Midsummer Pandebrexit -- by Susan Price

 

No cultivated rose is more beautiful. And the bees and hoverflies go mad for these. They patrol up and down the length of fence the rose grows on from morning until late in the evening. The bees fly away with bright yellow, bulging knee sacks. Somewhere not too far away, honey-stores are being crammed full.

A tour round my (tiny) garden. Right outside the kitchen door is a bonsai cherry (bonsai meaning 'grown in a pot' rather than small.)  It is hung with ripening cherries which, I hope, will actually ripen this year instead of falling off. So far, it's looking good. Not exactly a bumper crop but I hope to get a handful of cherries at least. (We moved the cherry to a more sheltered spot this year, which is one advantage of having your orchard in pots.)

To the other side of the door are the lilies. Also in a pot. These Asiatic lilies are great but I prefer the taller, fragrant Oriental lilies which are still to come.

 

 

 

The bench is a good place to sit -- except when the seagulls fly over and drop their load. (I had to abandon drink and go in and shower after one fly-by attack.) The tree in the foreground is the bonsai cherry. And somewhere in front of the bench, hidden in all that greenery, is a pond where the sparrows and blackbirds come to drink and bathe.

In and around the pool grow enormous buttercups -- I think they're called 'king-cups.'

Walk along the path between the pond and the raised beds and follow the curve around the bonsai plum and you come to white wall where the peas and beans grow.

 

The rescue plum has hardly any plums this year, but it almost broke its branches last year, so it's having a rest.

Duck past the plum and the mexican daisies come into view. They grow by the first of the steps that climb up my steep garden and they always seem to be shouting, 'Hurrah!'

Climb up the steps, past the bonsai apple and pear -- apples and pears on the garden stairs! I hadn't realised that.

There's a miniarette cherry and pear against the wall too: and a butterfly bush, delphiniums, sweet peas, geraniums, all alive with bees, hoverflies and other pollinators... but we're going on up, past the magnolia (did you know magnolia were alive when the dinosaurs were, before bees, and so are pollinated by beetles?) to the compost heap. I do like the compost heap, It teems with life. Dig a trowel in and turn it -- there are worms like anacondas in there. And spiders and wood-lice, slugs, snails, millipedes, centipedes and many beetles I could not begin to name. Sometimes the wood-mouse too.

I'm toying the idea of making a compost heap a character in a story.

Above the compost heap, on the highest level of my garden, is 'the wood.'

It's in the running for the tiniest wood in the world but it has a birch, a dogwood, a holly, a crab-apple, a rowan and many brambles and lush, overgrown ferns. In spring there are primroses, bluebells and wood anenomes -- which my Dad called 'wind flowers.' A translation of their latin name, I suppose. More wild roses dangle down from the privet hedge at the back.

I planted some sweet woodruff, which used to be used as a 'strewing herb' for floors. Now it's taking over. Stoop down and ruffle it and there's a faint, sweet scent, a little like new-mown hay.

 

 

 

 

 

At the back there's a spot of blue which is a himalayan poppy.

I first saw these blue poppies at the Scottish writing centre, Moniack Mhor. I love blue flowers. Had to have one.

 

Finally, one has deigned to flower in my garden. When the sunlight shines through the blue petals...

 

Other poppies are available.

 

My garden, small though it is, helps me remember that Homo stultus (Stupid Mankind) are belated newcomers to this world and around and behind and below stultus' bellowing and stumbling is a world that knows nothing and cares nothing about all the things troubling us. Even if we succeed, stultus-like, in blowing ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust, the indestructable bugs and microbes will simply carry on and begin evolution again. The next time round, hopefully, they'll make sure stultus stays in the trees.

 

 

Susan Price won the Carnegie medal for 'The Ghost Drum' and the Guardian Fiction prize for 'The Sterkarm Handshake.'

Find out more at her website