Those Three Words Are Said Too Much

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajy0w1XPJk8

We'll do it all, everything
On our own
We don't need anything
Or anyone

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
I don't quite know, how to say, how I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told, before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
All that I am, all that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

20 May 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8ZOJj5ni44
...dutyinthedesert...

Early May Sunshine

A week ago, I awoke on the first morning of May to the dawn chorus. It had been warm overnight, and I remember getting up during the darkness to open the windows. When the dawn chorus began a handful of hours later, the birdsong filled and filled my world. Each morning since began mistily, chilly, with heavy condensation coating the lawns, the pots, the car. But during the long drive to work after the school run, the sun appeared and burned off the morning mists, leaving glorious mornings of pale blue skies and the promise of a lovely day ahead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DnUxLISFcA

Each evening since May began, I've arrived home, sometimes before teatime, sometimes later, and my house is filled with golden sunlight, right through from the west-facing kitchen to the east-facing front door. Warmth and sunshine, birdsong and dancing midges; all these things announce summer is on its way. The explosion of insects coincides with the birds nesting. Over the weekend the doves began their courtships, the sparrows too, and the blackbirds chased each other across the lawns and under the trees. The apple blossom is at its most beautiful and sketchable, and I am unwinding into the long summer months ahead.

Corey's Dad

Now here's a sad old thing --> Corey's Dad died yesterday.

I surfed on into Corey's blog shortly after I first discovered blogs. I like her photography (better than Pioneer Woman's). I've hungered for the meals she describes. I like that cerise cardi she wore to French Husband's do. I especially like her helpful chats about buying French antiques... (in sunny Derbyshire we call "antiques," "tat!")

But more than this, I like her candid revelations. So American. So for Corey, French Husband, Chelsea and Sacha, this is for you; (in English "ships" are assigned the female gender (how very French), but for today, they assume the male gender, for George);

A ship sails and I stand watching till he fades on the horizon

And someone at my side says "He is gone."
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. He is just as large now as
when I last saw him. His diminished size and total loss from my sight is in
me, not in him.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says his is gone

there are others who are watching him coming over their horizon

and other voices take up a glad shout "There he comes!"
That is what dying is.

An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further

Bishop Brent

(because, if I'm good enough and I die and return to paradise, I'd love to sing like this)

On Snowing All Day

It's been snowing all day, on and off. The Phantom's right. You can tell it's snowing even before you wake up. Just open your ears to the muffled sounds then your eyes to the whiter than usual glare coming through the curtains, and you know it's snowing. The snow bounces light right through the windows into every corner of the rooms. The birds huddle together in the hedges and trees, urging me to feed them last night's bread ends. Later in the morning they are followed into the gardens by children sliding about bare headed and gloveless. A car or two passes. Lunch is prepared. And still the snow comes, on and off, but not really sticking.

It hasn't really snowed properly, enough for drifts halfway up the house walls, since the children were at primary school. Then we'd be out making huge snowmen, leaping off the garden benches into enormous snowdrifts, and finally making snow angels. Sometimes even the village school would close, and parents would be summonsed from work at lunchtime to collect their over-excited children. Of course no-one minded, we all joined in with the mock-anxiety of it all. Should I try and get to the butcher's for stewing beef just in case we get snowed in? Have I enough milk and bread? Shall I get the barbeque out just in case we get a power cut, and where are those blasted candles? You only need to be snowed in and cut off once, with young children, to know that the panacea for all ills and fears is a well stocked pantry, a beef stew on the go and lots of candles. And snow angels, of course.

On Stuff White People Like

I like this blog, it makes me larf.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Alstroemeria In Easter Flowers

Yes, I knew that your hands were

a budding sprout, a lily of silver:

you had something to do with the soil,

with the flowering of the earth,

but when I saw you digging, digging,

pushing pebbles apart and guiding roots

I knew at once, my farming woman,

that not only your hands

but your heart were of earth,

that there you were making your things,

touching moist doorways through which the seeds circulate.

So in this way from one plant

to the other recently planted one,

with your face spotted with a kiss from the clay,

you went and came back flowering,

you went and from your hand

the stem of the alstroemeria raised its solitary elegance,

the jasmine adorned the

mist on your brow with stars of dew and fragrance.

Everything grew from you

penetrating into the earth and becoming green light,

foliage and power you communicated your seeds to it,

my beloved,

red gardening woman:

your hand on familiar terms with the earth

and the bright growing was instantaneous.

