O bid my anxious thoughts disappear

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Dear Monty,

I'm not sure you really need to know this, but the bees have gone, they were successfully relocated to a new hive somewhere nearer the sea. I regard this as a victory in the bid to care for the world a bit more. This is a small gesture I know, but I was so grateful to the members of Swansea and District Beekeepers' Society. I did have to destroy the few remaining stragglers however, because they were gathered around the chimney flue, and the builders would not go near them.

They honey was almost clear and beautifully sweet, the comb dropped down three feet into the old flue and it took great effort to remove it along with the colony. I had a look down the flue, and despite being surrounded by the bees and unprotected, I was not stung. I have great respect for bees, and am no longer afraid of them.



I am reading 'A French Garden Journey' and enjoying it very much, as much as my most favourite book based around the subject of gardens  'The Bad Tempered Gardener' by Anne Wareham. Sitting in the garden in this glorious warmth makes the serotonin flow, and I become fanciful and imagine that this mini paradise is influenced by my visits to France.....but then I read some reviews on www.thinkingardens.co.uk and I become anxious about my garden. It has a jumble of plants with things in the wrong places - which are eventually moved. It would be thought of as dull and lacking in colour too because it is in its summer lull, but I love it even now.




My garden is my garden , I love it and was encouraged by reading in 'A French Garden Journey' about La Louve:

 ' Yet it is small, the planting contains little of horticultural, let alone botanical interest, there is a very muted palette - hardly any flowers, and it was created with almost wilful ignorance and neglect of basic horticultural wisdom. Thank God. '

My garden is a plodders garden, it is made (as long as I am alive) by intuition and a little knowledge (very little). I suppose as an artist I do things more by feel than by science.




The garden on 17/7/13 was subtle and beautiful in the simplest of ways. Self seeding combinations seem to work sometimes with a repetition of the same colour providing a rhythm all accidental and more glorious for it.







Vive La France!

Paul.



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