Bishop’s Castle

In An Autumn Light: The New Kitchen

Henry, who produced the structural design brief and plans for our kitchen extension came round on Wednesday to take photos of the finished ‘product’. This reminded me that I had not posted any photos so far, mainly because there are a few bits and pieces to finish off. But then this week we’ve had some glorious light through our roof lantern and this morning it spurred me into action.

But first, this is how it was just after we moved in:

The sitting room then had a galley kitchen (around the right hand corner) and the back door opened onto an oldish, large uPVC conservatory. The conservatory was pleasant enough in summer being shaded by the house and the hedge on the south-west, but its doors also faced north so it was pretty chilly in the winter.

Our plans for replacing it with a properly insulated room were constrained by the hedge and the position of the upstairs windows. We are also in the town’s Conservation Area. We thus had to stick to the original footprint although we could add a metre or so along the rear wall, taking in the exterior downstairs former kitchen window. When it came to the roof, we could have had a shallow lean-to option with roof lights, but decided the parapeted flat roof with lantern would give us the best light.

So: there were all sorts of compromises, including cost, and constraints over access at the rear of the house and to the front of the house for debris removal and deliveries. We also didn’t want to do anything that would be at total odds with this modest little 1920s town house.

It finally came to fruition thanks to weeks of conscientious in-put from builder-hero, Alan Morris, who project managed the whole thing. He was also responsible for some nifty brickwork, as well as taking pains to match, as far as was possible, the original brickwork.

Alan Morris conducting a spot of problem solving with Graham.

And the final result suits us very well.

Here are some reminders of what happened in between, starting with the conservatory as moving-in dumping ground:

And inside, it all went on around us:

The old kitchen:

Range cooker gone and original access to cloakroom restored. This is now the utility room, stud-walled and doored. The downstairs loo has been much smartened up and its parma violet and bottle green walls banished. Also discovered but covered up again was an old flue that probably served a laundry copper. Still some finishing off to do in this quarter.

New wall and door to the utility room on the right.

And the new kitchen – yes, I know, It is more than a touch quirky. For one thing, we didn’t domesticate the original outside wall, just washed the spiders off, and kept the window spaces too. Anyone who moves in after us can plaster board over them if they want to.

We left the window space by the back door open. A kitchen ‘hatch’ no less. It gives us instant access to the utility room sink. Ideal for chucking freshly dug spuds into it:

And of course there’s the aardvark:

Handmade units made by Shepherd Hills cabinet makers. The angles either side the cooker were tricky to deal with:

The ‘horrid hedge’, which I’m still tackling, has turned out to be just the place to hang some bird feeders. The sparrows and robin have found them, but the jackdaws haven’t (not yet anyway), and we have good mealtime views of passing birds.

And now, after all that, a good sit down beside the wood burner is called for:

There’s still a lot to do. Top of my list is that Graham needs to get rid of all his trailing cables. We don’t have TV but stream and screen things we want to watch via a laptop and projector. At present the system is mobile and makeshift, waiting for the moment when all the wiring will be hidden under the bedroom floor. There are signs that this might happen soon. Apart from this, much decorating is still required, and we still haven’t quite moved in. One day…

In the meantime, the Castle is a good place to be.

The Grateful Gardener

We have snow here in the Castle. We woke up to it early yesterday. What a shock. Snow in November. It’s much too soon. I’d seen the weather forecast of course, but was expecting only a spot of sleet that would soon melt away with the global boiling, not several inches of real snow, the sort perfect for snowballs.

Anyway, it’s not the snow I’m grateful for, but I do love the brilliant blue sky it’s brought with it. And also this golden Rowan tree in its white cocoon. It stands just outside our garden, and provides us with some borrowed treescape. And it, in turn, has recently been much loved by the birds, especially the blackbirds. Before the snow came they were busily stripping the stems.

I’ll miss the berries when they’ve gone. On bright autumn days they light up like jewels. This is how they looked in early October. A tree full of joy. Thank you, Rowan.

The snow fall also focused my eye on the latest garden addition: a Jelly King crab apple tree. Yesterday morning while sitting at the kitchen table eating my porridge, I could see its clutch of red apples glowing like little beacons at the bottom of the garden. Time for a photo then, and to say how very pleased I am with this Halloween birthday gift from my other half. Thank you, Graham.