Love, thus also your hand of water,

your heart of earth,

gave fertility and strength to my songs

you touch my chest while I sleep

and trees blossom from my dreaming.

I wake up, open my eyes,

and you have inside me stars in the shadows

which will rise and shine in my song.

That's how it is, gardening woman:

our love is earthly:

your mouth is a plant of light,

a corolla,

my heart works among the roots.

On The Arrival Of Frogs And Toads

Fingers crossed, I may be emerging from beneath a six-month period of immense office based activity. During this time my garden has pretty much had to fend for itself. The appalling weather last summer helped; the seemingly constant rainfall gave plants a head start, only to encourage an explosion of slugs and snails that chewed everything in their nocturnal path. Plenty of growth but no harvesting or weeding problems... My favourite iris, smuggled back from a beach path near St Malo and nurtured for the past three years finally sent out a flowering stalk. Then one morning as I came to the terrace with a cup of tea, there it lay, flopped to one side where the damned slugs had chewed it through that night. How do you swear at slugs? Loudly and at length, that's how.

Every bit of cavolo nero chewed to bits as it emerged, and I can't even begin to describe what happened to my adored purple sprouting broccoli without genuine tears of regret filling my eyes. Adding insult to injury the blasted rabbits decided to have a population explosion and joined forces with the slugs and ate all my bean crop. Only the pumpkins and tomatoes survived.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago during another prolonged period of rain and blustery winds whilst walking towards the house along the drive after another office-bound slog. "Bloody cats!" I said, as I narrowly avoided stepping on a pile of cat poo slap bang in the middle of the drive. Except it was too big to be a pile of cat poo, and anyway it moved slightly. Thinking there might be a tapeworm in there, I bent in for a better look (it was nearly 9pm, after all and we don't do street lamps in our part of sunny Derbyshire). It was an enormous toad. The frogs and toads had arrived for their annual sexfest in my pond. Huge, bloated things were all over the paths, drives and lawns, all moving inexorably towards water, aided by the shiny wet surfaces all around us. "And where were you buggers last year," I muttered, and went on into the house.

The weekend's weather of blisteringly cold and clear early mornings with rainclouds moving in by lunchtime means I have a few hours to get the laundry out onto the lines to dry, before the deluge begins. Last night I went to bed to the sound of quite a gale rattling round the chimneys and rain lashing against the windows. Lovely. This morning I woke just after 6am (nine hours kip? I must be knackered) to another clear morning. Maybe I'll start some proper gardening today.

Easter Sunday

Good Friday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvjKUFVLLrE

On Avoiding Gardening, Part 2

I'm sitting here at the pc googling "how to tie a butcher's knot." Half an ear on beloved firstborn and merci beaucoup enfant deux upstairs as the former teaches the latter how to play Wildside by Mötley Crüe on bass. This has been going on for about 20 minutes; mercy boo learns fast, she's picked it up already. They're moving on to Doctor, Doctor by UFO. My work as a parent is done.

Palm Sunday

I see the King of glory
Coming down the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes
I see His love and mercy
Washing over all our sin
The people sing, the people sing
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
I see a generation
Rising up to take the place
With selfless faith, with selfless faith
I see a near revival
Stirring as we pray and seek
We're on our knees, we're on our knees
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest
Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity
Hosanna, hosanna
Hosanna in the highest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7SMUf6QcyQ

On Shovelling Snow And Flipflops

A lovely mild and balmy start to the day, so I decided to wear my flipflops whilst throwing crusts to the birds.

Oh Dear

I like the sound of Fiona, and there is no way on God's earth she's a Virgo, given all that rammel she's packed in at hers and Danny's place. Although Virgos do tend to horde things "just in case," so maybe she is one after all. Her latest post about those obnoxious money-grubbing clients got me thinking about my clients. I accept horticultural commissions by word of mouth only. Invariably one of my clients will ring me up and say, "I've just recommended you to a friend of mine. I did warn her that you won't take on a garden you don't like."

This serves a dual purpose. It gives me an immediate get out if I take an instant dislike to the garden or its owners. Once I rejected a garden after its owners told me they liked to holiday in Dubai. Any garden with slate chippings is rejected, but only after I rather slyly and unpleasantly enquire if, "that part of your garden has become the neighbourhood litter tray?" And any garden with spiky plants is rejected as a matter of course, as are owners who don't line dry their laundry or talk of "greening the desert."

