The earth laughs in flowers

...said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I'd like to take him on a tour round our garden just at the moment. A lot of times in the year it's not laughing very much and sometimes it's sobbing and miserable as sin, but at the end of May...

Wisteria hysteria!

(still not fully out)

As Monet said, "I must have flowers, always, and always."






“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”  Iris Murdoch

Who could be miserable in a garden like this?

(Don't answer that!)

I suppose the pleasure of country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live...

said Vita Sackville-West, splendid woman. (I know VirginiaWoolf agreed with me, in her own particular way...)

By Shoshana Kertesz

 There are brave efforts going on in a very bleak and bare garden to illustrate this determination to live.

Smiley miniature daffodils!

Cherry blossom (just about) on the tree I bought to remind me of my trip to China.

That's about it, folks. But it's a start!

While we're on the subject of the garden, may I introduce you to my Patent Wind Gauge? Everyone should have one.

Mostly, just one chair blows over if there's wind. Yesterday, the wind force was 2 on the Garden Chair Scale. Apparently, when we were away in Switzerland, all four blew over. Must have been practically a hurricane!

Ah, extreme conditions in an English country garden!