rhinos on the lawn

 Spring stroke Summer is here in the garden now - the magnolia is in full bloom along with the tulips -some of which have already gone past. Spring might be late but looks as if Summer may be early. However what isn't in my garden right now are  couple of white rhinos grazing on the lawn.

 I wanted to do some research on an idea I have for a new book and went to the Cotswold Wild Life Park which is owned and run by a friend of a friend of a ...... It is the most fabulous place - none of the animals are caged and like these rhinos you can get up quite close without being tossed into the air by one of those horns - as if you were a hat that a coat peg took a dislike to.
Now what I really want is a tapir.

 I just had to take a photo of this bizarre tulip - called Pirand - which I hadn't wanted and wouldn't grow again but it opened up like a waterlily and was the size of my hand span. That vase is not a thimble by the way. Actually I don't know why I wasted my camera battery taking a picture of a tulip - what I meant to photograph was my first egg! Well not mine personally, but the first egg of the year laid by the clever white lady duck in the polytunnel area. They are all girls there now, four of them, all different colours like a box of assorted chocolates. There's brown and white, white and brown, a black one and a white one. Last year after their mate died they stopped laying and I was beginning to wonder if unlike hens they needed a male duck before they laid but I'm happy to say they don't because I still can't bring myself to split the two boys up who live in the garden. I had to put one of them on bed rest for a fortnight because he had some trauma in his leg.( that's vet speak and very expensive it was too.)
He just stayed in the wendy house which is their sleeping quarters but it's very nice and has two pairs of green gingham curtains and a small blackboard incase they want to practice their numbers. They spent most of the day talking to each other over the stable type door. The one not on bed rest running round the garden then occasionally popping back to the wendy house for a chat with the patient.

Beezle and Pocket.

 There's such a lot of activity out there now, birds busy with their nest building and also laying their first egg I have no doubt. Insects buzzing, horses shedding their coats, hedgehogs trying to dismantle their GPS collars, but in the house there seems to be an awful lot of sleeping. Most spare area has something asleep on it. Either a cat of some sort or a dog. But as Beezle and Nietzsche would say "Every man's an artist when he dreams."

Narcissi Thalia now in abundance

Meanwhile as the woods are holding their breath for the eruption of the bluebells people are in there with their chainsaw stockpiling wood for WINTER! I don't think that's very Zen. What about living (or sleeping) in the moment?


'This is the first thing."


This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.




Philip Larkin