Here we go, we are now in December and Winter is knocking at the
windows asking to get started. We have had a few frosts now and the pond
has started to ice over. Yes the cold is coming and next week is set to
be really quite cold, there is talk of pre-Christmas snow.
I was having one of those flippant, glib twitter conversations the
other day that started out talking about tiny trolls and turned into a
comparison of my garden and Mordor (by me I hasten to add). The
conversation wandered into hobbit houses and Tolkien-gardening and trailed
away; but the thought stayed with me, a seed had been set.
I think many people know I am a bit of a a Doctor Who fan, in fact
quite nerdy in general, I was going to say that before Doctor Who there was
Tolkien, but actually I started watching Doctor Who from before I can remember,
but I do remember reading the Hobbit when I was about seven years old. I then moved on to The Lord of the Rings a
couple of years later and then reading just about anything else I could find by
him including Leaf by Niggle a short but beautifully crafted story and one I
still love. I am not going to go
into the plot as it is a short story so any plot hints would be pretty much the
whole tale, needless to say it involves a leaf, trees and a love of nature.
Back to the point though, in Winter my garden loses much of its
colour, it freezes solid for days on end and becomes pretty inhospitable.
Well, compared to how it is in the summer it does anyway. This is largely (no, totally) my choice. I do not have a large amount of evergreens in
my garden. Very few in fact, in fact as
I think about it I can think of one deliberate shrub and one refusing to be
killed laurel. Oh and the garrya, I keep
forgetting about the garrya, and the
mahonia, I forgot about that too, so actually more evergreens than I realise
but still not that many. I rely very
much on the Spring flowers to bring the colour back to the garden and I rather
like this deliberate die-back and rebirth of the garden every year. I know we are all supposed to aim for
all-round colour, but I like the change.
It does mean I embrace every tiny bit of colour I have though, I
treasure it like it is going out of style (which, in Winter, it is).
On good days I skip around the garden pretending it is Lothlorien
or Rivendell and on less good days I stomp around doing a fair impression of an
Orc. Though even on the less good days after initial Orc-impressions I quickly settle down to Lothlorien skipping as the garden can calm the worst of moods.
Quite frequently I can be found standing in the middle of the garden doing the pocket-patting dance as I search for which pocket I put my garden-knife in often muttering 'what has she got in her pocketsesss'. Yet strangely the one bit of the garden named from a book is not from Tolkien at all, but from C S Lewis and the Narnia books, my beloved Dancing Lawn. Maybe I should have Tolkien-themed area, I shall have to give this some thought. It will not be a hobbit-hole I promise you that, it is more likely to be a Tom Bombadil reference. I shall ponder this, names always follow the place as the place happens first and tells me its name. Well, unless I| think of a good name first of course.....
Quite frequently I can be found standing in the middle of the garden doing the pocket-patting dance as I search for which pocket I put my garden-knife in often muttering 'what has she got in her pocketsesss'. Yet strangely the one bit of the garden named from a book is not from Tolkien at all, but from C S Lewis and the Narnia books, my beloved Dancing Lawn. Maybe I should have Tolkien-themed area, I shall have to give this some thought. It will not be a hobbit-hole I promise you that, it is more likely to be a Tom Bombadil reference. I shall ponder this, names always follow the place as the place happens first and tells me its name. Well, unless I| think of a good name first of course.....
Have you got one of those Tolkein Willow trees that consum people.?
ReplyDeleteReally enjoy the throught of gardens resting really miss defined seasons, perhaps a cane fruit patch after 'Goldenberry'? look forward to hearing what how it evolves
ReplyDelete*chortle*
ReplyDelete