I’ve been putting this off all day.

There are gardens everywhere.  The plan is to write about them.  The plan is to write about gardens in general and my garden in particular.

Most of the time the writing will be descriptive or practical.  And it will be plant centred.

Plants for food.

Plants for flowers.

Plants for foliage.

Fruit, wood, medicine, flavour.  Plants in relationship.

In my garden I have cherry tree at the front of the house.  The house is a centre terrace and so the garden is divided.  There is a passage through to the back which makes the upstairs of the house slightly bigger than the downstairs.

I planted the cherry tree two years ago, so this spring I hope for a good crop of cherries.  Last year there were quite a few, but the blackbird got under the net and ate them before I could harvest them.  This year I will have to be more thorough with my netting.  I don’t want the birds to think of it as a rather elaborate bird table!

I am writing a remembered description of my garden because I am not at home, and it is dark.  A cold February evening.  I am at my Dad’s house in Shropshire, where cold can be quite severe.  A few years ago a temperature of minus 23 was recorded here.  I’m not sure if it was centigrade or farenheit, but either way very cold.  All the roses were pruned to the ground by the cold.  One old man, long since dead I’m sure, had a splendid topiary horse – lifesize, with jockey – in his front garden, a bit like my garden now, it seems to me, and I would admire it as I drove past on route to visit my parents.  The frost killed it.  The horse and his boy.  A year later I noticed that an attempt was being made to shape a yew tree in the nearby pub garden, but it never came to anything.  The plant that died was Lonicera nitida and the moral is use box or yew to conjure horses and riders if you want them to stay the course.

It’s not that cold tonight.  Barely freezing, although it did drop to minus six the night before last.  And I have a fire in the hearth and a small white dog at my feet.

Dad is in hospital and I am staying here so I can visit him and prepare the house for his return.  Removing hazards and making space for him to move about with his new zimmer frame.

There is a garden here.  It is quite neglected, but gardens can be neglected.  They don’t mind, and nor do the sparrows.  Someone cuts the grass through the summer, but that is all.  In the front is a mulberry tree which I gave to my parents some years ago.  It has already produces a few slight fruit, but more surprisingly it has produced a cutting which rooted, and that is now growing in my garden at home.  It is only about twelve inches tall, but it is alive in a corner near the front fence.  At the moment only a twig, but with great expectations.