You Were Right, Joyce

Joyce Grenfell, 10 February 1910 - 30 November 1979, is known and loved mainly for her comic monologues. Her most famous catch phrase, “George, don´t do that!” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXhHFgDRNBQ ) is instantly recognisable to all her fans. What I didn´t know until today is the fact that she wrote some of the most beautifully evocative nature poetry I´ve ever heard. I say “heard” because the following poem was never published and I´ve only just heard it on BBC radio. Luckily, it was on the Listen Again feature so I was able to write it down. I´m sure you´ll agree that it captures the very spirit of Spring.

Taut as a tent the heavenly dome is blue,

Uncrossed by cloud or tossing twig or plane,

A measureless span infinitely new,

To fill the eye and lift the heart again.

Deep in the wintered earth the shock is felt.

Glossy sweet aconite has shown her gold,

And strong straight crocus spears where late we knelt,

To lodge their bulbs are waiting to unfold.

The ragged rooks like tea leaves in the sky,

Straggle towards the earth with awkward grace.

A robin in a silver birch nearby,

Thrusts up his carol through the naked lace.

I´ve known this day for thirty years and more.

It will go on as it has done before.

You were right, Joyce. It has.

Ten Minutes To Spring

One unusually warm day recently I was out in my garden for the first time this year admiring all the spring flowers. The snowdrops looked like silent bells as they swayed in the breeze or maybe they were nodding their heads in approval of the weather. The first daffodils had sprung up in such large clumps I could understand how William Wordsworth must have felt when he wrote:

“ I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

Well, it was a stretch of the imagination to picture the lake because our garden doesn´t include one but you know what I mean. There´s something so joyful about suddenly coming upon these harbingers of spring and realising that the long dreary winter is almost over. The tulips won´t be far behind either. I could spot their leaves in every flower bed interspersed with the first few forget-me-nots. I´m particularly looking forward to seeing the frilly ones which we planted a couple of years ago under one of the trees. However, on my way back I was distracted from anticipation of flowers yet to appear by the sight of my quirky “white” rose bush which had already produced a perfect little flower, all white but for one single red petal. I´m so glad that the Red Queen´s little gardeners have survived the winter unscathed! I was also thrilled to see the first new lupins sprouting, a sure sign that summer will eventually come around again.

Then as I left the garden and was walking along the path to the house something stopped me dead in my tracks in amazement and wiped all thoughts of showy spring flowers right out of my head. There, tiny, humble and insignificant growing against all odds in the moss and winter debris between the paving stones, was a bright yellow pansy. The flower was only about an inch in size but I thought it the most beautiful thing I´d seen all day.

Maybe we all occasionally need to be reminded that we should cherish the simple things in life.

A Feast For Everyone.

As some of you know already, I´ve been laid up for the past few weeks after I put my back out and I find it hard to sit at the computer for any length of time. It looks as if a stay in the orthopaedic clinic is on the cards for the new year. In the meantime I´ve been trying to keep my spirits up which isn´t always easy when the sky is leaden and my beloved garden is slumbering under several feet of snow and summer seems so far away. It´s then that I´m glad that I kept a record of how it looked when everything was blooming under a bluer sky.

Last spring Diane sent me a packet of sunflower seeds little knowing how much pleasure they would eventually give, not only to me, but also to some of the creatures which visit my garden. Most of the sunflowers “only” reached a height of about 6 feet but the ones I sowed in the fertile soil of my vegetable garden grew to an enormous height and seemed intent on proving that everything from Texas is bigger than elsewhere. Here´s a photo I took of them towering above my garden shed.

And this is a page I made using the Nature Notes freebie QP to remember them by on a dismal dreary day when winter seems unending. 

Journalling: “Sunflowers are a feast for everyone. In summer I feast my eyes on them while the bees and hover flies feast on their nectar. In autumn the sight of the birds feasting on their seeds gladdens my heart and makes me less sad to think that summer is over.”

The photo of the finch was a lucky shot taken through the screen on my kitchen window which is why it´s not as clear as it might be.

If you´d like to have the freebie QP, you´ll find it here.

Thanks again, Lajuana, for helping to make the blog look festive with A Christmas Carol...and if I´m not around for a while, I´m sure you´ll understand why.

Nature Notes Freebie

Here´s a set of 5 grungy elements which coordinate with my recently released Nature Notes.

