At last a day of sun!
April 25, 2012
From the day the hosepipe ban was announced it has rained every day for three weeks …except yesterday. Of course this is an excellent thing but it’s also a bit gloomy. Yesterday we managed to cut the grass
and I did some necessary weeding.
This is an attempt at a seventeenth century garden to complement the house, which means formal with straight lines which is what I love anyway. But I also like untamed wild rustic beauty. The apple espaliers seem to me to combine the best of both.
Victoria Clayton 
Absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Hi Victoria,
you are surrounded by so much beauty,much of which is your own creation.The magic of your beautiful home and gardens weaves it’s way into your books, which I love.
I love ”Stormy Weather”,by the way.
Everything in England always looks so green…some compensation for all of the rain.
I love you blog…
Per solatz revelhar,
Que s’es trop enformitz,
E per pretz, qu’es faiditz
Acolhir e tornar,
Me cudei trebalhar
To wake delight once more
That’s been too long asleep,
And worth that’s exiled deep
To gather and restore:
These thoughts I’ve laboured for
Guiraut de Bornelh (c. 1138 – 1215)
Trans. A.S. Kline
What a splendid garden! Everyone in my family and many many friends – in Germany & Italy & here in Eastern Canada – adore your novels and your blog. I think with blog devotees it is as with mice: for every one you see in your comment section, there is an invisible multitude huddled behind the walls, preferring to enjoy the spoils of their online wanderings in the safe privacy of their nest.
On the last day of April … Charlotte Smith, again.
The First Swallow
The gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding, and, beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath, of May.
The welcome guest of settled Spring,
The swallow, too, has come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hailed her as she passed.
Come, summer visitant, attach
To my reed roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music catch,
Low twittering underneath the thatch
At the gray dawn of day.
Charlotte Turner Smith (1749 – 1806)
Spring is like a perhaps hand
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)