Long Mizzle Garden

 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' furry antlers, I wonder what the artist Frida Kahlo would have made of a national lockdown. With her stern mono brow stare, nationalistic folk dress and cigar smoking attire, she looked to be a woman who wouldn't have liked being told what to do. However, Frida was no stranger to confinement. Having a crippled right leg from contracting polio as a child, she reached her teens only to have her spine, ribs and pelvis crushed in a bus accident, resulting in years of operations, multiple miscarriages and chronic pain. Henry Ford Hospital (1932), The Two Fridas (1939), The Broken Column (1944), The Little Deer (1946) Detailed paintings can be viewed at www.fridakahlo.org   Turning away from her previous career choice of medicine, Frida started painting. And what did she choose to paint in her constant bed of non-convalescence? The subject matter closest at hand - herself.  Only one look at some of her self-portraits exposes the true frustration, heartbreak and rea...