Today is a sparkling, glittering sea day as an early cold front brings in a heavy swell, lumpy and bumpy, reflecting the sunlight in every direction. The sound is muted as a late southeaster carries it offshore, but the waves will be big at Outers at high tide and the surfers are already gathering in anticipation. Gentle rains have fallen and no doubt we will have more as the Easter weekend approaches. It is traditional to have rain over Easter, as this is when most people are camping!
It's time to chop back summer's growth on the trees and shrubs, pull out the last of the annuals and prepare the garden for the next season. It's hard going to saw off little branches, lop and chop, then pack into bags to be taken to the compost dump, but it has to be done if we are not to live in a jungle of tangled under- and overgrowth. Most plants prosper from a pruning and I would be happy to just do that and have a lackey follow me round to clean up after me, but no such luck! I recall on a visit to the Alhambra we watched the gardeners - about six of them, one to clip the hedge, the next to sweep or rake into a pile, another to pick it up, one to carry the bag - and saw the connection between labour created for employment and gardening for the love of it. I would be happy to be the clipper at the Alhambra or the one driving the little cart carrying the equipment, but nothing in between.
Of course, Cleo is keen to help and keeps leaping into the bag to rearrange it, running off to chew on a leaf from time to time. It's exhausting stuff being a puppy in a big garden with so many things to do; bark at the cats, chase a dove, bark even more fiercely at the spade and the wheelbarrow, flop down under the lemon tree for a rest, then rush round madly and finish off with digging a big hole!
It's the little things.
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