A good gardening day

If you have a beech tree in your garden, you have a forest...
Taken this morning at 7.30 am - still LOADS of light

Well it is almost the end of the school holidays - tomorrow we restart. It is really amazing how much there is always to learn about yourself. This half term, I learnt how much I, when forced, do enjoy the company of others. I also learned how I am perfectly content with where I am with life. I am utterly enjoying the calm before the storm which will be Brexit and the chaos it will bring should May bring herself to carry it out.

Here is a garden table set I bought two years ago - it finally has the patina I wanted.
The candle holder is from Singapore and has aged well
as has the flower pot which has now got a few years of moss on it
I think that the aged look really works.
I can't bring myself to throw away anything - yesterday I began gathering shards of
broken pots to bin, when i thought, no I could make a cool border with that.

So I do the little things. I make nice meals, I shop in small shops. I plan the curriculum to teach. I garden and look after the boys. Oisin in particular is getting older by the day, sometimes by the hour really. When I look at him the idea that I conceived a long time ago, that I would do everything I could in my power to ensure that whenever he grew up and as he left my orbit of influence, I would be able to say, I did my best, that idea both satisfies and taunts me. Satisfies because I think, I know I definitely did my best, it was humanly impossible not to have done more. But there is always the niggle at the back of my mind, maybe I could have done more... however, there is always my diaries and blog to witness. I did my best, to remind me. 

Here are more resued and repurposed things
The watering can is a TK Maxx special obtained four years ago - with the
Morris Strawberry Thief. It was a steal at £12.00 - a V&A issue.
The tiny terracotta pots were being thrown away and I just swiped them -
and the blue Ikea plant pot behind, well that was bought by someone else
and then neglected - so I just took that and now it is adorning our picnic bench which
also no serves as my potting table

I can hear the little coal tits chirping at the feeders...

Ghin is now ill. A very strange illness I have never seen before. He has a headache, which he never gets, and a fever which is low, and he has a cough and also his skin feels on fire from time to time. I am keeping an eye out for meningitis and so far nothing has materialised. It is one of three things, or perhaps all three: 1) a virus 2) too much sugar over the holidays and not enough sleep and 3) growing up. We watched the Woman In Black and he was terrified. So, four - the shock of watching the Woman in Black.

I felt so sorry that I had allowed him to do this.

I cannot believe it took this long for the bins to find their true home,
behind the garden gate. It is the perfect place for them.
They are tucked away neatly when we dont need them, they are
close to the gate, but not so far away that it makes it a total pain to get to them
and the fit PERFECTLY there I don't know if the crab apple tree likes their
company but I think I may try to get some coverings for them.

In half an hour these feeders will be bunged. I recycled old cereal into fat balls
- now called more PC - energy balls - I have discovered. In fact the starlings are now here
for their morning feed. They can see me and there
therefore very cautious. Birds do not like feeding alone so they always wait
till more arrive. Yesterday there were 12 starlings going mad on the feeder.

Yesterday we were talking about the Great British Bake Off which he has been rewatching being sick and all and he said to me that they use rude words in the programme. Oh yeah, like what? I asked. Like prostitute. Really? I said. Prostitute is not a rude word. It is someone's job. He was visibly amused. I can't believe you have just reacted so calmly to someone being a prostitute. So, I thought, maybe I need to tell him about Prostitution.

So, I did. I know, possibly inappropriate, but it is really important to me that if my son is thinking that prostitution is something shameful, he should know its origins and the reality of being a prostitute. 

So I said, it is one of the oldest jobs in the world. Really, he said. Yep. It started out with temple prostitutes - they were like the avatars of the goddess and they would choose men to sleep with in order to fertilise the Earth. Sex was sacred. Then it got confused with money - because people would pay for the honour. And then when the religious element was forgotten it became degenerate and women were then exploited. There is nothing wrong with selling your body for sex, however, it is so badly regulated and controlled that the women who do this do this at great danger to themselves. I forgot to tell him that in Amsterdam it was legalised and regulated and therefore much safer. And it wasn't as much of a stigma. I suppose it is unorthodox, but it is much better to speak of things and put the record straight than to not speak of them at all and sit in embarrassed silence and let stupid ideas fester.

The back of the garden. Nastursiums are the last plants to
fade. I need height in this flower bed, I am now on the search for maybe a dwarf fruit tree.
Wait, I have just remembered my stunted cherry tree which
I can plant here and keep very small by constantly pruning it

I used to be very anal bout the way things looked but now I am
a lot more chilled.

Birds feeding at first light - so beautiful, so gentle. I can also hear the robins trilling away. It really is going to be an awesome gardening day. I am going to clear the pond area and probably get a few more herbs which I saw at the garden centre... and some violas. And if there are any more blubs left I'm gonna get them too. It is a good time to start to clear the ground because not much will grow until the first burst of greed at the end of February. 

I can't believe how beautiful the light is today - pellucid, as they say. Today will be spent getting ready for the new half term - from organising the classroom to cleaning the house and sorting the curriculum - and doing some gardening. I am grateful for the ebbs and flows, the rhythms in my life. What does that feel like? It feels like I am standing fully in my power.

The grassy patch in the centre of the garden
This isn't the neatest garden in the world but it is bunged with insects and
robins and blackbirds love it as a feeding ground
They spend ages foraging in the undergrowth
I have decided to keep the edges filled with nettles because insects love them
and they are the backbone, literally of a lower ecosystem.
They are full of spiders and other inverts which in turn brings birds in.

Here is this corner of the pond which I have never managed to
decide what to do... last year the hostas received a brutally short cut
and they are still recovering.