Thought for today:
" 'A year from now, Becky,' my son William once said to his sister, 'dad will probably wish that he started cutting the lawn today!'
All of my adult life I have loved gardening. I have been one of many nature enthusiasts who have wallowed in hourly pleasure watching the flowers grow taller and ever more beautiful under my tender care. On nights when frost has tended to bite, I have never slept soundly in my own bed until I have protected those delicate plants in theirs.
Once I went out into the garden on a nice warm day, nothing would induce me back inside the house until the sun went down. The taste of tea and cucumber sandwiches in the garden on a sunny afternoon will never be surpassed in my book. I often found gardening to be a saving grace when I wanted to escape the rest of the world, and there was even a time that I could name every plant in the garden that I ever grew.
I was fortunate over the years to have many gardening friends to provide me with advice. The television presenter of 'Gardeners World', the late Geoffrey Smith, was a close friend of mine for over twenty years. After I retired from my work as a Probation Officer, Geoffrey would often visit and we would have lunch out in a nearby pub before spending a few hours in my garden. He was one of the most gentlest men I ever knew and when he smelled a rose or held a petal or examined a plant leaf in the garden, he would treat the plant as tenderly as I'm sure he ever held a child. In fact, plants were his children, come to think of it!
Once, after telling me that his wife had bought him a field as a birthday present, Geoffrey said he spent the next few years turning it into a wild meadow. Until then, I'd always shown pride in the short-back-and-sides cut that I twice weekly gave my immaculate, green lawn. Indeed, it was in the area of grass where Geoffrey's horticultural influence came most to bear on me. Geoffrey had, very early on in his life, been brought around to appreciating the natural features of nature and eventually came to see the traditional cutting of grass as being unnatural; particularly in land border areas. I still recall him telling me that, 'Everyone in the world had a garden to admire which lies not only within their house boundary, but also over their garden wall.' Geoffrey said that whenever he landscaped a garden, he always included the neighbour's garden in his range of vision and the surrounding landscape.
My children must have considered me bonkers when I stopped cutting the lawn in a two-yard's border surrounding my garden; leaving its grass to grow naturally and attract wild life into it. I just couldn't believe how much wildlife this small action attracted over the coming seasons. I had decided on this plan without telling William and Becky and by the time the grass started growing, they each thought that I'd started losing my mind....as well as their balls." William Forde: June 5th, 2016.
" 'A year from now, Becky,' my son William once said to his sister, 'dad will probably wish that he started cutting the lawn today!'
All of my adult life I have loved gardening. I have been one of many nature enthusiasts who have wallowed in hourly pleasure watching the flowers grow taller and ever more beautiful under my tender care. On nights when frost has tended to bite, I have never slept soundly in my own bed until I have protected those delicate plants in theirs.
Once I went out into the garden on a nice warm day, nothing would induce me back inside the house until the sun went down. The taste of tea and cucumber sandwiches in the garden on a sunny afternoon will never be surpassed in my book. I often found gardening to be a saving grace when I wanted to escape the rest of the world, and there was even a time that I could name every plant in the garden that I ever grew.
I was fortunate over the years to have many gardening friends to provide me with advice. The television presenter of 'Gardeners World', the late Geoffrey Smith, was a close friend of mine for over twenty years. After I retired from my work as a Probation Officer, Geoffrey would often visit and we would have lunch out in a nearby pub before spending a few hours in my garden. He was one of the most gentlest men I ever knew and when he smelled a rose or held a petal or examined a plant leaf in the garden, he would treat the plant as tenderly as I'm sure he ever held a child. In fact, plants were his children, come to think of it!
Once, after telling me that his wife had bought him a field as a birthday present, Geoffrey said he spent the next few years turning it into a wild meadow. Until then, I'd always shown pride in the short-back-and-sides cut that I twice weekly gave my immaculate, green lawn. Indeed, it was in the area of grass where Geoffrey's horticultural influence came most to bear on me. Geoffrey had, very early on in his life, been brought around to appreciating the natural features of nature and eventually came to see the traditional cutting of grass as being unnatural; particularly in land border areas. I still recall him telling me that, 'Everyone in the world had a garden to admire which lies not only within their house boundary, but also over their garden wall.' Geoffrey said that whenever he landscaped a garden, he always included the neighbour's garden in his range of vision and the surrounding landscape.
My children must have considered me bonkers when I stopped cutting the lawn in a two-yard's border surrounding my garden; leaving its grass to grow naturally and attract wild life into it. I just couldn't believe how much wildlife this small action attracted over the coming seasons. I had decided on this plan without telling William and Becky and by the time the grass started growing, they each thought that I'd started losing my mind....as well as their balls." William Forde: June 5th, 2016.