It came a few days before my birthday, delivered in a tall box to the front doorstep, whither I was directed to investigate the new arrival. Once I’d broken through the cardboard, I was surprised to find the little tree had come with eight tiny apples still firmly attached. There were also a dozen loose ones in the bottom of the box, sadly not quite enough to make crab apple jelly, but filling me with high hopes. I decided to keep them as a spur to locating a wild tree. I thought I knew where there was one. And so it proved. Last week I found a fine crop of fallen apples in a patch of woodland on the way to the builders’ merchants. We now have crab apple jelly. No need to wait for the little tree to do its stuff then.

And speaking of stuff – we still have some of the salad variety growing outdoors and in the greenhouse.

This year I’ve grown Red Radicchio endive. For the past few weeks it’s been growing fatter by the day, and as temperatures lower, the more red it becomes. I’ve been plucking the outer leaves with hopefully plenty more to come. In the greenhouse I have tubs of red Chinese mustard, Moroccan Cress which grows like a cut and come again lettuce and a few oakleaf lettuces. Also some lettuces out in the garden, though they may have succumbed to the snow. Likewise the marigolds. But it makes me very happy to find a bowl full of fresh salad leaves in late November. Thank you, garden.

And one little plant that is standing up to the snow, once I’d dug it out it earlier today:

These sweet little hearts ease type pansies have been flowering for weeks and weeks in a pot on the garden steps. And they’re still going strong. They were a gift from my sister. Thank you, Jo.

Lens-Artists: Gratitude This week Tina sets the theme, both timely and thoughtful. Please visit her ever lovely blog.

Six On Saturday: Of Flying Saucers, Scorpionweed And An End To The Great Gobbling

And no, we have no extra-terrestrial sightings here in Bishop’s Castle, at least not over The Gables, but I do have a few Flying Saucer Morning Glories. They are late on parade, growing up my obelisk of butter beans in the front garden. I wasn’t really expecting them: the seed was several years old. Yet here they are, busy luring insectkind.

Also in the front garden, in the opposite bed, the phacelia has been flourishing for the past few weeks, every day alive with bee hum.

This borage family member hails from North and Central America where it also goes by the name of Scorpionweed, which sounds hair-raising. So far there has been no sign of cohabiting scorpions (no doubt a huge comfort to other half who was bitten on the foot by one while overlanding in the Sahara.)

I sowed the seeds quite late, probably around the beginning of July. As with the Flying Saucers, I was prepared for them not to germinate. The packet was left over from Wenlock allotment days. I grew it back then either as green manure or a cover crop. But then on a trip out in late June I’d spotted fields of it around Ludlow. I’d never seen it growing on an agricultural scale before. It was in full bloom and the fields seem to float in a mauve haze. More than a good enough reason to try it.

These days there is much farmer emphasis on improving soils and attracting insects on land taken out of food production (food security no longer seems to be a priority in government policy for British agriculture). Hairy crops like phacelia, vetch, linseed have been found to improve worm populations, this even in light and sandy soils.

I decided to try it on the ground where we had lifted paving slabs and left behind a layer of old mortar which had mostly been broken up into the soil. It looked very unpromising territory, and I wanted to see if anything would grow there. And it did. The seeds sprouted in a few days.

Usually if you’re growing phacelia to provide green manure, it should be dug in before it flowers to stop self seeding. But I thought never mind about that. The flowers are so pretty, their scent so subtle and, while they last, their kindness to insects immeasurable. The first frost will doubtless fell the plants, and I’ll probably leave them to dig in before spring.

And here’s another insect friendly plant, doing its end of season feeding duty while looking lovely too: Caryopteris ‘Heavenly Blue’, a fairly compact hardy shrub bought back in the spring. It clearly loves our garden and has opened its branches so generously. The flowers are scented too, and it’s taken over catering duties from the neighbouring purple agastache, which is now a mass of dusky seed heads and no longer of interest to the bees.

Much of the rest of garden has a look of late-summer weariness. We had a couple of real summer days earlier this week, but there’s a real sense of autumn in the offing. My runner beans simply stopped producing at the end of August, for no reason that I can fathom. Although I did notice yesterday that a single plant has decided to grow a couple of strands worth. Perhaps one last small meal then.

Meanwhile, the Flying Saucers’ hosts, the butter beans are still flowering like mad up the front garden obelisk. There are many pods but they are being very slow to fatten, doubtless down to the lacklustre summer and cold-spring start. I’m now hoping for an amiable October that might give the beans the chance to finish off. And for now, the blossom is still performing essential services.

