Category: garden leaks

Some years ago in moments of

je ne sais quoi, I planted three box

plants. I had a while believing that

every garden needs a folly, not

in this case a building, but birds; pecking

birds, close to the ground. Then I changed my mind;

more than once – so the now amorphous lump

really is a folly of indecision.

It gets left out of those summer clippings that

keep my cloud stroke bubble pruned hedge tidy.

It waits for winter just as I wait for

inspiration; more cloud? Geometric?

Corkscrews or a child-size garden chair?

Or maybe those birds were a good idea;

when winter comes, this year, yes this year

I will do something creative with my shears.

At the bottom of my garden,

a neighbour rose scrambles over

an old wall into the sunshine

space, waves long fronds out over

painted archways that offer a

permanent illusion, a trompe

l’oeil journey into somewhere that

lives in my imagination.

Plausible in summer, spring and

even autumn, a comforting

fantasy in frosts and chilly

winters, this escape from the real

beckons under the faded pink

of this last rose waving greeting

or maybe a final goodbye.

I’m still basking in high summer.  The cosmos

producing late buds, are still just beginning.

We share reluctance to let go, to move on;

but mornings are minutes later and evenings

are dark enough for candlelight. I focus

on midday moments, on summer dreams and on

breathing in the energy of feeding plants:

bulbs stocking up for next years exhibition,

stellata fattening sweet silvery buds,

and the Japanese anemone peeping

bright white eyes between the glossy green

of fatsia fingers. Focus on hoarding the

memories, the mellow delights, for the long

hibernation that will inevitably

follow the summer fattening of my soul.

The thin ribbon of mist that trickles

it’s way down the river valley at

this time of year, this morning flash-floods

and, on waking, only the very tops

of the trees are visible above the

pale swirl. Dissipating to reveal a

rosy horizon, it leaves behind

the chill of autumn, challenging my

denial of summer’s hesitant withdrawal

by drawing finest grey-white beaded

outlines to the exquisite new alchemila

leaves emerging after the ritual

of a July decapitation.

The Japanese acers have not had their best season

Skeeters Broom has put on weight, but the rest, to a brush,

have shown their dismay at the taciturn

vagaries of this years weather. The hot translucence

of scarlet that was Skeeters greeting to spring, now

replaced by a hesitant red-green fading to

purple grey. The indecisive reticence of the

sun suddenly transformed without warning, to fry

the fragile fingers of Sango-kaku into curled

claws of pale orange-brown. My memories of

Kyoto colours have failed to ignite as my own

small woodland hunkers down in dusty varieties

of vaguely green while we all try to stave off

any hint of the season of mellow fruitfulness.

Evening candles pool flickering warmth

over the deep bronze-black of phormium,

black lily grass and aeonium.

A late stand of acanthus, five elder

gentlemen, make short, upright blossom

with sparse flashes of white acknowledged

by the low-bowing agapanthus blooms

still vying with the candlelight in

mellow dusk. The ravaged hosta spurts

perfectly miniature grey-green leaves

now late sun has driven slug-life

deeper underground while geraniums trail

bright white stars through this heaven

of ease and contentment, of unhurried

peace.

Lucifer sears it’s way through the green formality

dips it’s flaming fronds to ignite the last of the bronze

hemerocallis, nods to the waving purple of

verbena bonariensis and the deeper tones

of clematis scrambling wild and irreverent through

golden euonymus neatness and the gnarled contrast

of an ancient rosemary. Sedums, still pale ice-green

cluster around the Japanese anemone

awaiting inspiration from its bright pop of pink.

Green makes valiant attempt to dominate the space

with spikes and swords of kniphofia, crocosmia

and gladiolus byzantinus, giant ears of

bergenia and the green fingers of peony.

Under cover of all this hyper activity

stubs of sturdy greenness push their way up into daylight

Surely premature, these are muscari, heralds

of next year’s spring, too soon and yet so reassuring.

A self-seeded arrangement of

stipa tenuissima and

white nigella continues

to delight me; as flowers

fade, the textured seed-balls

rattle with ripening seed

and their subtle colours weave

among the sun-bleached stipa.

Preparing to recreate

and extend this little patch

somewhere more convenient

excites my green thinking

collecting seeds, digging,

weeding; planning something

that will no longer be a

happy accident I feel

the thrill, anticipation

of glorious renewal

as the rest of my garden

billows in the full throttle

of summer’s maturity.

Spotlight on the new shed, detracts;

plants just background to a focus

on tools, on their neat, orderly

arrangement in the pristine white

of their new home. And then the axe,

my own cabinet reshuffle,

just-in-case, might-come-in-handy

stuff bites the dust – makes its way to

recycling; treasures that might still

be useful, die for lack of skills.

The quirky of the old shed risks

being swallowed up in modern

plastic practicality; in

the rationality of small.

A shrinking world, until my eye

returns to sky unlimited,

the uncaged bird, and the toadflax

still escaping over walls.