Time, Life and the Garden

It is a while since I wrote anything here. I have found things very tough in the last two weeks or so and, in spite of the idea that I would keep a record through such times; I have not, and in honesty did not even try. Surviving through each day and fulfilling my responsibilities were as much as I could do. I remember a Christian man I much admired saying that he had prayed every day all his life until an acute illness. I think it surprised and humbled him that he was unable even to pray during the worst part of the illness. Perhaps I should not be too tough on myself.

It is quite surprising, how we cope with some of the most difficult situations, but then something quite silly ‘knocks us for six’, as they say. I was going to try and tell you about it, but it is sometimes better to draw a line under unpleasant periods, let them go and move on. That is what I am going to do now. I am going to tell you about the four cordyline plants I bought.

During the spring of last year, we radically restructured our garden. Although I did loads of planning, the restructuring seemed to take on a life of its own and sort of evolved. We had planned an informal garden party on the Sunday afternoon following our middle daughter’s wedding. The event was nearly on us as we finished a crazy paving semi-circular patio area. This was bounded by a narrow curved flower bed and a path. In record time, we planted the flower bed with some bedding plants we bought and others we already had in pots. It was a bit of a hotchpotch, but it seemed to work. We were blessed with two glorious summer days for the wedding and the garden party.

As the summer progressed, we had a wonderful show from achillea, which grew higher than I had planned for the bed. In the autumn, we cut them back and planted some winter bedding plants, but the lack of height made the bed uninteresting. That is where the cordyline come in. One of the plants in pots, that we planted in the bed before the wedding was a sad looking cordyline. In the summer, it was lost amongst the yarrow, but over the winter months, it has been quite spectacular. We decided that we would buy some more, to add winter height. Of course, December and January are the wrong time of year to find such in our local shops, but this week Wilkinsons has got their new stock of plants in and I was able to buy four green ones. We wanted green. Our soil is quite dark and we have some bark areas, both of which result in the red ones being somewhat invisible. So yesterday, we planted them out. At the end, of the garden we have some ornamental yellow grasses, which have grown very well. Dave suggested that we split them and introduced this yellowed green to the bed as well.

It is now May; Dave thought the above piece of writing needed an ending. It did but there was no ending, so I avoided writing anything for weeks and weeks and weeks! Silly isn’t it. The spring bulbs I planted far too late have grown up, out-shone the cordyline and are now past their best. Even the achillea is growing up and getting ready to flower.

I make no apologies for my humanity. What I am I am, but I am finishing this. We watched for every bulb and flower. A single daffodil began to open on St David’s Day. This was followed by a succession of other narcissi planted at the edge of the lawn by the path. Of all the experiments with the bulbs, this was the most successful and is something to develop further next year. After the encouragement of the first daffodil, we were a bit disappointed because we seemed to have a poor response considering the number of bulbs we had planted. We had planted a number of different varieties. These came up and flowered at different times. We had to be patient It was not going to happen all at once. May be that is something I need to learn in my life.

I began this piece, by commenting on why I had not written for some time and even before it is finished, I allow myself to be hindered. Perhaps I need to be patient with myself.

And the cordylines? They are doing just fine

Gill