The good news, though, is that the horrendous brassica gobbling has ceased, this after the cabbage white caterpillars ate every kale plant down to the stalks. It did not matter that I’d covered crops with so-called butterfly netting and fine grade enviromesh. Somehow the butterflies sneaked in to lay their eggs. Patrolling the plants even twice a day proved a losing battle. They made inroads in the pointy cabbages too, but I’ve managed to save some of those.

Ever hopeful, I’ve replanted Russian and Tuscan kale plantlets under extra-fine mesh. The butterflies are still about, but not in the flocks we experienced earlier in the summer. Fingers crossed.

There are other bright corners in the garden, and especially this towering clump of helianthus, a perennial sunflower. Back in the spring when I planted it out, it was three single small stems with only a few roots between them. The cuttings came from my sister’s Little Stretton garden, descendants from plants that grew in our Aunt Miriam’s Devon garden. I’m so pleased to have it. I did not have a chance to grab a segment or two of my Wenlock helianthus before we moved. It used to be the star of the late summer guerrilla garden there. It’s growing even more vigorously in Bishop’s Castle.

And last but not least, but definitely with an eye to autumn in its new russet foliage, this is a newcomer to the Farrell garden, Japanese cherry kojo-no-mai. (Posing here with some very sweet violas).

It will eventually grow into a small tree, but for now seems happy in this pot.

Six on Saturday Please visit Jim at Garden Ruminations. He needs some get-well wishes.

Oh, What A Perfect Day…

Yesterday felt as if all our missed summer days had been rolled into one. It was warm, the light golden, the sky a flawless blue in every quarter. In the afternoon I took myself off for a walk – up Laburnum Alley and into Welsh Street, and thence up a green lane out of the Castle and onto the uplands.

There’s little to hear but the bleating of sheep, the thrum of a combine harvester just over the hill and rook call. The town lies quietly below.

As I climb, I stop to scan the changing vistas. From the highest point there is a near 360 degree ring of hills surrounding Bishop’s Castle, the most obvious for its length being the Long Mynd. Whenever I see the Mynd I always give a mental wave to sister Jo, who lives on the other side. I sometimes thinks it’s odd to have this very big and ancient hill between us; some of the oldest rock in the world in fact.

Looking east-ish towards the Long Mynd

And towards the opposing quarter…

I need a Castle local to teach me the hills, particularly those to the north and west and into Wales. I know the names – Corndon, Lan Fawr, Roundton, Todleth …and I’m guessing they are in the next photo moving from right to left (?) and that the big wood below is Saddler’s Big Wood.

For now, some other scenic spots…

Six on Saturday ~ More From The Random Garden

As I said in my last Six on Saturday post we have a new garden. I also said that for various reasons – rampant weeds to clear and too much wet weather from winter to spring – I was all behind come growing time; things got sown or planted out wherever there was space at that particular moment.

This has since made protecting cabbages, purple sprouting, kale and cauliflowers, first from pigeons, and more recently from hoards of cabbage white butterflies intent on laying their eggs, somewhat problematical, not to say given rise to a mishmash of netting and other protective devices rather too reminiscent of my former allotment contrivances.

So number 1, since it is preying on both my mind and on my brassicas: CABBAGE WHITE BUTTERFLIES…

Caterpillar damage on Tuscan kale

I actually quite like this photo. The more so as the target of interest is my SoS 2: agastache or Vietnamese Mint. The butterfly is calling in for an energy fix, which I suppose I should mind. (Enough procreation, thank you!)

I love the agastache. It smells of aniseed and its leaves are edible. It’s a perennial (I grew lots of it from seed this spring), though I’m not sure how hardy it will prove in a Bishop’s Castle winter. Anyway, it is a very tidy plant, growing beautifully upwards with lots of purple-mauve spires – not easy to photograph well.

SoS 3 is one of this week’s very pleasing finds: a nice young toad lurking by the outside tap.

We’d already found a much bigger toad hiding under an old tile by Graham’s new garden shed creation. I’m wondering if there may be more, because so far there has been very little slug damage along the vegetable rows – so little in fact, I can’t quite believe it. (Lull before storm?) We were besieged with molluscs in Much Wenlock. We do have the odd big snail however.

Talking of the new garden shed, this is number 4. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that it’s being built from scratch, incorporating recycled parts from our April roof makeover and other assorted materials, the whole inspired by a Great Western Railway goods wagon. I’ve had to sacrifice what might otherwise have been a large and useful garden border, but never mind. I’m liking the shed. It’s presently having its rubber roof applied.

