The Ups and Downs of Gardening

 

Walking across the fields which look down on my house, while Lily skipped ahead of me sniffing round a bale of hay left out for the sheep,  I couldn't help noticing some snowflakes drifting about in the air. Just a short time ago the sun had been shining strongly but now all was grey. I stood and admired the view for a moment which, even on a suddenly lightless morning, had a stern beauty all of its own. The reservoir lay slate-coloured in the middle distance, framed by the curve of valley, hills and bare-branched trees, while the high undulations of Kinder in the distance were softly illuminated by the tail end of weak sunshine.

And then the next thing I know I'm digging over a vegetable bed with icy beads of snow falling on me. I thought of going inside but then I said to myself: 'Why?' I was warm enough with the digging and a warm jacket and scarf. Lily was happy in her own little doggy world. So I pulled up the old thread-bare cabbages and put them on the compost heap and any remaining yellow-brown foliage I dug into the soil.

I laid my seed potatoes (Pentland Javelin) out in module trays in the greenhouse, the chitting process already begun. I glanced at the green algae smearing the panes of the greenhouse and thought that it was high time I gave it a clean - but that it could wait for another day. Instead I pruned a bit more off my one remaining ageing blackcurrant and created a new cutting from the prunings. This I inserted, deeply, into the new bed for currant bushes next to some I had propagated last year at college. I was going to plant a row of chard but found my hoe was down in the potting shed and suddenly my will deserted me. That, too, could wait another day.

So I gathered up a wooden trug and headed back down towards the house, peering before I went at a self-seeded hazel near the walls of the vegetable garden. I had a while back that it should be removed as it would block precious light, but as I looked more closely I noticed a couple of pale yellow catkins hanging off a slender branch. My desires to give it the chop suddenly deserted me and I heard myself finding reasons to keep it...

I stooped and picked up fallen twigs and branches of beech and pine for kindling on my way back down the garden and glanced at the neat piles of perfectly sieved soil that the moles had obligingly given me to fill up one of my vegetable beds. I noted, too, a plant which had succumbed to the icy winter as well as the daffodils and numerous Cyclamen coum that were determinedly pushing through the grass. Survival of the fittest.

A burst of sunshine found me heading down into the woodland area with the stream which I call Dingly Dell. I knew I wanted to clear the brambles from the bank where the primroses I have been planting over the last couple of years are now flourishing nicely and taking me back to the Sussex lanes of my youth. With some precarious manoeuvres and many a thorn through my gloves I tugged at five metre lengths of vicious prickles which, thanks to the leaf-mouldy nature of the soil, eventually gave up their hungry roots to the force of my pulling. What simple pleasure to reveal the tight buds of soft yellow and crinkly green beneath these spiny monsters.

While I worked I thought of all the plans I have for this part of the garden. It is the one area that, having done the vegetable garden, is still to develop. The grandeur of its Victorian past has long faded and I need to start to reclaim it from neglect. We have now attended to the overgrown hedges and wayward branches of the ancient trees. We have cleared invasive Rhododendron ponticum and tidied up the species Rhododendrons. I have planted Narcissus tete-a-tete - with many an autumn planting still to come - and plan for more azaleas, acers and other woodland plants and shrubs. There are always swathes of snowdrops at this time of year (all over the garden in fact) and daffodils and then bluebells will take over in due course.

I also looked at the spot I have in mind for a small wildlife pond and checked that it had clear sky above it to avoid excessive leaf fall. The canopy above parts in just the right place. I started pulling up self-seeded saplings and cleared the stream (currently dry after little rainfall these past few weeks of freezing weather) of debris where it drops underground to emerge in my neighbour's land across the way.

While the sun and snow continued to play hide and seek outside, I retreated into the potting shed to sow some sweet peas. I nicked their tough seed coats with my knife and placed them in seed and cutting compost in two round pots before sieving some more compost over the top and sprinkling on some grit. I then placed them in my heated propagator and must remember to go back and label them as I did not have a pencil to hand. I should have stayed and done many more but Time was calling me back inside to tend to other matters. I had done my gardening for the day.