Tender Gut....Wild Garlic...and Being Patient

 After a bad night I wake to rain and the heifers lying down in a  huddle in the field.

The gang of starlings is still dominating the bird station...

but I'm glad to see a little sparrow holding his own.

I nurse a tender gut all day... I can't face eating  anything like the salads 

and spring onion tart I made for my dear cousin on Saturday.

I de-frost my sister's velvet smooth yellow squash soup instead which she made when I was laid low and I have that instead 

when I come back from wandering the streets of Exeter.....shopping for summer shoes and tops....and losing the will to live. No shoes, and I need to take back two of the three tops.

This evening it stops raining and the light flooding through steely clouds brings  the garden to life.

I walk along the bank of my stream  - pale bronze new leaves adorning the oak tree - and I'm thrilled to discover

long swathes of wild garlic in flower. A dear friend had offered for me to go and pick the wild garlic on the banks of her stream but

now I won't need to. Robin would have been so happy to have wild garlic in the garden ...he would have been out there picking it by the handful..... and eating the leaves along the way.

It's good to have the grass cut...except where the daffodils are planted even though their flowers are dead...you have to wait 6 weeks my gardener says. And longer for the bluebells.

The small apple tree  by the greenhouse is coming into blossom but

I don't think it will have many apples as it has a horrid canker disease which I don't know what to do about - if anything.

This gorgeous flowering hawthorn/blackthorn( iPhone photo) towering at the front gate is at risk of being severely cut back by Western Power as it is growing across some telephone lines. I'm glad I've got several more in the back garden.

The day sweeps  me along and I suddenly find it's 9pm....more soup and rice crackers.. a hot water bottle for my tummy.....and I notice that it's the first day of May....and  the house plans are still on hold, incomplete, not ready for planning application yet.

 I want it all to be done and dusted by the end of the year - the builders long gone at least. But it looks like that may not be the case now.

So I may need to re-frame my pictures of how I want it to be.

Maybe it'll happen when everything is in alignment...when it's all flowing...not being jammed into my  preferred time frame with a crowbar.

Being patient is a new practice for me.