Roads to Joy

How blessed are we, we exclaim, to enjoy the spring flowers as they erupt around us?

The wilds of the North Pennine moors did not lend themselves well to bounteous, delicate blooms. Copious blackthorn and hawthorn blossom there are so much appreciated, when they cover isolated trees and hedgerows alike, but these flowers are very small, perhaps to withstand the heavy breezes on the high fellsides. Not for those windy regions are fragile petals. So it’s a real delight to wander through our new-to-us garden and admire the display, out of the wind’s reach and spreading open to entice the visitation of insect pollinators.

We had nothing to do with the development of this garden; we’re only the stewards for now, watching and waiting as new plants put forth their efforts. As stewards, we seem to reap the joy from the effort of others, but our continued delight will be in the proper maintenance of things.

For example, we cleared out a lot of dead wood from plants that had apparently not survived the severe frost that passed through these parts before Christmas. We’re waiting to see if the eucalyptus plant, which looks very bad, will put out any new shoots. It’s already highly unlikely that the olive tree we’d kept safe in the polytunnel back in the North Pennines, over winter, will have survived. But other shrubs have definitely bit the dust, and their days are over.

And the lawn maintenance, of course. Easy mowing if it’s done promptly and often. We’ll just be cheerful maintenance gardeners, this season, while we watch and wait.

And the blossoms just seem to keep coming, sometimes so enchanting as to elicit another exclamation of delight. Bless.