Letters to garden makers

Dear reader, The hills were cuttingly cold numbing my brain to a stupor Powdered snow blew along the ground in cloudy drifts The Cribbarth looked like a cut out - reduced to two tones Grey and ochre The garden defrosts and miraculously the daffodils lift up their heads Cruelly cold - but as beautiful as a cut diamond refracting light My lungs are sore from it But out of the wind the sun begins the thaw Beauty can be found here below the old coal tips In the valleys where the mines were. Paul

Dear reader, The warmth returns Sanctuary The reflection and refraction of light through the kitchen window from the garden is of its moment Filtered through the pines and the leafless trees Sparkling off wet stems and evergreen foliage It will not be the same ever again Or at least I may not ever see it as I see it now The garden is a paradise in this moment The cloister garden is cloistered Enclosed Private This spectacle of light and of birds feeding avidly after their frozen fast Of vapours rising from the edges of low walls It is like an offering of incense in the temple Offered back to the God who made it. The Ides of March The sun appears again The boiling star brings some warmth today I am able to sit in the garden and feel its warming touch Held at the right distance away from its mantling We continue to ferment upon the surface of the earth The birds sing their territorial songs Breeding ovetures Love songs Two red kites return over this

Dear reader, The garden like your garden if in the UK has been blasted by the east wind (given a name which I will not repeat) it has frozen and gutted the Yucca its spikes flattened. No shelter since the hedge that protected it was dug up by me the week before. I stole its chance to survive. Fleece yes fleece I know - but being a non fleecy gardener there was no fleece. The wind with no name has blown bare the beech hedge of its clinging leaves. It dislodged my tinplate spiral throwing it discus - like into the middle of the garden. Spring has been arrested Put in gaol A prison of cold soil - a cold soft surface mush with hard iron below Now in between two seasons Winter not wanting Spring to have its head The heads of lenten roses bow to the ground Leaves splayed as though in abeyance No sap - no life blood - no energy to flow It cuts back Halts Fights to keep its grip But it will loosen when the hand of God allows it Who is God you may as