2005

A day in the garden

   9.48pm GMT. A lovely day. I washed up after breakfast; we went to town. I returned The British Film Catalogue to the Library, then had a look at my website, now looking rather different. Freda met me there. After we got home we sat on the bottom patio, enjoying coffee and (between us) a Danish pastry [from Burns the Bread].

   The garden looks beautiful just now but the daffodils and forsythia are already past their best. I worked in the garden until 1pm, trimming the grass (and daisies and celandines) where last week I landscaped around the SW edges of the pool. I also lopped some of the lower branches of the yew, which were overhanging the pool. This has increased the light to the pool, balanced and enhanced the appearance of the tree, released a clump of daffodils (all blind but one) from being hidden, and opened up the path I have been using across the woodland to the path which leads down to the pond where we bred so many froglets last year.

   At one point I watched with sheer delight a wren come to the pool and run along the rim of the earth-covered barely visible liner, from which it drank, then ran along the stems and leaves of the water-lily with its golden flowers, and the white flowers of the water hawthorn. Later in the afternoon, after a sleep, I transplanted more daisies from the lawn and did some quite heavy spade-work to improve the contours and therefore the general appearance of the edge of the pool. I had already created a “beach” there, but the edge and the path were too straight and unnatural. There is still much I should like to do, D.V.

   We had tea at 6.30pm — later than usual, allowing Freda more time to work on the rockery and me to have a bath. We then watched the first episode of the new Doctor Who, with Christopher Ecclestone as the 9th incarnation of the Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion.

   Angus [Angus H.J. Abercrombie, OE] phoned this morning, just before we walked into town; and on our way back Neill & Dawn stopped the car to speak to us, on their way to town, Dawn looking very poorly as she has bronchitis again. We saw a peacock butterfly while we were having coffee. Earlier we had seen a brimstone in High Street outside St John’s; we have also seen one in the garden several times.