SoS 5 is the front garden sweet corn. It’s growing tall and starting to tassel. Possibly planted rather tightly, but so far the plants don’t seem to mind.

As seen a couple of weeks ago:

I also have a neighbouring raised bed with cabbages and spring onions. On the farther side of the front garden there is now a row of purple sprouting growing where the potatoes were, netted of course.

The two raised beds seen here were made from building work off-cuts, and I’m hoping for more to be made when the shed is done, and eventually I’ll move these to the back garden.

Or maybe not. The front garden does seem a good growing spot.

There’s also some good growing going on at the bottom of garden. I’m pleased that back in the winter I managed to make a good compost filled trench for the runner beans. It brings me to no. 6 – last night’s first meal of the season. Always a gardening landmark in Farrell household.

The trench of garden waste and hot bin compost certainly seems to be working well for runner beans Emergo and Painted Lady

Up, up and away…

Six on Saturday

Please visit Jim’s lovely garden at Garden Ruminations

The Changing Seasons ~ This Was July ‘24

Here in Bishop’s Castle, as in many parts of Great Britain, much of July was cool and overcast – more autumn than summer. The garden, however, carried on oblivious, although there was an obvious shortage of bees, hover flies, butterflies and other insects.

But then just on the last lap, summer happened. And not heat waves either; simply days of pleasing warmth which certainly brought out the bees. And then whole flocks of cabbage white butterflies flew in, wafting round the garden, dozens at a time, homing in on cabbages and nasturtiums to lay their eggs. I’ve given up chasing them away.

They also like to feed on the agastache (Vietnamese Mint), a perennial I’ve grown from seed this spring. The bees love it too. So I’m glad I planted out all the many seedlings that germinated, as well as giving some away. It’s a stately plant with purple-mauve plumes and leaves that smell of aniseed.

The switch to warm days has made all the lettuce bolt, but we’re still eating some of them. As ever, I have failed to organise a seasonal flow, so there will be a gap in salad content for a time. Instead, I’m picking the young leaves of Swiss Chard, a second crop which I’ve managed this time to protect from nibbling pigeons. There are also herbs – dill, basil, and lots of coriander and chives, and wild rocket (about to bolt) and masses of developing leeks which are good in salads.

But best of all, the runner beans are beginning to set, so I must keep an eye on them. They often fool me by producing the first crop near the ground inside the canes, where they can’t be seen.

And then this lovely mallow has started to flower…

And there’s been a second flush of foxgloves…

And then I noticed a happy partnership (growing out of the concrete on the front path) campanula and lavender perfectly arranged…

And finally, in amongst the ongoing building work and general domestic confusion…

…we take note that it is was a year last July when we exchanged contracts on The Gables and began planning our move to Bishop’s Castle…

And in case you’re wondering about the big beer barrel, the town is famous for its historic pub and brewery The Three Tuns Inn, serving folk since 1642. Just one of many good reasons to settle here. The beer is delicious. Cheers!

The Changing Seasons: July 2024 Hosted by Ju Lyn and by Brian at Bushboys World

Six On Saturday: On Random Gardening

Starting a new garden is always exciting; daunting too. And our particular garden, being a hundred years old, had traces of many a planting disaster venture. More recently, though, all had been overgrown, and invaded by rampant phygelius (Cape fuchsia), ground elder, vagrant raspberries, bindweed and Spanish bluebells. The two front garden beds (south-east facing) were covered with concrete slabs and Spanish bluebells.

Most of it had to go.

1: Because we’d had to rent between selling one house and buying another, I’d brought only a handful of plants from our Much Wenlock garden. Among them was yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris), a favourite flower since childhood when I’d first seen it lighting up the verges of the Shropshire Hills. I’d grown it from seed, bought on-line from Jekka’s Herbs. Now, by some pleasing accident, it seems to have grown up with some purple toadflax.

When we moved into The Gables, just under a year ago, my most pressing concern was vegetable growing. I knew we would miss the produce from my allotment plots of 16 years (if not the heavy labour), so tackling the most weed-infested areas to make beds for food crops was my first priority. My thinking here was that these beds would be cleared every year, so repeat ground elder and bluebells wouldn’t be quite the same bother they would be in shrub or herbaceous borders.

