Patiopatch

Burial patch

PatioPatch — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:50:40 +0000

This time last year I wrote about losing the bit of garden I’d cultivated for many years. I’d decided then to keep my gardening blog going but with broader horizons, and accordingly renewed the patiopatch site. The time has now come wherein it feels too much like hanging on in there instead of just burying the . . . → Read More:

“My Garden”: unearthing a piece of history

PatioPatch — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:45:42 +0000

I’ve never bothered much with gardening books as the aspirations of design and planting are too often targeted beyond my capabilities, budget or modus operandii. I do however possess basic instruction manuals on the hows, whens, and whys of horticulture and in less judicious moments have been taken in by eye-candy books of country gardens, meadow . . . → Read More:

Wych Elm: threads of gold

PatioPatch — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:54:55 +0000

‘Clotho’ and her opposite wych elm neighbour

Two months have passed since I featured the Camperdown elms of Old St Pancras churchyard. In the last post, I’d belatedly tuned in to the fact that a Wych elm was in fact growing just opposite the Umbrella elms, ‘Clotho’ and ‘Lachesis’, that I’d been studying. Recently I took . . . → Read More:

Courtyard Garden: Plants #7 & #8

PatioPatch — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:05:17 +0000

I’m so belated with my ‘Dozen for Diana’ Courtyard garden meme that it’s almost time for 9th plant so I will delve in without further ado with #7 & #8:-

Plant #7: I love Astilbes. Perhaps because they are flowers that pretend otherwise. Instead of blooms they have plumes held aloft over . . . → Read More:

GBMD: September Plowing

PatioPatch — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 16:37:15 +0000

“For seasons the walled meadow south of the house built of its stone grows up in shepherd’s purse and thistles the weeds share April as a secret finches disguised as summer earth click the drying seeds mice run over rags of parchment in August the hare keeps looking up remembering a hidden joy fills . . . → Read More:

Verging on the insane

PatioPatch — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 09:16:05 +0000

‘Leave it and they will come’ is a good enough adage for how wildflowers settle in to an area; carried on a walker’s boot, dropped by bird, or blown on the wind, and finding a foothold in the poorer soils, typical of wasteland, railway cutting and roadside verge. And just when the flora is . . . → Read More:

Wych Elm: seeing for the first time

PatioPatch — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:17:38 +0000

Atropos in summer decor

It’s two months to the day since my last ‘tree follower’ post and the weeks of rain can only have benefited the Camperdown elms in the fullness of their summer foliage. Back in May I focused on the solitary ‘Atropos’, which is how I refer to the third of these Umbrella elms . . . → Read More:

Serendipity

PatioPatch — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:34:46 +0000

old vicarage hotel gardens Bridgwater

I dislike hotels as a rule and the uncertainty of what to expect when you arrive only adds to the bother. Whether it be hotel or cottage holiday break, I could not care less about wi-fi, tv, swimming pool or the like. I just want a clean, comfortable bed for the . . . → Read More:

Blurring the boundaries

PatioPatch — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 17:52:08 +0000

“A straight and tangled row of heavy green, A hedge, till then unguessed, where loftier trees Stood up amid a world of clustering things, Brambles and slender vines and, stiffly held, The heads of little, sturdy, hopeful trees…”1

Looking through the parched eyes of a city dweller, the patterning of little green acres is indeed a . . . → Read More:

Museday 1/7/12: An Encounter

PatioPatch — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 11:42:07 +0000

ONCE on the kind of day called “weather breeder,”1When the heat slowly hazes and the sunBy its own power seems to be undone,

I was half boring through, half climbing throughA swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar

And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,And sorry I ever left the road I knew,

. . . → Read More: