A Feast For The Birds

It was with some trepidation that I made my way to NC on Saturday, it was to be the first day that just Giles and I were gardening, the girls having gone on a flower sculpture course, pretty soon it will be like that all the time when Alison#1 leaves and Nikky returns to the nursery. It was a very cold morning and the garden was looking beautiful in its frosty white blanket but Giles took pity on me and gave me the peach house to clear out and mulch, a nice inside job until things warmed up a bit. It was delightful to look out and watch the antics of the birds, Giles had left the windfall apples for just such a morning and the field fares, red wings and blackbirds were tucking in with gusto. Next we ventured outside to move four vines, Vitis vinifera 'Purpurea' which we placed next to the apple store door and three others along the warmest south facing wall, in the hope of improving next years crop. The vegetable plot received our attention next getting a good weeding and some compost, the soil in there is beautiful and I can't wait to see what produce we can coax from it in 2012. And so four o' clock was upon us astonishingly quickly, proving that good honest toil passes the time best of anything!
"But what minutes! Count them by sensation and not by calendars and each moment is a day"
Benjamin Disraeli