My Grandfather's Spade

My grandfather died in 1962 so this spade is well over 50 years old.  In that time the only care it has received is to be cleaned after use with an oily rag.  I don't know how long he had it, but I am told grandad grew rows and rows of vegetables in his back garden all perfectly measured and straight in the "traditional" way that provided a veritable feast for his family.

I remember my own father using it in the 1960s to do something similar.  And I recall myself trying to emulate the young man next door by digging over unused ground in the long hot summers we had back then.  I would even take my shirt off and tie it round my waist like they did and it made me feel so manly.  Only they were probably wearing boots while I would be wearing sandals with grey socks as was the fashion in these parts in that revolutionary decade.  And if I nipped my skin on the rolling handle I would hold back the tears because that's what men did too.

The spade has been with me for around twenty years, the first ten of which it was largely neglected except for shovelling snow and other odd jobs.  But in these last ten years it has dug, double dug and treble dug in three different gardens and an allotment.  It has moved considerable amounts of compost, manure, sand and soil.  It has planted more plants than I care to count.  And there it still stands to this day as sturdy and strong as ever - although the blade is somewhat smaller than it once was.

Its most recent job was to excavate a small area in front of the potting shed and then to mix the soil with grit and sharp sand before replacing it to create a small area for some thymes:

The plan is that the thymes will fill the spaces between the slabs and part cover the slabs so that when I step on them to tend the summer containers behind them their bruised foliage will release their healing scents.  I have used Thymus 'Doone Valley'; T. coccineus; and T. serpyllum 'Goldstream'.  I have also added a couple of New Zealand Burrs: Acaena buchananii and Acaena microphylla 'Copper Carpet' which I understand just love being trampled on.  And in the bottom corner where I am less likely to step there is a small bellflower for a contrast in form: Campanula cochlearifolia 'Blue Baby'.

Probably Narcissus jonquila 'Sailboat'

Another job the spade did about 18 months ago was lift some turf and plant some daffodils.  I had been looking for these for ages and not seeing them until the early light of yesterday morning cast these shadows.

Did these just shoot up over night?

Or am I just too wrapped up in unimportant thoughts to be able to see such beauty until it is blindingly obvious?

Maybe you can tell me.

Less exciting was the light cast on the next job to be done.  I had treated the fence on the north of the garden two years ago with expensive wood preserve but ran out and used cheap stuff on the rest of it.  Alas, the cheaply treated stuff is green while the dearly treated stuff still looks great.

There's a lesson for life in all this somewhere - I wonder if I shall ever learn it.

Nothing Comes From Nothing

As that great philosopher Julie Andrews sang in her magnum opus "A Sound of Music": "Nothing comes from Nothing".  At least, that's how it goes in my garden - things don't just happen or appear from nowhere even when it seems like they do.  I find it very reassuring to know that everything comes from somewhere.

Take this pot, for instance.  This was supposed to be a cutting of Rosemary surrounded by Tulipa kaufmanniana 'Johann Strauss'.

In fact, it now also contains a Cotoneaster, a Buddleia, two Welsh Poppies and, just for good measure, a Dandelion.  Now how did they get there?  Not by my hand, that's for sure.  In only a year and a half this pot has become a veritable nursery.

On the other hand, these leaves unfurling themselves just now came in my car all the way from Beth Chatto's garden in Essex a year and a half ago:

Lamium orvala
Balm-leaved Red Dead Nettle

While this Primrose is the only survivor of three British-grown plants bought two years ago in Freuchie but happily it is putting out seedlings:

Primula vulgaris
British Native Primrose

These hybrid primulas are survivors of a hanging basket used to make the front of my old house look attractive when trying to sell it three years ago.  They seem to survive on neglect:

Hybrid Primulas
Alongside self-seeding dark leaved Viola labradorica and
Galanthus nivalis (Snowdrops) all from Dobbies Garden Centre

These snowdrops below look much healthier having been bought mail order "in-the-green" two years ago from Cambo Estate.  I am extremely excited by the emerging dark flower bud of the Hellebore which was an unspecified seedling from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 5 years ago.  It is peeking out from under the Spanish Poppy Papaver rupifragum which hitched its way here in pots via two house moves - how its ancestors got here from Spain, well that's a story beyond my ken.

Lenten Rose
Helleborus x hybridus (Previously Helleborus orientalis)

The winter-flowering heather (Erica)  below one of the Yews (Taxus baccata - not in picture) was here when I came - brought here by who knows who?

The most recent arrival, at least that of which I am aware, is not a plant at all.  It is a bird box given to me by a friend from Crosshill and now sitting in its urban back garden glory on the Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris).  Maybe one day some Tits will take up residence and raise a family here but where they will come from I have no idea.  All I know is they won't come from nowhere.

"Somewhere in my youth or childhood

There must have been something good"

                                                                                                 Julie Andrews
                                                                                         via Rodgers & Hammerstein

The First of February

The first Daisy of February

Bellis perennis
Thomson and Morgan seed free with Amateur Gardening magazine sown in June last year.