Missing Spring

          This could be taken two ways:  I miss Spring, the season, in that it really isn't here yet, or, I probably won't be around my home this year when Spring comes and thus will miss the start of the season.  I am meaning the second part here.  In the three plus years we have lived in this house, I have been diligently planting spring flowers.  The first year, in my misunderstanding of the British countryside and wildlife, I planted around 100 tulips, all of which made the local deer quite happy and me quite miserable because I ended up with 3 stalks and 2 tulip flowers at the end of it all.  While I was exclaiming proudly to my new neighbor, who had great experience in this matter, she informed me that the tulips would not see the light of day as the deer would eat them all.  Yep.  At least I had also planted daffodils and some lilies and those all grew and were lovely.

          So each year, I planted more and more daffodils and added crocus, more lilies, and anything else that looked like it might be unappetizing to deer (getting the lowdown from my neighbor).  I say, "I planted" as if I did the actual work but the house came with a gardener and I would get the bulbs and he would plant them where i said, "they would look good there, don't you think?".  Of course, he always agreed with me.  And more and more bulbs went into the ground.  

          As the house garden came already planted with some lovely rhododendrons, various grasses, some of which flower, some camellias, some fuchsia, some azaleas and a couple of lone rose bushes, my garden was looking more and more lovely each spring.  Plus there are plenty of different varieties of green bushes around and some red bushes, black bushes and other stuff that my gardener knows but I still have no clue.   Now I have to ask my gardener "Is there room" and I have not purchased any new bulbs for this year other than some tulips (yes 20 tulips - all in netted pots so no deer can eat them).

          So Spring comes, starts early, green shoots start coming through the ground, all over the garden, sometimes a bit early and then get covered with snow again, but they keep coming.  As we walked around the garden this weekend, I realized that almost all my daffodils have pushed through the ground.  The crocus are about to burst into bloom.  The rhododendrons  and camillas  and several other bushes have plenty of buds, and the roses are retaliating as well.   My garden is so dang beautiful when all these flowers bloom.  

          And then it hit me.  We are going on holiday soon - a slightly longer than usual holiday - actually leaving my daughter at home for once, instead of the other way around when she jaunts off to work in Africa and leaves us behind.  AND there is a very good chance that I will miss the blooming of the garden in a big way!   I am sure that everything will not bloom and die during the time we are gone but I am also fairly sure that most of the daffodils and crocuses will be up and well on their way to being gone by the time we return.   How sad for me!!!  

          Spring is such a joyous time here because it comes after such nasty winters, whether there was a lot of snow and rain or just cold weather.  Everyone here loves Spring.  You can hardly get into one of the local DYI stores or gardening stores because everyone is there getting ready for Spring.  When we lived in Houston, wasn't such a big deal.  There were flowers blooming all year-long so nobody was overly excited for Spring.  But HERE, it's a lovely occasion to celebrate the season, watch the glorious colors and plants come to life in your garden, shake off the winter doldrums, and start being outside a lot more.   I have fallen into this category of being delighted when spring arrives but this year I will be in the tropics, in a rainforest, and not staring at my garden, just delirious with joy at all my daffodils and crocuses and tulips and rhododendruns and such.  Not the best of planning on my part.   Well, luckily, we will probably be here for next year's spring as well.  I think I'd better go get some more bulbs.

Weekends at the DIY

Had to hit a DIY this weekend and for anyone who is really behind on the times, a DIY is Do It Yourself.  On occasion, it is so much easier to just repair something on your own rather than call a repair person or the landlord or whomever.  This may not be one of those occasions.  So we thought we had a quick repair where the upstairs pipe had broken off under the sink in one of the bedrooms.  This was not an under the sink plumbing that I have ever seen before but it seems to be fairly typical here as when we went into the DIY store, there were plenty of like parts to get and they seem to come in an "all in one" type replacement part.

What was amazing though is the number of people that were shopping the DIY.  OMG.  it was like Christmas sale week at the malls.  The lot was full, people were waiting for cars to move out of the way so they could park (although, it you went far enough out in the lot, there were some spaces).  Once inside, I was so thankful we were not going to the building section or the garden section as it seems like these sections were heaving with people as the Brits have decided that spring is here and they are busy working on their homes and gardens to fix up, spruce up, weather up, and/or maintain.  wow.  A whole lot of gardening and repairing going on across the nation, I'd say.  


Didn't take us too long to get what we needed even though we had a short list.  Took longer standing in the line to check out than it did to find everything we wanted.  But we managed.  

Back home, the repair that looked so easy and uncomplicated for a plumbing repair did not work.  Something is wrong with the picture as the easy part would not screw into the part that is left behind.  My hubby worked and worked and worked on it until he had stripped the threads in the PVC pipe.  Back to the hardware store for another piece of plumbing kit that was exactly what we had previously purchased and lo and behold, hubby could not make it work either!  Dang, two 5.99 pound parts, both stripped now and both not going where they should and my sink still not fixed.  double dang.  How odd.  And how funny.  My hubby can fix things and do a good job sometimes but on occasion, his engineering and computer brain takes over and he keeps trying for a "re-boot" when a re-boot won't do.  such was the case here.  So now we have three sets of plumbing parts that don't work, but we probably can't ever throw them away just in case we can use them elsewhere, a sink that still doesn't work, and a lovely Friday in the DIY along with the rest of England. 

