and other things I have discovered
It is good that megabytes don’t weigh much. If they did, my phone would be too heavy to carry, because it is stuffed with moments. The best ones prove something or remind you of a lesson learnt. Like these thistles.
Four years ago this kitten brought joy to the house. Now she brings havoc and rats.
Continue reading “How to Manage Food and Rats”Snowdrops symbolise innocence, the quality that lets you declare a grand plan that will never happen. Announcing you will Feng Shui one corner a week for example. One year later you will discover that you didn’t do it. Now what? Have a word with the clutter, ask the right questions, and work out why it is still here.
This old oak was born into a village of horse-drawn carts and solitary cottages. Now it watches over sprawling estates. For centuries it has provided calm shelter for birds, and shade for saplings.
The patch of creeping thyme is struggling. It wants to spread a soft carpet across the rocks but bigger plants have turned up, and everyone is jostling for position. It is too complicated to control, so I leave them to fight it out and look for something else to organise. I trot indoors to play Feng Shui and find the drawer from hell.
The dreaded Blackthorn Winter. The one that ancient farmers warned us about. When the blackthorn bushes flower, spring flips back to winter with east winds, snow, wind and hail. You must scuttle back indoors, clutching your seedlings, and take up an indoor hobby like Sorting Out. There are bad scenes in the kitchen.
Einstein suggested that time is not constant. He probably started thinking about this after a tough slow winter. One day he was glad that February was done, the next he was staring at his Camelia bush wondering where the hell March went. I know how he felt.
In the olden days, people passed through this room for fun, or work, and often stayed for weeks. We kept it tidy, some people got fresh flowers, and everything worked fine. A year ago today that stopped, and a new word was born. ‘Stickitinthespareroom’ became a thing. It is going to take a lot more than a bunch of daffodils to sort this lot out.
In Aboriginal culture, the eucalyptus is a reminder of our interconnection with nature and the importance of links to past and future generations. This tree was planted to provide gentle shade, with a hint of rain forest. All we got was a spindly stick that thrashes about in gales. It became a reminder of ‘potential damage to a roof’. So we chopped it in half.
The White Narcissus is so tidy and dainty, catching the sun on its way to the pond, which has too many leaves, and no frogs. Where are the frogs?
When the world looks troubled, go find a Virginia Creeper, a slow firework to calm the mind. Over summer, while apple trees were fainting in the heat, the creeper was busy, going all out to engulf the greenhouse, vegetables and whatever else it could get its leaves on. Now it is queen of the month.
Sweet Peas are easy to grow and fill the air with scent. We have a new flower to distribute around the house, in case visitors come and don’t like our smell. Except we don’t have visitors any more. I picked them anyway, filled the house with heavy stinking bunches and immediately triggered an asthma attack. I do this every year. It generally takes 45 minutes to remember they cause potentially deadly wheezing.
