Sunday, June 10, 2007

Love that wilt not let me go

There are no better days than June in England to enjoy the beautiful lushness, the green and the colours that surround us. In my heart today I felt some sadness at having taken the decision to sell our home, a place that abounds with beauty. I feel privileged to be a caretaker of this place and this garden. The colours are stunning and the wildlife abundant and it truly is a parnership between us ( even with the slugs).
I noticed a toad in my polytunnel and am happy to share the place with it. It eats slugs and keeps some other bugs at bay. Birds have been getting closer to us over the last few weeks, and I have a cheeky blackbird that hops in the polytunnel, looks am me sideways, hops on the strawberry bush and pecks away. I am happy to share, in turn I am sure he helps around the place in some way.

I got this foxglove as a seedling at last year's garden's open and I love the pattern and the colours in it. No idea of its variety but it just has a stunning colour and pattern to it.
I am in love with the place I live, and on some level, it does not want to let me go.

Yesterday, we saw the most amazing sight. Into the garden came a swarm of bees, the buzzing was overwhelming and it sounded like a huge bee argument ' Shall we settle here, its lovely, lots of flowers, a sallow tree, come on guys.......)They hovered together, in a sort of dance and moved together. I am not sure how they do that but it was beautiful to look at. In the afternoon we had a visit from the local beekeeper society with a new beekeeper keen to catch his first swarm. It was swelteringly hot and it was such a beautiful thing to watch happen.
I learnt a lot about bees. Its on my list one day, beekeeping......and an impromptu visit by a new swarm made me focus on that to put it a notch higher on my list.

6 comments:

Henry said...

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Sian said...

I once heard an old country saying,

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon, but a swarm of bees in July is not worth a fly.

There, my sum total of knowledge on bees!

Mark said...

Are you moving far? and i can understand not wanting to leave a garden (even the slugs) from which you get some much pleasure from , as you know it will take ages to make another.

Cheers mark

Downshiftingpath said...

Hi Mark,

I am hoping to stay in the same neighbourhood but at the moment nothing is happening on the house front so am enjoying the place as much as I can. It takes about 3 years to get a garden sorted and where we are hoping to go, the focus will be on a much smaller garden but linked to a business.I believe that this lifestyle is possible without much land.

Mimi said...

Good luck with your move. I'm sorry you have to leave your garden. When we moved a little over a year ago, I didn't really miss the house...but, the garden I missed terribly! Just goes to show that nature is much more important to us than material things. Take care!

Anonymous said...

I feel the same way about my home, which i had put on the market last summer.

As it turned out, surgery intervened, and by the time i was ready to re-list the place, the real estate market here tanked, and so i decided to wait a bit longer, perhaps even a few more years.

I have a mature garden studded with pink and white dogwoods, mountain laurel, rhododendron, blackberry brambles, white pine and so much more.