Not apparent in this picture of my house is the big crack over the front door after a passing trucker lost control and plowed into the front (before I bought it). Hence the covering vine.

Not just car traffic but foot traffic too, (usually inebriated). Some of it inclined to vandelism (hence a [...]

Ask these guys who are preparing to put all these services back up after a high wind collided with my vine into which the lines were carefully escounced. This involved ladders, clippers, hardhats, yellow tape, barriers and amused passersby.

Here’s my vine, formidable and all pink in the sunrise. It was being [...]

Here’s the chairless front of my house. Thank heavens I wasn’t testing the waters with the Reading Frog Garden Sculpture which is safely inside.
These particular missing lawn chairs were more or less bait. Old and prone to collapsing, no writing on them, only someone desperate and deluded would want them. They [...]

“IT’S A READING FROG!” The first person to see the Rob O’Dare sculpture in my garden said. “OMG, I LOVE it! Who IS this guy?”
He’s English, I told her and yesterday became a Canadian citizen.
She examined the sculpture more closely. “He’s a welder,” she explained, “working with iron. [...]

Rob O’Dare and his friend, teacher/librarian Yvonne came by on Monday. Rob had just become a Canadian citizen. He had also made me an iron sculpture particularly appropriate for a former bookshop garden.
I have some book pages I may add to the one the creature seems to be contentedly [...]

Never have the flowers been so bright and tall – hollyhocks, lilies, chicory, daisies, black-eyed susans, scarlet bergamont. With fewer beer cans in the middle and not as much trampling as usual for the front garden. Fingers crossed.

My front garden at the end of April is above

Just over a month later, it looks like this! Yes, I know how it works but if ever there was proof of magic in the world – here it is. All those whistles and skyrockets, buried underground, just waiting. Who wouldn’t want to find [...]

Someone held a cigarette lighter up to this particular renku in my spring garden on the corner. As a form of criticism, it leaves a lot to be desired. Was it this verse on the front, sent me by Sandra Stephenson as an academic offshoot of rengu or this one I love on [...]

Going to try and photograph this patch of ground at least every two weeks till you can see the poppies swaying on their stems. Right now these are their sawtoothed leaves. They were under a heavy frost on the weekend.

Closer look at the poppy leaves. They are spreading, thank [...]