And Some Fell ...

... on stony ground. I have never come across such a stony garden. It's not that there are stones there naturally but because someone put them there. But why? I'll probably never know. I've already shifted a few million of them from beds to the drive, but now I've come across a hoard of pebbles where I'm trying to plant crocosmia and hemerocallis. Digging holes for these plants was agonisingly hard, and my hands hurt accordingly. But this is the first time my garden has looked like a proper garden, and I'm delighted with it. All it needs now is for Mr Mole to come along and ruin everything.

After my digging efforts, long after Lewis and Darren had gone, I decided to go for a walk. It was a beautiful evening, possibly the last of its kind for many months - the weather is set to change tomorrow and become wet and cold. Warm, sunny, calm and peaceful, it beckoned with an irresistible hand and I responded. Down the lane towards Bruisyard I trotted, relieved that I didn't have to pull on a lead or steer a determined little body away from anything dead, or smelly. The big field that slopes down from where someone has planted thousands of daffodils was a picture in the evening sun, brown folds smoothly laid out along the hillside as neatly as if they had been combed. The sun was low behind the hedgerow and trees creating pointed shadows across the land that could have been painted, or cut out from brown earth-coloured fabric and pasted against the lighter soil. Walking back I watched a hare dash across the field behind my house, and found the cause of the scare - two riders ambling along the grassy edge, their voices reaching me clear as a bell. I followed two dizzy pheasants, a husband and wife, who scuttled just ahead of me trying to decide where to go. He made many suggestions, important and puffed up, but she rejected them all until she found just the right escape route underneath a hedge and he had no choice but to follow, a little deflated I thought.

Here's my garden. It was too late to take a photo of the beds I've now filled with plants, but I'll do it tomorrow. It really is a sight for sore eyes.