Long Mizzle Garden

 Hello m' thirsty willows,   'Blossom and brick' ... I like how those words collide together. One sits stubbornly steady and reliable... the other is fleeting, fragile. Placed side by side for years upon years, they guard one another and share their little quirks. Would they greatly miss each other? Would they prefer to simultaneously fall into ruin? Each spring, when the blossom blooms, against a backdrop of bricks, it feels like anything and everything is possible.    Sackville Gardens by the Gay Village, Manchester City Centre (back in 2007) Where once a northern working men's club stood, lay the remains of my great grandparents house. As I kid I'd pass it on the way to school and skirt along its foundations. I knew which room was which. You see my dad had pointed them out to me, so I could visualise the chairs around the kitchen hearth, tea on the hob, a pie cooking. This post does not follow that family line; all the historical paperwork hints at heartache and...

 Hello m' dry Aprils, How are you doing? I shall keep my Long Mizzle correspondence relatively short and sweet this week. Less talking, more cuppa drinking, that's the way. I am worryingly behind on cuppa drinking and biscuit dunking. So have you got your cuppa? Brill. Let's see how the garden's growing today -  Forget-me-nots, 'Spring Green' tulips and apple blossom   Tree Echium Flowers Photinia 'Red Robin' in flower Forget-me-nots and Fennel Narcissus 'Rose of May' - beautifully scented! 'Green Wave' Parrot' Tulip Narcissus 'Smooth Sails' Last Friday I received a cardboard box through the post from Halls of Heddon, filled with little dahlia plugs. I loved the way they were wrapped in paper and sphagnum moss, as opposed to nasty plastic. The next day I potted them up and popped them on a window ledge. All of them perked up pretty quickly. Later on today, they will be graduating to the greenhouse.   What of the dahlia tubers ...

 Hello m' ansums, "Why have you brought us to a pit!!!" cackled my eldest daughter, when she saw the sign for 'Gwennap Pit'. "Why not?" I retorted. She wanted a mystery road tour and this was our second scheduled stop (the first being a play park with zip wire). With UK lockdown easing, the incoming visitors can have the beaches, buckets of ice-cream and waiting mutant seagulls . Maybe only walkers, Poldark lovers and the odd weirdo know of the joy of pits. Busveal Chapel, built 1836 Gwennap Pit is a funny old place. We drove through steeply climbing narrow lanes, closely edged with dry stone walls and fields full of horses and gypsy caravans. An unassuming wooden sign post initially marks the spot, which could be easily missed.   This welcome sign reads 'for GOD is here', not 'for COD is here' as I misread. There's a metal entrance gate by the small whitewashed chapel. A path with some World Heritage  information boards leads to ste...