For Sale or Not For Sale?

I get to somewhere mid March and I am so fed up with wind and rain, mud, mud and more mud that the 'For Sale' sign starts to be just a phone call away. For at least three months I do not see my home in daylight ...I wander about like a mole crossed with an olde English sheepdog peeping through my unkempt fringe wishing fervently for tarmac and sodium lights ...then all of a sudden...spring charges in with violets in the hedge rows, woodpeckers hammering like mad things and the cuckoo joining in the chorus.

The grass turns from a muddy mess to stuff lions could hide in within days. Suddenly the whole world is bright green and pulsating. The birds are deafening, a blackbird sings his heart out in the tree opposite the bedroom window and the pigeons coo themselves into a frenzy. Now I know why I am here on this windy hillside facing Wales .....because it is simply beautiful. We haven't had a meal indoors since last Friday. Bodran's clingy clangy wind chimes gently peal in the breeze sounding like the Angelus in a little Irish town.

I remember the first spring 11 years ago. Down the track a musical family would practice their instruments each evening sitting in the middle of the field. Well would you want five kids practising brass instruments in the house? No ...nor me! We always eat outside when we can and would sit listening transfixed to the music coming from the long grass. Couldn't see them ..only hear them. On band practice nights the same five children would walk up to the village hall, still practising as they walked. They never spoke...just played as they passed and we thought we were living in the faery lands of Mary Webb for sure.

The houses along the track host two rather large street parties during the year in June and November. On Saturday we had a 'bit of a do' to arrange the June event. Needless to say with a huge pot of communal curry, naan bread, home made pizza and a couple of school dinner sized puddings a party was born. The wine flowed, the sun dipped over Cader Idris, the guitar came out and ably led by the junior school teacher the singing started. 'The Fields of Athenry' turned into 'Wiv My Pit Boots On' and 'Babby's Yed' all mixed up with a couple of Abba favourites, The Seekers got a look in and a couple of hymns crept in as well. The youngest partygoer was our grandson of 13 months whilst the eldest was about 75. As the dusk fell all the children from the eight different families gravitated to a groundsheet under the holly tree and with two black labs as pillows they curled up like a large nest of puppies.

I sat talking to E who just marvelled at the scene in front of us ...how all the children had played together, how the little ones had been looked after by the big ones. How safe it all was, the families all intermingled yet all at ease. Even the pets were all there, dogs and cats lay under the collection of mismatched piebald chairs....just how it should be.

No I dont think I'll make that call for that 'For Sale' sign just yet ...well not until next March anyway....just remind me that I do get through it ...just like Christmas...yuk!

Mother Nature and a gooseberry bush

Remember at Sunday School or in the infants class when the topic turned to the Bible and God and you could nearly 'see' a big old man with a long white beard and a kindly rosy face like everybody's grandad. So...who was his wife? Mother Nature of course! I can 'see' her now ...a cross between Hannah Hauxwell and my mum. A force to be reckoned with indeed. Anyway during the last few weeks of lambing and weather and gardens and soggy lawns me and Her have had a few set to's ....they take me straight back to being 15 and not allowed to go to the dance when ALL my friends were...and my question is still the same now as then ...'WHY?'

We moved into this hovel on the hillside in April 1997 and the following spring I bought some lovely plants from a plant sale at Bridgnorth market. Forsythia ..it flowers, Mock Orange...it flowers and smells, Golden Buddleia...it flowers, proper geraniums...they flower and have spread and a camellia...nothing! Nice leaves... shame about the flowers. It has even been mentioned with posterity in a local version of gardener's questiontime...too dry, wrong soil, wrong position...sod it! I left it there on the corner of the flower border and swore at it profusely over the years...threatened it with the bonfire, watered it with the hosepipe with great force ...all to no avail.

For a similar amount of years I have also been fighting with a gooseberry bush that insisits it WILL grow near the front door in a crack in the front path. I have cut it down, weedkillered it, creosoted the stump, boiling water the lot! One poor drunken friend fell in it one hot August night as she left...could never work out why she was covered in long scratch marks the next day.

Last year in a particularly fed up moment I uttered those fateful words ....'OK, OK you can stay....I'm fed up with trying to eradicate you'...BUT Mother Nature can we have a bit of co-operation here? If I let that swine of a thorny bush stay right by the front door, in everybody's way could you at least do something about old misery down there and let's have a few flowers?

They exist not three feet apart ....Gooseberry bush larger than ever, loads of flowers this year, bumper crop expected ...dozens of legs WILL be scratched. People will wonder why this batty woman has a gooseberry bush by the front door...'what a stupid place to have a gooseberry bush!'. I've heard 'em say it!

Camellia however ...wait for it.....covered in dark red flowers...for the first time in 11 years! Good old Mother Nature...awkward old cuss!

The end is nigh!

Only three mothers left to produce and by the looks of them they aren't in any particular hurry..August will do. So tomorrow it's back to the paying job...proper clothes and shoes with heels. That fortnight went past with the speed of light...well for most of it on four hours sleep a night ...perhaps that's why it went fast.

I saw the saddest sight last night as we fed the sheep. The ewes with the lambs that I have been topping up with bottles had decided they didn't like their little field and had wormed their way through the fence into the big field. They all raced back to be fed of course ...when they had finished they gathered up their offspring and left following the sheep track back up to the big field. They never called for Big Bob, Nelly Knock Knees or Little Wilbur. They never even looked back. We watched as the three little lost souls looked at each other a bit bewildered , they had always had a mother here before to run to ..but now nothing. They made their way into the little shelter under the wall for the night ...first time alone.

I woke up in the night hoping the fox hadn't called on her way home from the valley.

At 5:30am I held my breath as we approached the field ..out of the little shelter came three hungry little souls..looks like this is their 'lot' now.....fed and happy together they were back in their shelter before you could recite 'baa baa black sheep' ...I know ...its survival of the fittest and all that...but their little faces last night when they realised their miserable mothers had just gone. Sheep ...who'd have 'em?

Finally, for I may be gone a little while, some pictures from our day out with purple people last week......

Yes the flowers are real and the sky was that blue and the happy gang on the bridge at Dingle Nursery.

l-r ..Woozle, ElizM, Mountainear, CCA and Bodran