I made a start last summer, but then the following months were mostly too wet and cold for gardening. And then in spring the house roof had to be taken off and rebuilt. And then the building work on the rear extension began, all of which saw parts of my territory invaded, first by a mountain of broken roof tiles and battens and then by piles of construction materials. There were times, too, when I couldn’t reach the projected vegetable plots in the back garden, it being uphill from the house, other than by climbing a ladder. All of which means that bed making efforts were piecemeal and, in the end, things (vegetables, herbaceous perennials, herbs, developing shrubs) were planted out wherever there was a space at the time.

2: But it’s all alright. Everything is growing all over the place. I have yellow courgettes at the front door, which is actually quite handy…

3: The front garden bed is also yielding some very nice Charlotte potatoes (despite going in very late). The building debris and old mortar from the lifted slabs seem to have provided some good drainage in our heavy-ish soil:

4: In the spring I’d sown some marigold (calendula) seeds, obtained from the Bishop’s Castle seed bank (local growers’ donations) and they’d germinated prolifically. So I planted them out all over the garden, front and back, because you can’t beat marigolds for their spirit-lifting qualities. And now we have masses of golden heads, which of course are edible too:

5: And on the eating front, since spring we’ve done rather well with all manner of greens, but most particularly the Romanesco cauliflowers, which I haven’t grown before. They are much sweeter than white caulis, and if you cut them and leave the stalk, they sometimes produce more sprouts. They don’t need much cooking either.

6: But best of all, are signs that the runner beans are thriving. I have three varieties growing together: Emergo (white flowers), Painted Lady (red and white as in featured photo), and St. George (red):

I mean to say, what could be lovelier than this Painted Lady bean flower. And then to think: there will be beans!

Six on Saturday Jim at Garden Ruminations is the host. Please pay him and his splendid garden a visit.

A Spot Of Garden Flamenco?

We have visitors, blown in from who knows where. All over the garden too. And what a show they’re giving us with their fiery frills and flounces. Papaver somniferum, the sleep-inducing opium poppy.

The bumble bees have been mightily excited by the poppies’ presence; their behaviour far from somnolent. In fact I witnessed much unseemly rummaging through floral petticoats as they hoovered round the creamy anthers.

Elsewhere in the garden there are more hot colours, this time courtesy of the Bishop’s Castle seed bank. This is a wonderful community venture whereby local gardeners donate flower and vegetable seeds. You can help yourself to the contents of the tray which lives upstairs in the Town Hall council chamber, and leave a donation to the seed bank.

These French Marigolds were grown to protect the carrots. Their minty-lemony scent camouflages the carroty smell so fooling carrot flies that like to lay their eggs in the developing roots. But by some failure of organisation they ended up by the cabbages where they do nothing to dissuade the egg-laying proclivities of cabbage white butterflies.

And then there are the seed bank pot marigolds. I’ve planted them out everywhere because I use the petals in salads. They have many beneficial medicinal qualities including a high lutein content which is good for protecting eyesight. Simply to gaze on them might suggest this particular property.

Marigold with purple toadflax petals

But back to the flamenco. I don’t know about you, but this wild display makes me want to lift up my skirts and dance…

When The Wall Came Down

I think this is where I left off with the building work updates: acrow props holding up a third of the rear house wall while two steel beams were put in place. The door you can see was the original back door. When we moved into The Gables almost a year ago it opened onto a large uPVC conservatory, which at 20 years old was a little weary, as ageing plastic structures tend to be.

The conservatory that is no more

We knew at once it had to be turned into a properly insulated room, ideally a new kitchen-dining-room. And so began the process of having a designer draw up plans and submit them to the local authority for planning permission. That took a few months.

But now the photos. The acrow prop view shows our main sitting-room, looking from front to back of house. (There’s a second smaller sitting-room across the front hallway). Originally, when the house was built in 1922, there was internal wall running behind cupboard, presumably with a door through to a run of two or three narrow rooms. We’re guessing scullery, pantry, W.C. and also boiler room for doing laundry. This last possibility we discovered only two days ago when builder Alan was investigating the plumbing in the downstairs loo of many surprising colours. In the corner (left) he found signs of a small flue that had been re-used for the pipework when the upstairs bathroom was installed. (Tell-tale soot in the cavity).

Anyway, at some point, in more recent times, the big sitting room was extended into the rear rooms to make an ‘L’ shape with a galley kitchen (running off to the right). The far end access to the W.C. was walled up in order to put in a big range cooker, and a new doorway to ablutions installed in the back corner of the smaller front sitting-room (not ideal!)

