Tag Archives: garden
Honesty – Seed of Memory
I tried taking photos of our Honesty plants some weeks ago but was not happy with the results – the evening light gave a colour cast that, when seen in the images, did not look natural. Now the plants have been moved to a more suitable spot in the garden and the dry seed heads were laid out on a table.
Why Seed of Memory? Because Honesty is a plant that always brings back memories for me of our garden in Northern Ireland when I was young. My mother must have talked about it and the name, being an easy one to remember, has stuck in my mind and is now associated with a time in my life when it was not only in the garden, but also in the house as decorative dry seed heads.
Thinking of this association with memory, I immediately think of one of my all time favourite albums – Seed of Memory by Terry Reid. This too, brings back some strong memories of people and places for me. I’m not sure what the copyright restrictions are for the file below but it is on YouTube and available to buy on that web page.
A Flower from the Garden – Welsh Poppy
Neither the sun nor the flowers were in the right position for the angles I wanted in the photographs I took of these Welsh Poppies in my garden yesterday, but it was good practice for another time.
Click the images to enlarge.
About to bloom
Wandering Around the Garden, France.
French Garden – Two more photos from my parents’ garden in Faye la Vineuse and you can see it below in the StillWalks “Garden Walk, France”.
. . .
The house is for sale and you see the StillWalks house tour here and get further details on the house website.
Looking Out
Looking Down
French Garden Walk and House Tours
New StillWalks – I have just completed a new StillWalk, for Summer, of my parents garden in France, “Garden Walk, France”. It is a beautiful garden and the sounds of the birds and bees, the church bells and the peace take me straight back there.
There is also a StillWalk house tour produced to help sell the house. Anyone interested should check it out and if you know of anyone who may be interested, please pass this on.
French House
Busy Bees
Stress Signal Status
Aching, painful muscles?
Tinnitus?
Headaches?
My stress signals include these three symptoms and probably in that order. StillWalks or walking are my most immediate remedies.
Tinnitus – The tinnitus comes second in the list even though it is a constant in my left ear. It is when it becomes a textured and vibrating whine that it gets more difficult to accept and it does this at times of greater stress . . . and then, of course, I get more stressed as a result.
Muscles – It’s the same situation with the muscles – the pain in the muscles (often my neck, currently my shoulders) may be the cause of stress or something else but the result is the tensing of those and other muscles which only makes things worse.
Headaches – These come last on the list for me because I do not generally get headaches. When I do, it is usually the result of stress. I have only ever had a couple of migraines but that is two too many. A good description for them was put up here at the A Word in Your Ear blog last week.
It’s Amazing – I’ve just watched a StillWalk and it’s amazing how well can work! The Garden Park Walk is a full length example – you’ll find it on the Spring Walks page of StillWalks and it is recommended that you watch it full screen.
Here are a few images from this short 6 minute video.
Magnolia, Clyne Gardens, Swansea
Clyne Gardens, Swansea
Clyne Gardens, Swansea
Rhododendron, Clyne Gardens, Swansea
A Blank Canvas (Our Garden)
When we first moved into our current house, the garden was almost a complete blank. A flat rectangle of grass with a straight path down one side, an unused greenhouse towards the bottom end with about 30 – 40 feet of brambles and rubble all banked up behind it and chain-link fencing down the sides.
We spent our first Winter planning how we wanted it to look – not too ambitious to begin with, we simply wanted to get some plants in there and take away some of the straight lines. We dug borders and changed the shape of the path and my mother gave us a Flowering Cherry tree.
We were pleased to find out that, until about 12 years earlier, what was now grass had been filled with roses. This must have been quite something – the garden is approximately 50 metres long from the yard and about 5 metres wide and 50 – 75% of this was roses. Anyway, they must have done the earth a lot of good, and the earth kept that goodness all locked up until we came along and started planting. The result was that it seemed like anything planted grew like crazy. Actually, there are some things that don’t do well and, of course, some of the things that do grow well, we would prefer them not to.
Over the years we have managed to reclaim all of the area behind the greenhouse as well as using the greenhouse itself for a number of years for tomatoes, cucumber, basil, aubergine, etc. However, the greenhouse is no more – taken away when we built a studio at the end of the garden. We still try growing fruit and veg but these days the british Summer is more suited to moss cultivation than anything needing a bit of sunshine. Speaking of which, why not visit the Moss Appreciation Society on Facebook.
There are always improvements and changes we want to make to the garden but whether or not we get round to doing anything about them doesn’t matter to me, I still love our garden the way it is – never too much under our control!
. . . and the birds . . . I used to play birdsong recordings in the background on the computer sometimes in our previous studio – now I don’t have to. Even without StillWalks, they are always there in the garden, right beside me.
The Cherry Tree in full bloom through the patio doors