A blue sky and daisy day...

A blue sky and daisy day, lackadaisical daisy day, hazy, lazy daisy day, head in the clouds, blown on a breeze up and away and out to sea, head full of clouds, stroked by the breeze, sunshine shining down on me.

A blue sky and daisy day, nothing to do daisy day, dreamy, steamy daisy day, smell of grass all around me, touching the soil with my shorts bared knee, mind full of colours, too bright to see, sunshine shining down on me.

A blue sky and daisy day, clock stopped slow daisy day, drifting, lifting daisy day, laughing aloud so not like me, for a few moments living completely free, head full of thoughts, too clear to be, sunshine shining down on me.

Daisy, daisy, daisy chain, necklace, bracelet, summer rain, an answer, an answer, an answer do, petals picked by me for you.

She loves me, she loves me not?

She loves me not.

More dandelions…

Watching the dancing dandelion seeds float in the breeze. Thousand on thousand. Tiny parachutes glowing in the sunshine, each the potential to be some gardener’s bane, each on landing a waiting weed hungry for roots that will feed and grow.

Lawns and pavements, building sites, gardens and pastures, busy roadsides, quiet graveyards - dandelions plant themselves everywhere, anywhere - deep rooted and bitter, bright headed and milky, salad leaved and sunny. A weed is a just flower growing in the wrong place.

Dandelion sunshine falling from the skies, setting up home on earth - and making me smile.

Catching one I make a hex. Float and find home - settle, grow, make dandelion smiles and pattern a grey world with sunshine.

Fish?..

Fishys?

What fishys?

Rumour has it that there are fishy-wishys in this tank, two of them. Well if there are I can’t hissing see them and I’ve been sat here for over a (or should that be an) hissing hour as it is. As far as I can see all that’s in this tank thing is some murky water, a couple of pathetic plastic plants, a silly sunken ship, and lots of the stuff they put in my litter tray. No fishy- wishys though. Maybe it isn't a fish tank at all, maybe it's a new kind of litter tray. Well, they won't get me using it, there's no way I'm going to sit in all that water.

Oh well, I’ve had enough of looking for imaginary fishys, time for a little snooze I think.

The return of the water...

The rain started the process and eventually man – in the shape of the building agents – completed it; although my belief is that nature would have got there in the end.

You may remember that last year the lake outside my office sprang a leak and was completely drained. Fish were moved, plants left to die, and the once beautiful water-filled lake became a parched, mud-cracked, and empty caricature of an African watering hole.

It stayed that way for a while and then nature, in the form of the horrible wet summer last year, did her thing and the lake began to fill up again - not fully to the top but at least half-way and what a difference that made.

After Christmas, when we had all that snow and ice, the pond froze - but when the spring arrived I began to notice that the rushes were returning, greening up and getting taller. A few weeks ago I saw the first signs of tiny Lilly pads on the surface of the lake and a trio of ducks, two drakes and a female, were swimming around chasing each other in a flurried courtship.

Nature was winning.

Lat week the process was made complete. I don’t know who and I don’t know why, but when I came into the office on Friday the lake had been made full to brimming and there were a pair of Canada geese waddling around its edges.

I’ve yet to see if the irises and other water plants return, a couple of footballs and some litter needs netting out, and the lilies have re-submerged with the rising of the water (but they’ll be back) and I saw a damsel fly, the first of the year, flash emerald green past my office window.

I wonder when fish will reappear again.

Summer in the trees…

Trees and roads go together well; a walk along any road through trees an adventure.

Who’s to know what you may find at the end of that tunnel, perhaps a topiary steam train will come rushing towards you with leaf and whistle, forcing you onto the platform safety of the fern strewn verge.

Or add some sunshine to the canopy above and suddenly you are walking through a lightshow of a world; bright and shade, dark and dappled, mossy green greenest - the breeze sharpening then blurring to soft focus.

Cool, still, deep, green, and calm. Listen to the birds; the day is full of birds, imagined trains, sunshine.

Summer in the trees - like drinking ice-cold champagne for breakfast.

The vegetable bug...

After last year I vowed that I’d never bother again. All that effort and hardly anything worth eating, the tomatoes got wilt, the courgettes mildew, the carrots were eaten by carrot fly, and the lollo rosso bolted – why bother?

But then the combination of sunshine and a wife who likes to grow her own produce and who assures me that home grown vegetables taste better (so long as I do all the work) managed to change my mind. So, off we went to the garden centre and before you know it I’m growing what will probably be the most expensive vegetables ever.

Here, take a look at this:
1 tomato house £7.99
1 large grow bag £4.99
2 self-watering
devices £3.00
Tomato food £0.89
Tomato plants (2) £3.00
Total £19.87

So, the best part of twenty quid to produce as best six pounds of tomatoes, making them £3.31 a pound - not including labour. Now there’s a bargain!

Worse still, now Gaynor’s got me started I won’t be able to stop. I’ve got the vegetable bug again. Already I’m growing sweet corn in a huge pot (£7.50), cucumbers in pots under a cloche (£12.90), lettuce in another pot (£3.00) and I’m in the process of growing a tumbling bush tomato in a hanging basket (£7.00). In total and to date I’ve spent over fifty quid and that doesn’t include herbs.

Those tomatoes had better taste a lot better than ones from Sainsburys.

Minestrone soup anyone?

Beautiful nothing…

You don’t have to look very far to see something beautiful. Beauty is all around us but sometimes it isn’t easy to see, sometimes you might not even notice it as we pass by living our busy lives.

Stop. Look around you. Look. Look closer. What do you see? Beautiful isn’t it.

Just a small ball of ice-blue lichen clinging to a twig; fragile and tortuous in its frost like complexity and below, fused to the surface of a large rock, an aerial map of green, brown, orange, purple, red - what country is that? What planet?

Worlds in themselves, thousands of years in the making, a freak of fungus and green alga, almost nothing really - but what beautiful nothing.