Long grass and daisies
Bramble & Briar #182
I looked at the sky last night – mid blue with vapour trails, not quite half ten – and realised with a start that the longest day is almost upon us. What. The Actual. {sound of word popping out of existence, and of air rushing in to fill the gap it left behind}. I am in no way ready to enter the darkling half of the year.
Meanwhile, all around me the garden rushes headlong to embrace the solstice, giving little thought to what lies beyond. Give me light, and more of it seems to be the overriding mood, as everything reaches out and up and the narrow green lanes along which we make our way through the space become increasingly congested, and the floor grows ever more shaded by an abundance of eager growth. Midsummer has stolen in on me, and I have no idea quite how this has happened.
You’ll have to excuse me. We’ve been away for a week by the sea in Suffolk – heavy, blustery showers every day, several good soakings, returning to bright sunshine and nary a raincloud in sight. The thing is, my Substack rhythm is a bit out of whack, and the short read long read sequence seems to have gone for a Burton for a while; in its place, a rambling medium read which, I have to admit, I’m quite enjoying putting together. I’m sure normal service will return imminently.
The thing is, going away as spring hands over to summer is a bit of a tense exercise for the gardener. The greenhouse staging is still stuffed with things in pots, the sun is beginning to assert itself and the weeks leading up to departure are filled with the gestation of innumerable schemes for keeping things alive in your approaching absence. Chuck in a comedy heatwave just before departure to quite literally turn the heat up on the whole experience. But the heat broke, and the forecast could just about be relied upon for assurances of moderation, and everything we abandoned for the not-so sunny delight of the Anglian coast seems to have flourished in the absence of my daily ministrations. Which, I have to be honest here, feels a little rude, but better that than coming home to find that everything’s carked it. I’d left long, shallow puddles in black plastic growbag trays, with everything huddled together for company, which you can get away with for about a week (not much longer) at the beginning of June. The cooler temperatures meant I could let things stay in the greenhouse, rather than following my initial plan of moving everything out to the dappled shade in the lee of the hedge. No wilting, and some encouraging growth. Plenty for planting out, sighs of relief all round. You can bet your life that the greenhouse was my first port of call as soon as we got home.
