wendy house

It’s beautiful

This weekend my gimlet helped me get dozens of flush screws in the woodshed

What was once a flat pack is now a full 3 dimenisonal experience with an asphalt roof.  No avatar necessary,  just a black and decker power drill, tape measure, tacks, hammer and the essential gimet

Recovering from an intensive weekend de-savaging the wendy house garden:  

• woodshed shopping
• leaf brushing
• weed plucking
• bush pruning
• snowdrop shoot admiring

Savage garden sang I want you

Christmas bought a Magnolia Stellata.  It is 1ft tall.  If left unpruned it will grow 5ft in 10 years and mature to a hieght of about 10ft

It is a SHRUB*!

(*or a tree)

The Wendy House garden has attracted many shrubs since last autumn when the low maintenance patio was broken into by a range of muddy borders. 

The Wendy House garden has become one large SHRUBBERY.  This gardening direction will please the knights

King Arthur meets the knights who say Ni

Wandering around the stunningly topiaried gardens of a stately seat in Kent. There some some significant, and in significant, discoveries:

• a pole dancing topiary bear
• a Virgin balloon full of hot stagnent air
• Woodwormed Jacobean panels beside a spiral stair
• Ms Scarlet’s radical stealth mohican-style crop of not-ginger hair
• some bushes (not Scarlet’s)

The local cat herd has well choreographed dance routines.  The balletic movements involve sudden, synchronised, dashes and leaps that are contrasted with subtle coordinated pre-dash tail-fluffing demonstrations.

The garden stage provides props for leaping over, dashing around, hiding under, elegantly perching upon and a liberal dose of insects to piroette with. 

Here we find Matrix lurking in the Nigella,  where she prepares to launch straight into a dash,  bypassing her weakest move,  the pre-dash tail fluffing.

get orf moi land, 

or in regionally more accurate terms  ‘OI!  git orrrf my lahnd with the optional extra ‘OAR isle shoooooot yew” is often creatively used by Bristolians to deal with all sorts of naughty intrusiveness. 

someone hogging the twiglets?   ‘OI! git orrrf my lahnd…’

Seattle symphony stealing your artwork? ‘OI git orrrf my lahnd OAR else….”

Seattle symphony orchestra is (allegedly) stamping on your emotions:  ‘OI git orrrf my lahnd OAR isle shoooooot yew“ 

A birdy around the Wendy House garden has a reasonable variation on this call,  here she goes,  sat in the neighbours Rowan tree: 

(18 seconds of chirpy  & wobbly camerawork warning)

An action packed weekend in the Wendy House garden:

• a fuzzy-buzzy bee feeds on a rotund allium
• a Peacock butterfly feeds on another allium
• the garden robin feeds on insects attracted by my recent digging
• a harlequin spectabilis ladybird takes a break from aphid eating on one of the acers 
• Matrix snoozes under another acer
• A large hornet (2 inches) found its way into my bedroom.  I didn’t know it was a hornet.  They look scarey.   I panicked, squeaked, opened the bedroom windows,  wrapped myself in a curtain and wafted the corner of the curtain at the hornet until it took the hint and  left via the window. 

On a sunny April weekend  post-youngster Brits launch into the highly risky business of sculpting their garden.  This weekend I fell victim to the under-publicised gardening health hazards.  Not a muscle problem from lifting, digging and carrying, or falling over a garden ornament,  but  a  little arm-blush reaction to a local ant. 

Ouch!

Kids,  beware the garden,  its a jungle out there

My new pruning shears may not be electrically powered tools but in my hot little holiday hands they can power through a Viburnum Tinus at dusk before the sun fully sets. 

Invite me to all your pruning parties…

clip clip clippy!

  During a week littered with uncharacteristically fabulous sunshine I’ve been wrecklessly wandering out without a coat or a vest. 

Wandering nowhere in particular.  Directionless in the garden.  

Planting bulbs and border-blooming plants for the summer, digging-up weeds, drinking gallons of well brewed tea and generally admiring the arrival of spring blooms from bulbs and bushes planted last Autumn. 

It’s leave from normal work.  It’s in my garden.

Its not technically gardening leave.

How silly is that?

Hittavainen, the Karelian god of hares has turned up in the Wendy House garden. 

According to the BBC Hares crop up in Mythology all over the place and are associated with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery.

This one is associated with pebbles purloined from beaches all over the world.

After consulting with the experts (mum, friend, their books, the internet) I thought that the nobly, noble, small tree in my garden was a ‘Sambucus nigra’ more commonly known as an Elderberry and before that as aeld. 

Like many trees the Mythical history of the Elderberry proposes, or describes its traditional uses.  The name may come from the Anglo-Saxon term ellaern or aeld which means “fire” or “to kindle a fire“.  It was associated with female-centric goddess systems then over time gradually perverted to represent ‘mischievious faeries’ by both the celts of Ireland and England.  Traditionally the Elder is placed by the back door of a home, where mine grows, to keep evil spirits from influencing or entering the home and used to pin the thatch to a roof.  The runic association is with Feh, the first rune, indicating where one sequence ends and another begins,  the cusp of transition,  renewal.

 British Christians gave the Elder a more sinister press,  claiming that Judas committed suicide by hanging himself from this tree.  He must have been short or the tree leaning over a decent drop.  Along with many other trees it is claimed Jesus was crucified on an cross made of Elder.

Then a garden specialist happened to wander by saying that’s a Viburnum tinus…

Garden designer guest:  it’s not many people that can look straight into their garden when sitting on their toilet

I will have to put something in the line of view to make it a tad more pleasurable than just patio and fence.  As I’m sure you can imagine,  I’ve been contemplating the garden rather a lot recently…

According to the principles of Feng Shui,  I should change the layout of the bathroom, keep this door closed, change the colour scheme from blue and white to red and red then add a few candles or my career will flow into the sewers.  Alas,  I’m way too busy building my career and going on holiday to bother with arranging and paying for builders to rebuild my bathroom in a Feng Shui approvable layout and colour scheme.  Pleasing plants in line of view will have to suffice.