Additionally, when my clients recommend me, they are playing with their friends that most subtle of British games, oneupmanship. The message is clear: Amalee liked my garden, but she mightn't like yours. Really, global brands spend fortunes cultivating that kind of marketplace mentality.

Looks like it's Gay Porn Day over at Pioneer Woman's site...

Some Kind Of Wonderful

Belting up the M1 this afternoon, rare event in itself, this lovely song came on the radio. Aled Jones is no Michale Bublé, that's for sure, but this duet is just delicious. So for the ungrateful wretch (you know who you are, matey) and for April whose missing her beloved, here's a little piece of musical heaven as Britain's lashed by appalling gales and floods, and my garden gets the soaking its needed since February.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIU2JhBXUu0

Homesick

First three horticultural commissions of the year completed; mid-semester exams sat and passed; final parents' evening of my parental career; Gardasil sorted; Lent well under way; and the closer we move towards the Triduum, the heavier my heart becomes, filling with longing for the Holy Land and my home and my past and my future and everything in between. My kitchen turns eastwards and closer to my homeland as rice replaces tubers, and harissa enters centre stage, with cumin, saffron and green leafy coriander to rock my world. I hanker silently for rice and chestnuts and lamb, for kibbeh, for falafel crammed inside flatbreads, for musakan and always for mansaf. Homesickness always strikes hardest during Lent; longing and loneliness born with silence and courage and shreds of hope. I love what I do not have. You are so far.

But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.

The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.

And as I love you, the pines in the wind

want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Narcissus Obvallaris

Narcissus obvallaris, or the Tenby daffodil, appears in my garden about three weeks after the little Tete-a-tetes and Jetfires make their appearance around the pond. N. obvallaris is taller and a more buttery yellow than the perfectly-formed wild N. lobularis which has yet to make an appearance. When my little beauties begin to flower, spreading through my garden like a creamy wave of baby smiles, I know that spring is truly here, that the long days of winter are finally behind us and soon I'll be eating breakfast on the terrace again. The cowslips flowered throughout the winter, the prostrate rosemary too. At least the pinks had the decency to stop flowering in December and make a stab at dormancy.

Walk Of The Month: Derbyshire

I've lifted the enclosed in its entirety from this weekend's Daily Telegraph, because that's the view I have driving merci beaucoup enfant deux to school over the mountains. Although obviously, I don't actually climb Stanage Edge...

"Christopher Somerville feels the weight of history in Derbyshire as he follows in the giant footsteps of Little John and Charlotte Brontë.

"It was a red dawn and a murky sunrise as I drove north into Derbyshire. But when I swung over Bradwell Edge and looked down into the lush farmland of the Hope Valley, the snake of mist that traced the curves of the River Derwent was already shredding away. By the time I got to Hathersage, the gritstone houses and road walls were sparkling under a pale sun.
On a pub sign I spotted a likeness of Little John, Hathersage's most famous son. The fierce but genial giant who once tumbled Robin Hood into a stream stood depicted in tunic of untraditional blue, his nickname abbreviated to a curt, if trendy "LJ". Up in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels I found his grave, long enough for two ordinary mortals.
Those who opened the grave in 1784 reported finding an immense thighbone nearly three feet long. Little John's mighty bow and cap of Lincoln green hung in St Michael's Church for hundreds of years; his cottage near the churchyard stood until it was demolished in the 19th century. Whatever the facts about Robin Hood's right-hand man, Hathersage continues to bask in the reflected glory of the Big Man of Sherwood Forest.
I pondered his provenance as I climbed the frost-whitened field paths north of the valley. In the 12th century the Hope Valley lay within the northern bounds of Sherwood Forest. Could bold Robin and brave John have lain among the ancestors of these oaks and beeches, the grey goose-feather flights pulled tight beside their ears, a fine fallow hart in their sights?
The handsome Tudor house of North Lees Hall stands close under Stanage Edge. Its tower spawned a tale in the mind of a 19th-century governess, a fable that has earned an immortality to equal that of Robin and his Merrie Men. Charlotte Brontë first caught sight of the pale stone tower in 1845 when she came for a three-week stay in Hathersage with her friend Ellen Nussey, sister of the village vicar.
The local surname of Eyre caught Charlotte's inner ear, too. Soon Jane Eyre would apprehensively approach the dark tower of Thornfield Hall, lair of the saturnine Mr Rochester: "It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman's manor-house, not a nobleman's seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look."
Those battlements were the setting for one of the most dramatic scenes in literature, as poor mad Mrs Rochester made her final bid for freedom from a terrible fire she had started: "...she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off... She...had long black hair; we could see it streaming against the flames as...Mr Rochester ascended through the skylight...we saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement."