So: we’re knocking out part of the rear wall into the new kitchen extension, and reinstating a wall on the inside right to turn the (until last week) old kitchen into a utility room, and also restoring the door to the cloakroom and blocking up the sitting room access.

The big knock-through

In the meantime, while the internal wall goes up for the utility room, I have makeshift arrangements in the new kitchen. This is currently only a shell awaiting its lantern roof-light, window, French doors, oak floor and kitchen units which are being made by Shepherd Hills, a Mennonite community of craftsmen who have their workshop in the next village.

Utility room and downstairs cloakroom with restored doorway

As for the outside, the brickwork is done, but I’m not revealing all until the windows and doors go in. There are always drawbacks with flat-roof extensions, not least the look of them, hence the addition of a lantern roof-light to offset the plainness of the rectangle. It is a difficult space to make the most of, in reality not very big. Nor was there much room to manoeuvre due to the position of the upstairs windows. Most of all, we didn’t want to add anything too fussy to this modest little house.

Looking back to the winter, some of you may remember the wall of bricks, saved by builder Alan from the conservatory demolition. They are now incorporated in the new build.

I can also show you our other structure in progress, as in Graham’s shed. He’s building it from scratch, inspired, he tells me, by a Great Western Railway goods waggon. It will thus have a curved roof, and as he’s forgotten how he built the Sheinton Street shed which also had a curved roof, the process is involving much pondering, followed by phases of making and unmaking. You may notice that some of the hundred year old battens from the rebuilding of the house roof are being repurposed. Also four panes from the old conservatory are going into the window slots.

And as for the garden, well, after all the rain, it’s coming along rather vigorously in this interim phase of development (i.e. until the autumn when I might make more of plan that will involve finding homes for all the stuff presently in pots. At the moment I’m more interested in growing food. (On the plot: assorted tomatoes inside and outside the greenhouse, runner beans, Russian kale, perennial kale, onions, leeks, a few beetroot, Romanesco cauliflowers, cabbages and oak leaf lettuce).

I think I’ve finished digging up the lawn, but there’s still the Hedge of Horrors to sort out, with more chicken wire extraction required, plus the unravelling of weigela, privet, elder, sycamore, ash, holly, hawthorn, ivy and some devilishly prickly berberis.

But on the plus side, the sweet corn is growing purposefully in the front garden, as are the Charlotte potatoes amongst the toadflax and achillea.

And that’s it for now chez Farrell. I’m leaving you with a single very lovely rose that snook out of the crocosmia thicket this week. It’s scent is delicious and growing by Graham’s shed.

Happy days amid dust and debris.

Roots Of The Matter ~ As In Too Much Burgeoning

I may have mentioned once or several times that we’ve inherited a garden full of promiscuous weedy invaders. Top of the list is ground elder, closely followed by Spanish bluebells, but topping the top is Phygelius (kindly identified by Jude who described it as a thug that had to be dug up and contained in a pot). It is a semi-evergreen shrubby entity from South Africa, also known as Cape Figwort and Cape Fuchsia. And yes, it does look pretty when it’s cascading in bright red tubular flowers.

But just see where its roots are off to. These are growing under and in what was lawn.They extend at least two metres from the mother plant at the top of the garden. And the thing you most need to know about this vigorous pesky plant is that the smallest broken fragment of root has the capacity to make a new plant and root system in the blink of an eye.

The ground in the photo had been covered by a sheet of black plastic for around three months. This killed the grass, but only encouraged the Phygelius to sprout potential plants at regular intervals along the length of its root system. The good news is I can now see it and so unravel it (carefully) with a fork, and also extract any intertwining ground elder.

A tedious job, but then I do have company.

This male blackbird spent all of Monday with me, scoffing worms and growing ever bolder. By the time I’m done, he will be one very fat bird, because the garden is also blessed with masses of worms.

And then this week there was another happy find, this time under a fallen roof slate…

…one large toad. What a gift. Perhaps he/she is the reason why I’ve seen so few slugs. (So far anyway).

And finally, a pleasing plant discovery, rescued from behind the compost bin where it was being nibbled by snails:

Cranesbill: Geranium Phaeum ‘Album’

And so the garden moves forward – renewed, reconstructed and (in several quarters), burgeoning.

#SquaresRenew Becky’s May photo squares each day feature moving forward, reconstruction, renewal and burgeoning. Still time to join in.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge