Our Beautiful Garden in Early Spring

My hubby has been working so hard in the garden, and his efforts are being well rewarded as it springs into life after the doldrums of winter. Devon in the spring is the most beautiful place anyway, and our gardens reflect this, with the wild flowers.

Here is the bank separating the patio from the upper garden – even at other times of the year, I always call this the primrose bank! We are hoping that over the years, they will spread and make a lovely carpet. There are other wild plants growing on this bank, too, including wild violets and ferns of various kinds.

A view of the whole garden. Both these photos were taken from the bedroom window.

There’s a different view from my hubby’s study window, in this case looking over the outhouse roof to the garage. We’ve got lots of interesting bushes and shrubs, some flowering, and some with varied and colourful foliage. Last year my hubby fixed the two trellises on the garage wall and we planted a Clematis montana, which has grown enormously, and is now covered with buds. Eventually he will put wires along under the roof and train it over the window. It’s such a pretty climbing plant in the spring with its delicate pink flowers. Even when not flowering, it will provide more interest to the garage.

Tilting the camera downwards a little you get a splendid view of our rock garden with its water feature, that my hubby worked so hard to clear last year.

A couple of weeks ago he went all round the walls, below the water feature and along the path to the other end of the garden, repainting and freshening it all up and it’s looking great now.

Such a beautiful day today! I took my camera outside for the rest of the photos. Here’s the aubretia plant in the rock garden with the most flowers on it so far – the other two are just beginning. We put these in last year, and eventually we hope they will grow prolifically and cascade over the wall with a lovely show of purple colour.

Here are some more flowers growing in the rockery.

Moving along the path in front of the back of the house, here is our first tulip! You can see the ferns growing in the bank, both male and hartstongue, beginning to unfurl.

Primroses and wild violets growing in the bank. You can see what a nice mossy bank it is.

Walking up the steps and along the path beside the garage, here is our gorgeous Cotinus hedge with the sun shining through the glorious red foliage.

Looking back towards the house, here is the hedge in all its glory.

Along the side wall of the garage my hubby put some trellises last year, and after the fabulous showing of sweet peas we decided we’d repeat the experience, and he has planted some new plants. Watch this space! They will climb all the way up the trellis with their little corkscrew tendrils and hopefully give us a gorgeous display of pastel colours, and that delicate scent. The more you pick them, the more they produce, so we will enjoy vases of them in the house as well.

Whenever we go out in the garden, the kitties are never far behind! Here they are, following me onto the lawn.

Phoebe.

The summer house at the top end of the garden. Last year my hubby put in two extra railway sleepers to create a usable “deck” area – we have a small wooden table that lives in the summer house and we have this out, in front of the bench, and often have our lunch up there in the summer. When the weather is very hot, it is so pleasant under the shady apple tree. It can get very hot indeed in the patio below.

My hubby got some help with pruning the apple tree a few weeks ago, and it is now sprouting into leaf. Last year we had a wonderful crop, which we hope will be repeated this year.

Along the opposite fence, the magnolia is now in flower.

Looking back down the path from the top of the bank. The concrete path gets really warm and the kitties like nothing better than to stretch out and sunbathe here. Beatrice is getting rather shaky on her old legs these days, and I’m not sure if she’ll manage to get up on top of the outhouse again – this has been a favourite sunbathing spot for her, too!

Looking further beyond our garden, we have the benefit of our neighbours’ shrubs as well. Phoebe is still there!

In front of the garage, above the water feature, our rhubarb is coming on apace. We’ll soon be eating it.

Here’s the Clematis montana on the garage, full of buds.

Beside the steps going down towards the house, our Forsythia is starting to flower.

That about wraps up the springtime tour of our garden! My hubby is so delighted to have a small garden which is so much easier to manage, and he’s gaining so much satisfaction from making it look nice.

I love this time of year.

PS – I’ve just looked at the Scripture for today on my blog – from the Prophet Isaiah: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” (Isaiah 40:8 / KJV) – but until it does fade, I shall enjoy it!!

Our Garden in April 2016

Today is such a lovely sunny day and things are looking so nice in the garden that I thought I’d take some photos.

All my hubby’s tremendous hard work is paying off. The rock garden is looking lovely and everything in the garden is starting to spout, gr0w and blossom. Wherever we’ve lived before we’ve had a larger garden, and he has been working full-time as well, so any time he had for gardening was taken up with maintenance and keeping the weeds at bay, and it is wonderful to see him now, so enjoying making our small garden into something special, and having time to be a bit more creative. So as you enjoy the following photos, remember that it is all my hubby’s hard work!

We recently had the cloudy kitchen window replaced with a nice new one, and for the first time I an see the rock garden in all its glory from the correct angle! Unfortunately the water feature doesn’t show up terribly well in photos but it’s there! It sounds lovely, too.

Beatrice enjoying the warmth of the rocks in the rock garden.

One of the little plants we bought recently. These are growing nicely, and have started flowering. Eventually they will cascade over the wall and fill the patio with colour.

More of the new plants in the rock garden.

Looking up the steps to the upper garden, to the left of the rock garden. You can see the outhouse at the bottom, and the garage at the top, and a lovely flowering shrub by the steps.

To the left of the steps, further along the back of the house, you come to Mum’s little patio. We have got gorgeous tulips out (and more to come in another trough).

Separating her patio from the upper garden is a grassy bank. There are quite a few primroses growing in this, and after they have finished flowering, my hubby is going to move some more down from by the garage, and maybe split some of the plants that are already there. Eventually it will be a whole primrose bank. There are also some ferns and other little plants growing amongst the grass, and along the top we’ve got a few lavender plants, which we hope will eventually become a lavender hedge.

Beatrice basking in the sun on top of the outhouse.

At the top of the steps. between the top of the rock garden and the garage, is a flatter bit with a bay tree (on the left in the photo - severely cut back – I was worried I’d have no leaves for my cooking this year but it’s sprouting again, and will be a nice rounded shape instead of the vast great tree it was!) and quite a lot of primroses. You don’t see these if you aren’t actually up there, so we are going to transplant some of these to the primrose bank. You can see the outhouse roof below.

A little bit further on, beyond the bay tree, we’ve got some rhubarb growing. This will be its second year and we hope for a good crop this year. The compost heaps are beyond. Phoebe likes sleeping in the compost heap!!

Looking down on Beatrice on the outhouse roof.

At the top of the steps. alongside the lawn, is a hedge of Photinia Red Robin, a gorgeous shrub whose new leaves are a glorious red colour.

On the other side of the path, against the garage wall, my hubby has put some recycled trellis that he got for nothing, and in the troughs underneath he’s planted some sweet peas. They are not tall enough yet to reach the trellis and he’s put in some little sticks for them to climb up, as a bridge so they can reach the trellis. They are still quite small, but starting to grow. You can see the apple tree on the left. We had a huge crop last year and they were delicious. In the corner beyond, we’ve got late raspberry canes, and again we had a good crop last year.

The apple tree has started to sprout! Soon it will be covered with apple blossom.

Here is Phoebe sunning herself and rolling around on the concrete path between the two patios – her favourite place on a sunny day!

Finally, a view of the fence to the right of the rock garden, showing the flowering shrubs in our garden and next door. We are quite pleased that that neighbour doesn’t clip his shrubs back because we get the benefit of them!

Later on, when I’ve finished painting the little flower boxes, I’ll take some more photos, to include the summer house and the other side of the garden.

You can see that we have a very pretty garden, and in the next few years as the new plants mature and grow, it is going to get better and better.

I am reminded of the beautiful little verse from the poem by Dorothy Frances Gurney:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.

My New Buggy, and an Outing to Brunel Woods

Today, after many months’ waiting, the new buggies arrived in the mobility shop. Some time ago, I inherited my uncle’s big buggy which is a very, very good one; very powerful, very comfortable and goes a long way on a single charge.

However, there is a major problem with it, and that is, it is much too big and heavy to go in the car. It is fine for getting to the shops, or to church – launching forth from the garage at home as you can see in the above photo.

However, many of the outings we go on involve going in the car. We belong to the National Trust, for instance, and if we have a day out, visiting one of their properties, the wheelchair is ideal for indoors, and for sitting in the restaurant, but not so good for going around the grounds – despite the power assist wheels, after a fairly short distance, I become too fatigued to self-propel any longer. My hubby has never forgotten (and never lets me forget, lol!) that time we went to the zoo, and he had to push me all the way up the hill to see the tigers! Last time we went to the zoo, the other day, we hired one of the zoo’s buggies and this was ideal.

So what we needed was a smaller, lightweight buggy that could fold up and go in the car, and still leave room for the wheelchair. We visited our local mobility shop, and I tried out quite a few. You really do have to try them – it is too risky to buy a buggy off the Internet, for example, without trying it, because however comfortable it may look, everyone’s body proportions are different, and what suits one will not necessarily suit another. The problem with the ultra-compact foldable buggies is that most of them are not adjustable at all, because this would interfere with the folding mechanism, and most of them were simply not comfortable enough. My arms are too short, which always causes problems, and having to reach further than is comfortable is very fatiguing. Some of them had really uncomfortable seats, and with the small wheels, many of them provided a very bumpy ride.

There was one that was different, though, and this was the SupaScoota. The control column is adjustable for height, and fore and aft angle, so that with it tipped towards me, and the whole thing raised, it was within easy reach and comfort for my arms. The battery is very powerful and it fairly zips along, with a choice of two speeds. With the seat removed, the control column can be folded flat against the base, and even with my adjustment, it still folds OK. Removing the battery makes it lighter for my hubby to lift into the car.

When we first tried it, the only drawback was the awful seat! As you will see from this photo:

The seat is triangular, and very uncomfortable, despite the sprung suspension. I was very disappointed, because apart from that, the rest of the features were ideal for me. The man in the shop told us that the manufacturers were about to bring out a new model with an improved seat, which was rectangular, and with a better back support. The buggy would also have an automatic setting that caused it to slow down when you turn a corner, but there would be a button to override this feature. We were very interested in this new model, and he said they would be getting some in soon. This took months longer than we’d hoped, but they knew we were interested, and let us know as soon as the prototype model arrived in the shop, and we went to try it.

You can see how much better the new seat looks. The foot rests are also larger. This is the four-wheel model (which we chose), but there is also a three-wheel model, and you can also have the extra “training” wheels for the front if you want. The new model is actually gold, not orange, and I much prefer this colour.

Here is a video of the original SupaScoota – the new model is so new that there aren’t any videos yet. (Perhaps we ought to make one!!) The new model is slightly easier to disassemble and fold, but apart from the new seat and suspension, the details are pretty much the same as on the video. I chose this Youtube video from Canada because it seemed to show best how the buggy folds up, and a lot of its features.

I tried the prototype in the shop, and after the control column was adjusted for me, I absolutely loved it! I took it for a good little spin outside, and my hubby practised taking the seat off and folding it up, and if he removes one seat from the back of our car, it will go in beside the wheelchair with no problem at all. He can also use the crane in the back of the car to lift it in. So we paid a deposit, and we then had another long wait, until this morning when the shop phoned to say they were in at last.

We went to collect it, and I am one of the first people in the country to get this new model – apparently there are only two shops that supply the SupaScooter – our local one, which is the importer, and another shop which I think he said was in Hampshire. Afterwards, as it was such a beautiful spring day, my hubby took me on an outing to try it out – this was by way of an experiment for him, too, to see how well he could get it in and out of the car. We went to Brunel Woods, at the entrance of which is a kissing gate to prevent mountain bikers invading the woods. This makes it very disabled unfriendly! There was no way my hubby could get my wheelchair through, but today, he tried the disassembled buggy – it was a bit of an effort but he managed to lift it over. He said afterwards that if he’d removed the motor as well as the battery, it would have been a bit lighter.

Off we went, and it was pretty steep! There was also a thick covering of beech nuts on the ground, and at one time I did lose control a bit and started sliding back! It was only when we got home that my hubby read in the instruction manual that you shouldn’t take it up a slope steeper than a certain number of degrees (and we were sure our path was steeper than that!!) and also that it should be run on a firm surface! So we broke all the rules on Day One lol! Anyway, we put it through its paces, and it was fine.

In Brunel Woods there is an extraordinary collection of wood carvings in honour of our greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the central feature of which is a dead tree trunk which has been carved into a totem pole, depicting all the things that I.K. Brunel constructed. It is surrounded by three more carvings, one of which is a statue of the great man himself.

Here is my hubby with I.K. Brunel, which gives a sense of the scale of the carvings.

Here is the totem pole, a bit closer up.

At the base of the totem pole, the date when it was made has been carved.

After admiring these things, we went for a wander in the woods. The sun was shining through the trees, and all the birds were in full song. There is something about birdsong in a wood – it echoes off the trees, and sounds so full and rich. In a few weeks’ time, these woods will be full of bluebells! To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a beech wood with a carpet of bluebells, with the sun filtering through the translucent, young green leaves of my favourite tree. If the oak is the king of the English wood, then the beech must surely be the queen.

Finally, here are some pictures of me using my new buggy. You can see that there is a bag on the back of the seat – we had hoped that the bag from my big buggy would fit, but it wouldn’t, so we got the one to fit this mini-scooter while we were at it. The basket on the front is actually surprisingly capacious – better than the one on my big buggy, but I shall still need to be able to carry more, especially after my operation when I will need to carry my emergency kit with me, for bag-changing etc. There is also room underneath the seat for another basket if I want it.

You can see from these photos how the control column has been adjusted to suit me. (Note my new hair colours!! Also, the felt poppies hair clip I made last year in the felt class.)

It’s a very nice, zippy little buggy and will do just fine for our outings, enabling us to go further afield and not be tied. It isn’t quite as comfortable as the big one, but with its improved seat and the sprung suspension, it’s not at all bad.

Today was another of what my hubby calls “spoilies” before I go into hospital. We were so pleased that the new buggies arrived before I went in! We have now got it all ready for when I am better enough to go out and about again. Another purpose in the second postponement of my surgery, perhaps?

Talking of which, having had nothing in the post from the hospital today and it being Friday, I thought I would phone them just to see if they had any news, and I spoke to Mr. Pullan’s secretary. She said he would be away until Tuesday. I asked her to phone me as soon as she had a date for my admission, and she said that would be fine. She said I was already at the top of his list, and it looked likely that I would have it done a week today, Friday 27th March, which would be exactly a month after my first scheduled admission on 27th February. (I am getting a bit concerned at the delay now, because that’s another whole month for the cancer to be growing… However, if they were worried about that, they would have got me in urgently and I’d have had another surgeon to do it.) She obviously could not confirm this date in the absence of Mr. Pullan, but hopefully we will get definite confirmation as soon as he returns to work.