For five minutes I stood at the gate, staring up at the tower, struck still and dumb by the power of that tremendous moment. I had walked on through the bare trees and up the ancient packhorse road to the summit of Stanage Edge before the picture faded and was overlaid by more immediate images - helmeted rock climbers festooned with rope, walkers filing up the rocky path of Jacob's Ladder, and, soaring above all, the rainbow arc of a paraglider's sail.
Stanage Edge, the rocky rim of what was once a gigantic dome of millstone grit, is a climbers' and boulderers' heaven. The grey adhesive rock, fractured into steps, cracks and layers, offers challenges to test tyro and expert alike. Famous names from that introverted, macho and phenomenally athletic world, the hardest of the "hard man" school - Don Whillans, Nat Allen, Joe Brown - cut their teeth along these modest-looking crags.
They and their successors dubbed every climbable crack and interstice with names superbly curt and clipped: Goliath's Groove, Agony Crack, The Unconquerables, The Vice, Blockhead Direct, Queersville, Eliminator.
I strode the flat, tricky gritstone pavement along the Edge, face to the wind, in a kind of high-level ecstasy. Climbers crouched and sprawled in impossibly heroic poses on every crag. Beyond them, a most enormous view opened to the south and west across the frosted fields and shadowy moors and edges of the Dark Peak. To the left ran cream and purple moors, the wind streaming their pale grasses so that the whole wide upland appeared to be in motion, racing north into Yorkshire.
Quitting Stanage Edge at last did not mean quitting these wonderful heights. Higger Tor and Carl Wark lay ahead, flat-topped tors like castles. I stormed their walls in an outpouring of supercharged energy.
Then, breathless and buffeted by the cold and wind, I dropped down through tumbled meadows around Mitchell Field Farm and the mock-baronial miniature fortress of Scraperlow House; down towards Hathersage, the warmth and light of the Scotsmans Pack inn, and the grey church spire that marks where Little John lies sleeping until Robin's horn wakes him for one last chase through the glades of the eternal Forest."

Freezing February Morning

You know that feeling when you wake slowly to silence? When your morning doesn't begin with John Humphries talking quietly in your ear, and your bed is cosy and warm, and your first thought is, "I have a whole weekend off," and you smile and move further under the covers? That's how my weekend began a couple of hours ago. And here I sit, having read my blogs and caught up with my fellow bloggers' news, read the papers online, Times, Telegraph, New York Times, made two cups of tea, eaten some toast and honey, and at 9am I'm deciding whether to drive to Belper and have a mooch around the architectural salvage yard there, or whether to drive over to Nottingham and visit M&S with my Oxfam vouchers, burning a hole in my wallet. Every once in a while, usually every couple of years, I open my wardrobes and decide to throw away everything in them. I have a couple of suits, a handful of Muji jumpers and three pairs of shoes left. And my Cossack boots and three Boden skirts, of course, but apart from that, the wooden hangers are having a lonely old time in there.

I take a similar approach to my garden. If a plant doesn't perform quite how I intended, or simply smells awful (something to remember when choosing lilies), after a couple of years it's hoiked out into a pot for the church plant sale. When I moved the fruit trees last weekend, I dug over a lovely bed in the middle of one of the lawns, shifting some revolting evergreens and some lovely bergenias to make space for the Egremont Russets and Discoverys. The evergreens are already potted up and in a quiet corner of the garden, awaiting transportation to the next plant sale and a loving home. The bergenias are sitting under a temporary blanket of soil awaiting inspiration. The apple trees are doing well, already the sparrows have discovered their latest perch and are busily chewing off the tiny fruit buds... This might be the distraction I need to save my espalier pear from their greedy little minds. Fingers crossed.

http://www.keepers-nursery.co.uk/product.aspx?id=DISCOV

This beautiful picture appears on the Telegraph's website this morning, and makes a delicious header for my list of gardening tasks to do this morning. Clear skies overnight made for a stunning display of stars, and a "red sky in the morning," dawn. Makes it jolly cold, too. So here I am, my breakfast of toasted prune and chocolate bread and the ubiquitous cup of tea to hand, listing tasks;

move that blasted damson tree; it's far too close to the bay which, I think, taints the flavour of the damson gin;

move that blasted apple tree; it snags the sheets when hung on the line;

prune out the autumn offshoots on the espalier pear;

unsubtle pruning of the vine really ought to be complete by late winter.

