Guerilla Gardening

I don’t generally photograph graffiti, especially when the ugliness of it is offensive in itself. True this garage wall was hardly a thing of beauty but it has well-laid courses of brick and does its job.

The scribble is hardly well-crafted, but it would be time-consuming and silly to remove it. No sooner was the door repainted than the felt-tip pens were out again.

My attempt at an answer is to help nature to take its course. An ivy cutting poked between the bricks and the asphalt has begun climbing the wall. Let’s see where we are come September.

orange tips

Two orange-tipped insects this week: a male orange tipped butterfly fluttered by the garden as Mrs T was taking tea, and a queen red-tailed bumble bee who was preening in the sunshine when this picture was taken. Thanks to Anneliese Emmans Dean of theBigBuzz blog on wordpress for the idenification!

Fifty years ago I used to see both of these often in Hampshire, but I don’t remember the last time I saw one of these bees in Kent or anywhere else. I need to keep my eyes open!

Willow, willow, willow

The self-sown willow in Mrs O’s garden is growing on the boundary. this time last year it was inaccessible behind waves of rampant brambles. I have cleared them over the months, although I see a new purple shoot every time I visit as the roots send buds to seek the sun and reclaim the land in leaf and thorn. But what about the willow?

i left it unpruned over the Winter to allow its early Spring flowering. The stems bearing pussy catkins were all too high up to contribute  to the display in Mrs O’s garden or her neighbours’, though they formed part of Mrs T’s Valentine’s bouquet, made up our family Easter Tree and graced the Paschal Candle and Baptismal Water at the Easter Vigil.

Willows, of course, are still exploited for making baskets and hurdles, Last May when I tackled the fallen willow in Wales, (See my post Si vis pacem, pare hortum) the new shoots were already evident, thrusting upwards like Mrs O’s brambles; they helped me determine where to make my cuts.

No such work had ever been done here, so I brought all stems down to eye level, about six feet high.That was on Good Friday, and now, four weeks later, there are shoots appearing up and down the stems, and all reaching for the sky.

Seeing such abundance, I almost regret not cutting lower down, but we’ll wait and see the year out as we are. As it happens, my pruning saw is at Miss Turnstone’s new house, where it has plenty to get its teeth into.

And maybe I should investigate basket weaving.