Garden Summary 2010 to 2011

2010  -  The first few months here were quite different in the garden, or maybe I was.

I was aware of the energies of my garden in a very strong way, and felt the life force of the land surging through my body.  The only time I felt well was when I was out in the garden, and it seemed as though the unseen world of nature was assisting me in some way.

Intuitively I also felt that the spirit of the garden was celebrating my arrival and was glad I was taking over its maintenance.

There was also much non-verbal communication going on with the birds and local animals, and I found myself in a surreal and magical 4th dimensional world.  Birds would also come and visit me at the house by hovering outside my kitchen window.  The local cats stayed out of my garden when I made it clear, telepathically, that they couldn't take a short cut through it.  

Clearing the ivy was the main task when I first moved in.  About 50 sacks of it at least.

I eventually hired a gardener to remove the ivy I couldn't reach at the top of the high retaining wall because I've no head for heights going up ladders.  I developed an intense dislike of ivy, especially when my skin started to react to it by breaking out in an itchy rash.  I wore gardening gloves too, but there were always exposed parts on my wrists and arms and that rash lasted months as nothing seemed to soothe it.  

2011  -  Less aware of the energies of the garden as time went on, or maybe I just became used to it so it felt less intense.  Walking up the two flights of stone steps to my back garden was becoming exhausting, especially when carrying water up in buckets during the drought of Spring 2011.  There is no outside tap and the way the garden is laid out in terraces with a high wall outside my back door makes it difficult to even use a hose.  Usually there is enough rainfall to not need one.

My neighbour cut down the dead tree (killed by the ivy) on the terrace, plus a few ash saplings growing on the path.  As I live in a Conservation Area I had to get permission from the local council to fell the more mature ash trees at the end of the garden and a huge holly tree, which was blocking the light on one of the raised beds by the deck. 

I have two years to sort that work out before the permission expires.

Both my neighbours moved out this year.  

Don't know who it was, but somebody decided to build a barricade of logs along the boundary between the trees at the end of the garden, which is an eyesore.  There was only a small overgrown gap at the end of my garden because that strip of land at the end of next doors garden once belonged to the previous owner of my house, who had since sold it back to my neighbour who rents that house out and doesn't live there.

This was the first time that the energies didn't feel good in my garden as, feeling into it, I could sense some hostility there. It felt like an aggressive act, especially as the logs used to create said barricade had been taken from my own log pile, which had been left in a mess.  I was shocked that someone would trespass on my sacred piece of land and that a boundary that affects both of us would be disfigured in this way without mentioning anything to me.  Not knowing who was responsible doesn't help either.

I never went out in the garden again after that, didn't put the garden to bed for the winter, and didn't take a tour of the garden until March 2012.  I just had a feeling of dread and kept putting it off.  Recently I had bought a new puppy, so went out with him for the first time in 2012 to look at the garden after the winter months.

The strong winds had blown the roofing felt off the summerhouse, and had broken two parts of the low fence on the other (west) side of the garden, the trellis by the deck was also completely destroyed.  And I found a small black backpack at the end of the garden near the opening where the log barricade had been put up.  I don't remember seeing it there before, but I suppose I should have kept it as evidence.  It had an empty bottle of Lynx aftershave inside.

That end of the garden was going to be my magical woodland glade garden, but it felt already desecrated by some patriarchal force that uses cheap aftershave.  I can plant some bushes that have thorns and prickles to fill in all the gaps in my boundaries, which I'll have to do anyway to make it a 'stock-proof boundary' so that my dog can be let loose out there rather than tethered to a long lead.


This year 2012, the priority jobs are the hard landscaping, mending of stone walls and making the boundaries more private and secure with hedge plants.