Of course, it's far too early to be moving the damson, as stone fruits really need delicate and well-timed handling. But sometimes irritability outweighs horticultural sense. Now let's get moving, we have a glorious morning in the garden calling to us.

"You could ride an elephant through the Tube and no-one would be particularly surprised."

Once again, Annie Mole and her great blog have provided a lesson to the world on what it means to be British. April, you may want to set this as a future homework for Little-Miss-Brit-in-the-making.

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2008/02/tube-thriller-video.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6EDAZ3crdY

Early Morning And A Dusting Of Snow

A lie-in this morning 'til 8. Glorious. Beloved firstborn dropped to uni yesterday after a flying, midweek visit, and merci beaucoup enfant deux on a weekend sleepover with best friend jody the waif. A whole, two hours extra in bed. And then waking up to snow too! I'm off out to buy some potatoes from the farmer who also sold me snowdrops last spring, and then breakfast at the best deli in Derbyshire, then across into Nottinghamshire to IKEA to buy some stripey material to make table cloths for summer. Lovely start to my weekend.

Friday Five: What Are You Eating This Week?

I have been following Fiona and Danny's experiment with "buying less," for a while now. Actually, I didn't really understand it; both working, she shops at Waitrose, gorgeous garden, how difficult can life be? Then I open an email at work this morning that made everything she and Danny are attempting to do, perfect sense. So here are the pictures, a Friday Five of sorts (I know there are 9 pictures, but whose counting?), and a perfect preparation for Lent, which begins next week.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide. Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07United States: The Revis family of North Carolina. Food expenditure for one week $341.98

Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca. Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 MPesos or $189.09 . Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna. Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo. Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 EPounds or $68.53

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo. Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village. Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp. Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFAFrancs or $1.23

What am I eating this week?

I Want, I Want, I Want.

Ungrateful wretch, I know. But I enjoy this gallery's choice of online art, and I really, really, really want someone to buy me these pictures. They are probably sold already, so lucky fellow whomsoever bought them. Oh Abbott & Holder, I surfed into your website a few years ago chasing a link to Edward Ardizzone (now there's an illustrator way out of my reach). I have day dreamed over your lists ever since.

But this trio by Anthony Baynes caught my heart completely.

http://www.abbottandholder.co.uk/exhibitions.php?action=view_ex&id=35

These pictures remind me of John Minton's illustrations in Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking. I received a beautiful, brand spanking new edition of Elizabeth David Classics a couple of Christmases ago, and decided that I was now old enough to colour in the illustrations if I wanted. So one dreary January afternoon I nipped up to the west-facing study and found my drawing pens. A cup of tea within reach, I sat at my desk and coloured in Minton's line drawings of platters introducing "Substantial Dishes", from A Book of Mediterranean Food. Then the tent; then the camels. After that I lost track of time until the skies had darkened and my tea was long cold, and my brand spanking new cookbook shone with colour.

But oh, how I want, want, want these three pictures...

Oh Me Wantee

http://uk.tiffany.com/Default.aspx?overlay=linkSimply&omcid=SS11#p+1-n+6-cg+-c+-s+-r+-t+-ri+-ni+1-x+-pu+linkSimply-

On Starting Back To Garden

I start back to horticultural work this morning, a site visit for my first commission of 2008. I'd much rather stay in bed until dawn, but my boots are calling, my new fleecy lined leather gloves already tucked into my waterproof, and the porridge cooked and ready to eat. So off I go.

Happy Birthday, London Underground

"Many Happy Returns to the Tube. On the 10th January 1863 the world's first ever public underground line opened. The Metropolitan Line had trains running every 10 minutes and carried 40,000 passengers between Paddington and Farringdon that day."

And many thanks to the wonderful Annie Mole and her blog, a great part of my week.

The Epiphany

When the song of the angels is stilled

When the star in the sky is gone

When the kings and princes are home

When the shepherds are back with their flocks

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among the people

To make music in the heart.

With thanks to Jan, on whose blog I read this Howard Thurman poem in the early hours of Saturday morning. Then off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the closing days of the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition, the largest and most ambitious project ever curated at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

This Precious Stone Set In The Silver Sea

This royal throne of kings, this sceptre'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,—

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.King Richard II Act ii. Sc. 1.