My Dad and the world around us.

As you know I have been popping back and forth helping Dad with his garden. It is only being around there that makes me see things more clearly. We complain so much about trivia. My Dad is not someone who feels sorry for himself. He accepts what life has dished out and gets on with it. Dad is losing his sight and is deaf. He is diabetic and has a heart condition. He can't see the things that I see clearly or hear those special things that come infrequently but make life more meaningful.

Yesterday morning I heard a friend, the Cuckoo, what a joyous reunion. She heralds summer here. She called to me, it was 6 a.m. and the rest of the world was quiet, just her and me. Beautiful. In the afternoon, I heard the skylark for the first time. This bird moves me to tears, don't ask me why, she just does. I stood in the garden and could see the pin prick in the sky. BUT her song, she rises several hundred feet vertically in hovering flight, sustaining her clear warbling song for several minutes at a time. Then she will sink down, singing all the while, until she touches the ground. Can it get any better?

Mum and Dad gave me this poem, it reminded them of me. To all of you, like me, who garden in all weather I dedicate this poem.

The Diehards by Ruth Pitter

We go, in winters biting wind,

On many a short lived winter day,

With aching back but willing mind,

To dig and double dig the clay.

All in Novembers soaking mist,

We stand and prune the naked tree

While all our love and interest

Seem quenched in blue nose misery.

We go in withering July

To ply the hard incessant hoe

Panting beneath the brazen sky

We sweat and grumble but we go.

We go to plead with grudging men

And think it is a bit of luck

When we can wangle now and then

A load or two of farmyard muck.

What do we look for as reward

Some little sounds, and scents, and scenes

A small hand darting strawberry-ward

A womans apron full of greens.

A busy neighbour forced to stay

By sight and smell of wallflower bed

The plum trees on an autumn day

Yellow, violet and red.

Tired people sitting on the grass

Lulled by the bee, drugged by the rose

While all the little winds that pass

Tell them the honeysuckle blows.

The sense that we have brought to birth

Out of the cold and heavy soil

These blessed fruits and flowers of earth

Is large reward for all our toil.

Have a fab weekend..............and happy gardening.