Journal

We didn't buy a house . . .

11 years ago we came to view Sunnyside.

We were fleeing from a house bedeviled with boundary disputes which had come to feel unsafe.

We were looking for somewhere to settle with land and possibilities. We were dreaming of an idyll.

We spent about 20 minutes in the house - a 1980s bungalow with tiny rooms and aluminium windows - which was just about as far from our dream house as it was possible to be.

Then we spent almost 2 hours in the bluebell wood beneath the house, walking down towards the Altquhir burn which runs through the bottom of the garden.

We didn't buy a house that day, we bought a wood of shimmering blue.

Then it all slipped away.

A couple of years ago several months of heavy rain turned the fields behind the house into a slurry like mix and one stormy night they slipped. The fields, with about 40 trees clinging on, tumbled down into the raging river and were swept away. The bluebells were covered with a couple of feet of wet clay.

Last year they struggled, we couldn't get down to the river as the ground was like quicksand underfoot, but we could see that there were not many bluebells. I cried.

But this year they have returned - the wood may have be half the size but the bluebells are back carpeting everything in a shimmering haze.

Alder seedlings are sprouting - within my lifetime it will all be back, a multi layed natural wood.

Garden Transformation - May

Here we are, right at the beginning of the garden transformation with some really rubbish discoveries on the plot. I will start with the good bits though (as befits a terminal optimist).

This week in my garden has all been about tulips.

In the border by the front door - along with the herb bed the only part that I personally gardened last year - all the orange and pink tulips have come out, sparking off the purple self sown honesty

Every day the zingingly bright yet subtle colours lift my heart. I am so pleased with how it is looking - the delphinium and paeony foliage working really well with the slight bronze back tones of the flowers.

It is just as well that I am happy with the front garden - for my other job this week has been digging up and burning the tulips in the back garden as they have succumbed to the nasty fungal disease tulip fire Botrytis tulipae.

This isn't the quirky virus that causes pretty stripes in your blooms - it is a nasty, nasty fungus that twists and discolours the leaves and makes the petals look as though they have the pox.

I feel terrible - if feels as though I have neglected all those poor plants - for now I know that we cavalierly planted new bulbs into ground that must have already been infected. I noticed that the leaves turned to straw as the flowers went over but dismissed it as a consequence of a hot summer.

It must have been the early signs and I should have burned all the infected bulbs at that point - instead all the fungal spores spread on the wind - they love it hot and humid - and once in the new beds they set up home in the brand new bulbs.

Now I must eradicate all tulips from the back garden for the next 5 years - and pray that the wind doesn't blow the spores round the house and into the front.

For the next 5 years I shall have to satisfy my tulip fever with masses of pots.