Thursday 15 May 2014

God's Heart


Having had a very mild winter and also warm weather in early spring the growth is remarkable. The calendula (marigold) survived and is now blooming, winter onions are flourishing and the young chestnut has put out 18 inch long new growth. Emboldened I have done a lot of sowing and planting. Leeks (Carentan) have been moved from trays to a nursery bed awaiting their final home when the early potatoes are cleared. Early broad beans are up and today I sowed some more to follow on. Petit Pois are showing well.

My stately home garden cuttings have struck. I never go anywhere without a sharp penknife. Call it opportunistic pruning; no herbaceous border is safe from my predation but I will occasionally buy a plant. If everybody did it – but they don't and it doesn't damage the plant.

I don't usually grow main crop potatoes but this year I was given some organic Robinta with good disease resistance. It will be interesting to see how they do. They are supposed to crop well but our soil is a bit light and potash deficient. I have some cheap organic potato fertiliser from one of those 'dealz' stores. The rather etiolate blackberry bushes for a mere €1,75 are recovering. The old established gooseberries are heavily laden and the plum that I pruned radically survived and is showing some fruit.

Tomorrow a new bed will have to be dug. The verse on kitsch garden statuary, (italic) I bring to ye by the power of the internet:

God's Garden

THE Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,--
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.


For He broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.

Dorothy Frances Gurney

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