The Lost Gardens of Eric

When we bought our house the garden was a veritable jungle, pretty much untouched for ten years. The original lean-to greenhouse was completely hidden by a mat of ivy.

I finally got round to replacing it - it is half way up a chalk cliff - in the style that it had been built by Eric - the man who originally 'laid out' the gardens. I recyled his glass window panes and used as much bodged together timber as I could lay my hands on - part of the mainmast of the 1950s yacht Egretta that ran aground near here a few years back and was a write-off and other bits of driftwood hauled backed under the cliffs. It is a compromise in so many ways and lies in deep shade in the early morning and from mid afternoon onwards loses the sun. But its the best we have.

I spent some of the morning potting up tomato plants and pricking out celeriac seedlings and then had to bang some bits of wood together to make a new shelf for all the seedlings - finally finally one of the squash seed is coming up although still nothing from the zukes and cukes.

The cold weather is holding everything back and I'm hoping that old standards like the beetroot and parsnips will not need resowing.

Later I took off my shirt in the full sun and set about repairing some of the minor terracing I have done on our very steep banks. Most of the branches I used for this fives years ago have now pretty much rotted out. Except for the yew branches which are still amazingly strong.

Later we went for a walk around the circuit and learnt that a body had been found at the bottom of the cliffs. Police and coastguards were on the scene and the chopper was very busy. It was lively on the coast path and apparently people had been sat at the cliff edge with their feet dangling over taking selfies as the grim recovery was under way.

Many thanks for all the lovely recent comments.Sorry I have not been reciprocating lately but will  do so soon.

PS I had no idea this was my 500th blip. Thank you all for being such a nice community.