A walk around the garden (part 1)

Ok everyone. Let’s take a walk around the garden. I’m pretty proud of what’s going on there at the moment and should be surrounded by things to eat soon. The idea is that we will go for another walk around the garden in a month or so when everything has grown a bit more.

Let’s start by the back door. Immediately to our right, we have the new cherry tree, which I am massively excited about…

Then a bit further along is the new plum tree that we bought the day we came back from Italy, to soften the blow of no longer being in Italy.

Following the fence on the right hand side of the garden, we have the strawberry plants…

…and the tomato plants….

Inbetween the tomato plants and the lawn, near the rosemary bush, is the lavender plant, bursting out of its pot…

…then at the end of the lawn is the mystery tree our neighbour gave us. We did figure it out and now I’ve forgotten what it’s called.

My photographs didn’t turn out very well for the fuschia, the marigolds, the trailing lobelia or the pansies so you will just have to trust me that they are there and when we take another walk around, I’ll show you them.

Summer in England

Ah. Summer in England. What a glorious thing to behold. It took a while getting here but now it is fabulous.

The skies are blue. The grass is green. The flowers are emerging.

Trees are a shock of loud greens instead of the twigs they have been during the seven month winter.

Colourful clothing is being worn again. Pale sun-starved flesh is getting an airing with mass shorts and t-shirt wearing.

Iced coffee is fashionable. The new ice cream shop in town finally has customers!

Groups of trendy city-workers let their hair down and drink pink champagne from plastic cups on the green.

My neighbours are feeling happy and generous and I get home to freshly baked biscuits on the doorstep.

We greet each other cheerily across the street, welcome each other in for cups of tea or homemade lemonade. The children who annoyed us yesterday suddenly seem sweet and funny.

We even go so far as to say it feels ‘too hot’! Older men play golf again, younger men get out their bikes again. The outdoor pools are open again and rammed with kids splashing about on sponge floats, almost hitting everyone else.

We drink more tea as, according the age old adage, it actually cools you down….?!

We eat dinner in the garden. We have barbecues.

We unearth the lawn from the general leafy debris that has gathered for months while we looked sadly out from the back window, not daring to step out. We get excited.

We love England. It’s the most wonderful place in the world. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be (except when the winter kicks in and we all run away to take holidays elsewhere).

One likes to play croquet, don’t you know?

So we had a croquet match yesterday, us ladies. Yes, a croquet match. On the lawn. Not just any lawn. The Croquet Lawn.

We each chose a ball and had the rules explained to us. My first few shots were played incorrectly so I was obviously messing around at the back of the class when we were having our Croquet Lesson.

Beige stepped up first, a seasoned croquetter and played a beautiful shot through the first hoop.

Yellow went next and played a rubbish shot which just sat next to the hoop.

Black sailed through and on to the next hoop.

Then it was my turn. I crashed straight into Yellow, who was next to the hoop. So I got two extra turns. I took two more turns and crashed into Yellow each time. Bloody Yellow. I got irritated. Yellow became my enemy.

Blue played last and kind of trundled through the hoop, not very spectacularly.

It continued this way for much of the game, Beige sailing effortlessly round and, ultimately, beating us all, and us trying to remember which hoop to aim for next and trying to find our balls in the bushes surrounding the Croquet Lawn.

Apparently you have to go through this hoop first, then this one, then that one then back through this one and that one…. And when you hit someone else’s ball you get an extra turn and when you go through a hoop you get an extra turn and….

When this all started to hurt my brain and us amateurs had been trying to get through the same hoop for hours, we decided it the proper way, with a race around the trees.

Blue and I arrived back within milliseconds of each other, me panting heavily, Blue looking calm and unaffected.

And that’s how it was decided. Blue and I came joint last. The Croquet Queen came first. Black and Yellow came second and third, I don’t remember which way round as I was probably off in the undergrowth, trying to locate my ball….

I’d like to say we all went inside and lunched like ladies and discussed knitting. But that’s not true. We got fish and chips and sat round the TV talking nonsense.

So all in all, a good time was had by everyone. What, what!