Bad Golfer Theory

Living with a golf course out our back garden is lovely.  We have a great view of the first hole.  It's dark at night so no lights shining in our bedroom windows and it's a grand view without houses interrupting it.  The added advantage being there are always some small groups of people moving about and golfing and they are quite interesting to watch.  We don't play golf but we have learned a lot by just watching the golfers.

Throughout the late autumn and winter, there is always someone on the course during the day.  In the rain, in the sleet, in the cold and in the frost, there are golfers.  The only days when the golf course has been empty has been when it was covered by snow and once the snow was off the fairways, the golfers returned.

When we moved into our rental home, we found several golf balls in the garden.  Usually we were finding one golf ball about every 2 weeks.  Once the weather got really cold, we stopped finding golf balls even though we could still see the golfers moving through the course and "aiming" towards the house.  As we are not golfers, as previously stated, we don't understand the passion or desire or interest that drives golfers to go out and walk around on a cold or wet day.  But we have come up with a theory, the Bad Golfers Theory.  This is solely based on the number of golf balls we find in our garden.

The theory goes like this: Only good golfers are willing to spend the time and money in inclement weather therefore bad golfers are more likely to be "fair weather golfers".  Hence, we will only find golf balls in our garden when the bad golfers are on the course.  In other words, only the bad golfers slice, hook, throw, drive, putt, or whatever, badly enough to have a golf ball end up in our garden.  And since we found no golf balls throughout the winter and into the spring, no bad golfers are on the course during that time because they don't like the sport well enough to wander around in the cold and wet.  

This week, as always, there have been plenty of golfers on the course and the days have been fairly nice and lovely.  I found three golf balls this week!

Deer and Tulips

The English people I know love their gardens, for the most part.  They take a lot of time and expense to lavish care on the gardens (we just know them as "yards").  Most gardens are quite lovely too once it gets warm enough to start the trees growing again and the flowers blooming.  That's one reason I think they like the gardens so much, because the growing season is short and when a garden finally blooms, it's glorious!

I definitely have a nice enough rental house with a very nice garden that I also want to lavish some time and effort on it.  It is a learning curve though.  Last autumn, I hit the nurseries and found the daffodils and tulip bulbs for sale along with some flowering bulbs I'd never heard of before.  SO I got a small bunch of daffodil and tulip bulbs and got them into the ground before winter.  

By spring, of course I had forgotten what I planted and where!  After all, at best, I am a half hearted part time dark green to black thumb person.  But come January, all the nurseries, garden stores, discount plant places and such start bombarding you with incredible offers for bulbs, hanging baskets, trees, fruit trees, shrubs, grass, pots and greenhouses and everything imaginable for the garden.  Generally speaking - I want it all in my garden!  I want a riot of color!  I want fruit, I want nice smells, I want butterflies and nice bees!  (OH, mushroom logs too!) so I start getting some bulbs and fruit trees (dwarf ones of course, my garden isn't THAT big)  

By February and March, many people have large swatches of daffodils growing and other early bulbs.  Not me.  I managed to put mine in a secluded spot so they don't come up until late March.  At least they came up.  And as dirt and rocks and pots and plants and bulbs and trees are delivered, I start putting it in the garden.  However, even as I am busy puttering around and planting my dwarf fruit trees in containers, here comes a freeze!  My gardener (the rental house comes with a gardener who is supposed to take care of the lawn and leaves in fall and weeds and such) tells me that we could get freezing nights well into MAY!  I must pay attention to the weather and when it is going to be especially cold at night, I must bring in my dwarf trees that are small enough to sit in the conservatory and cover the rest of the vulnerable plants outside with this gauzy stuff that is supposed to protect it from frosts and makes the other dwarf trees in bigger pots look like triangular sails (and the pots do tend to move around on the deck if the wind is strong enough).  And some of my bulbs, I can't even plant until May because they don't like the cold at all.  wow.  what a difference from living in Houston where everything had to be planted by January and was dead by March from the heat!

Now back to the title of my article.  Right after I had planted my daffodils and tulips, I was talking to my next door neighbor who informed me that she never plants tulips because the deer eat them.  Yes, she was absolutely right!  As I am busy planting some anemones and freesias and other bulbs yesterday, I noticed my tulips.  I have some nice leaves and some nice stems nicely nipped off close to the ground!  NOT A SINGLE TULIP LEFT!  I feed the squirrels and birds and hopefully the badger someday and hedgehogs but didn't really want to feed the deer all of my tulips.  Next year, more daffodils, zero tulips.