If you like them, you´ll find them here.

And if you´d also like a quick page created from the same kit, watch this space...

Season Of What?

John Keats called it the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” but to me it´s always been the season of colds and chills and cough syrup and a plentiful supply of Kleenex. In case you haven´t already guessed, we both mean autumn but either Keats was immune to the dreaded virus or he was using poetic licence. As for me, only the first line of verse 3 rings true, namely “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?” I know exactly where they are. They´re six months into the future, that´s where, and the way I feel at present they can´t come fast enough!

Still, all isn´t doom and gloom. At least I´ve got my autumn blog header to cheer me up while I write this though that open fire and cup of tea look so inviting I could nod off in the process. But not until I´ve announced the release of Nature Notes which, with it´s subtle greens and browns, seems to me to reflect the more appealing side of autumn with a few glittering little reminders of summer thrown in. The sight of it gives me hope that once I´ve recovered from this beastly cold I may again take pleasure from walking through the forest crunching autumn leaves beneath my feet “While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue.” 

Ah. I´m beginning to feel better already.

Here´s Nature Notes.

 

There will be a few freebies to go with it once I´ve fully recovered.

Thanks for looking.

PS If you´re interested, you´ll find Ode To Autumn here. 

At It Again!

I was sorting through my summer garden photos and I came across one that made me smile because I see they´ve been at it again. Yes, I know I´ve shown them at it already several times but this year they´ve really outdone themselves. Well, one of them has. He seems to have managed to paint quite a few of the white roses red before Her Royal Frightfulness came to investigate. Too bad she caught the wrong one!

I created this page using Nature Notes which I´ll be releasing soon.

Gardening Around the Clock

This spring I seem to have spent nearly every waking hour in my garden. I appreciate it even more than usual this year, perhaps because we had such a long, severe and depressing winter. Just as soon as the very last tulip had gone into summer hibernation and the first forget-me-not had appeared I was out there sowing, planting, fertilising, pruning and taking precautions against the most deadly enemy of my plants, the dreaded snail. And it seems to have paid off. Here are just a very few of my recent garden treasures although even as I write this my garden is changing with new flowers appearing and old ones fading so rapidly it´s hard to keep up-to-date.

I see from the clock that it´s twenty five past spring so we´re on the brink of summer already. I´m looking forward to seeing what this new season will bring. I created this floral page using backgrounds and elements from my most recent kit, Nature Notes.

Caught In The Act...AGAIN!

Remember my white rose bush?

Well, this year the Red Queen´s gardeners have been up to their old tricks again! She seems to have pardoned them last summer but it looks as if she means business this time. At least she´s only caught one of them in the act. If the other one´s careful he might get away with his crafty repainting for many years to come.

On the other hand, he might find it easier to remedy his original mistake and actually plant a RED rose bush. I hope he doesn´t though. It´s always interesting to see how many roses these rascals manage to paint in one summer.

Click to enlarge

The little that can be seen of the background is from Nature Notes and the photo mask is the one I used to create one of the frames in the kit. The long-stemmed rose is from Vintage Bouquet. As before, the wonderful b & w illustrations are by Tenniel from an old copy of Alice In Wonderland daubed red by the Red Queen´s gardeners. Well, they get blamed for everything else so why not that too...

Nature Notes

Here´s the finished - maybe - grungy kit I´ve been working on recently. I say "maybe" because there´s always a temptation to keep adding on bits. It´s pretty big already with 70 items consisting of 17 backgrounds, 10 frames and 43 embellishments, none of which is a recoloured duplicate. As I mentioned in an earlier post, because the hands of the clock and also the seasons are in separate files, the time and/or season can be changed to suit any layout. There´s also a grungy floral caps alpha which I´ve added just for fun. So perhaps "maybe" ought to be "definitely" and I´ll keep all the other bits and pieces for an add on later.

As for the name, I was tempted to call it Pretty Grungy just because it goes so well with my Pretty Shabby kit but there are so many nature elements in it I think Nature Notes is probably better and Pretty Grungy can keep for another time. On the other hand, if anything more appropriate occurs to me I may change it to something else. Hmmm. What I need isn´t another name for the kit. What I really need is someone to slap my wrist, give me a good shake and say, "For goodness sake, stop dithering." Anyway, Nature Notes or not, here it is. I hope you´ll like it.

Click on images for larger previews