started making a list of the jobs he wants to do, and the order in which he wants to do them, when he returns in the autumn.
That’s a good thought. A very good thought.
