Seed pods and cat Pod

We had our first proper frost last night which involved hastily trying to get the ice off the car windscreen without being late for school. You can never find the right tool when you're in a hurry and now that tape cassettes seem obsolete(their boxes make excellent ice scrapers) it was hard to find something that would make a dent in it. I usually resort to kettles but imagined the windscreen finally cracking if I did so we scratched away with icy fingers and hot breath.

Alcea Parkallee

 I planted  rows of these beautiful hollyhocks in my garden a year or two back but though mine have all died for some reason I was pleased to see they were still where I put them in front of a client's house.
This particular strain is disease resistant which is great as most hollyhocks give in to rust. You have to root propagate them - they won't come from seed so I must get hold of some more plants next year. They look so pretty in front of our faded pink house.

tulip double maureen

 Managed to get the last of the tulip bulbs in. In the front of the house (near where the Parkallee should be standing) I've filled the pots with green and white bulbs.

spring green

 This time I've done little drawings in a book telling me what the bulbs are. I'm not risking those naughty ducks getting a pair of stilts and plucking the labels out again.

Exotic emperor

Green star

 There's nothing of colour left in the garden now other than the rose hips and these wonderful orange seed heads from the Iris foetidissima. The frost has felled the dahlias and the last few blooms of things have gone into this posy.

seed pods from the iris

Plectranthum is a beautiful plant with soft grey leaves but it flowers late(ie now) and is not one bit hardy. So if you are quick you have to dig it up and stick it in the greenhouse to appreciate its delicate pale mauve flowers. The good thing about it apart from its beauty is it's easy to take cuttings from so I hope my cuttings will take because I did not dig it up before that frost! I'll dream on. As Beezle and Oscar Wilde would say " A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

 Pocket (quarter Bengal) has discovered velvet.
We have some sumptuous velvet cushions that he has discovered he can sit on, undiscovered and sleep the whole night on, shut in the living room because no one has seen him when the door was closed.We have to close the door at night or otherwise Pixie likes to sleep in there too and she likes to chew the velvet cushions.

Pocket has also lost his Mum. I haven't told him but his Mum - Pod - (Half Bengal) who belonged to a friend, went missing a month or two back. It is very sad when a young cat goes and you don't know what happened to it. We had a beautiful half Thai Temple Cat (Minky)who had four delicious kittens. We kept all the kittens for slightly longer than you normally do and she disappeared with the lot of them.  She came back on her own the next day and was very pleased with herself. The following day they all tumbled back through the cat flap. She had obviously decided it was a right of passage.  didn't want them hanging around any more and took them miles away and left them. We gave two of them away but shortly after she and her daughter went and we never saw either of them again. She left us a son. The black Monkey.




Untitled


Mother, any distance greater than a single span
requires a second pair of hands.
You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,
the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors.

You at the zero end, me with the spool of tape, recording
length, reporting metres, centimetres, back to base, then leaving
up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling
years between us. Anchor. Kite.

I space-walk through the empty bedrooms,climb
the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something
has to give;
two floors below your fingertips still pinch
the last one-hundredth of an inch -- I reach
towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky
to fall or fly.



Simon Armitage.