I am home now, and talking about my garden.  Actually working in my garden for an hour or so.  I have been digging.  With a fork turning and levelling a bed which will be used this year to grow vegetables.  The books will tell you that the vegetable garden should be dug before Christmas.  This allows the frost to work on the earth to break down the lumps and produce a friable tilth.  Friable tilth.  I do love the language of gardening.  Not just the supple and exotic plant names but also the way some phrases have such a palpable texture and taste to them.  This friable tilth I speak of will not be entirely lost because I am digging later than the ideal time, but more working of the soil will be required.

However, better late than never.  I have a plan for the back garden this year.  Most of my activities are driven by a desire to have an immaculate and productive garden which can be seen to be such by 24^th March, which is when I have my fiftieth birthday party.  I want to be able to show that I really am a gardener.

The front garden is developing well.  I have mentioned the fruit trees.  I will see if I can get a pomegranate tree and that will complete the tree planting in this part of the garden.  There are a number of herbaceous plants and roses in borders which surround a circular patch of lawn and in a rectangular border along the edge of a concrete path to the front door.  One day I will change the concrete for something that can support creeping plants like thyme, but the concrete will do for the time being.

I have planted a ring of forget-me-nots around the lawn.  They will be indicating their potential, if not yet flowering, by the end of March.

Digging.  I can look out now and see dark brown earth of the newly turned patch.  A robin is taking advantage of the revelation of worms and larvae.  While I was digging a common gull was wheeling about the sky and a jackdaw was walking along the ridge of the roof.  When the jackdaw walks it leaves its head behind and then collects it quickly before taking the next step.  A jerky progress.

The dug bed is one of four planned, one for each corner of the lawn.  Of the other three one is dug and ready, one is partly dug and contains a few straggly purple sprouting plants, and the last is still grass.  It also contains an underground wasps nest.  This is dead now, but was very active through last summer and I feel calls for some archealogical excavation to reveal it.  Whether this will happen, or whether it will fall under the spade I am not sure.  Something I’m not sure of.  Like Bob Lind’s butterfly.

Its raining now.  Three black headed gulls wander across the sky.  Aimless.  Time to stop.