THIS IS NOT A WOOD STACK

I've finished stacking the five steres of beech wood I bought this year, supplementing the ten steres of oak and maple, which is already under roof. To avoid last year’s creative setbacks, I only built one straight wall this time. It came out all right, I think, the Great Wall of Calvesgarden. I like to see it as a piece of land art to make the hard work more interesting.

This also works with many of the repetitious chores in the garden like digging the flowerbed or mowing the lawns. The beauty of big moist chunks of raw soil, to me, is as alluring as a finely cut lawn. I let myself go because it keeps me fit using only a spade or an ‘unplugged’ drum mower for the artwork.

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FAVOURITE GROUNDCOVER

The small rowan tree looks quite like a tree now. In a few days, it will be all out together with the chestnut tree and the lilacs. The red barrenworts or bishop's caps as I've seen them called (epimedium rubrum) are blooming in fine shades of crimson and their bronzed leaves are closing up the bottom of the box bread. A dense cover of white-pink buds on the spiraea hedgerow is announcing the coming of an all-out event. The dandelions and the daisies are also out in great numbers and the lawns are in for the second mowing. It’s a perfect day for gardening, all sunny and warm with only a light westerly breeze. Already, some kids are down by the waterside with their small nets on sticks, doing some fishing. I like their energy. It’s a fine time of the year.

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CENTENARY OF AN EDWARDIAN LADY

I’ve enjoyed rereading the colour facsimile of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1977) by Edith B. Holden. It was written by hand with great care and illustrated with beautiful water-colours of local plants and wildlife in her cottage in Olton, Warwickshire in 1906.

“May 9, 1906. The Common Avens, Bugle, and Plantain are in flower, and some of the Oaks are hanging out their long tassels of blossom. I saw a Moorhen’s nest today; it was placed on the stump of an old Alder tree, at the edge of a pond, just off reach of the bank. The nest was built of sticks and pieces of dead reed and contained one egg. I brought home a big bunch of Blue-bells, Red Campion, and Wild-beaked Parsley, the latter is showing its white umbels of blossom in every hedge now.”

The climate in Warwickshire is much like that in Calvesgarden, it seems, and many of the flowers and birds of the region are the same as ours. It was nice getting to know the English names of all the performing members of the great natural spectacle around Olton. Isn’t it curious, though, the pleasure you get from knowing the names of things, and, even more so, how a concept like 'land art' can lighten the dull chore of stacking firewood?