as it looked on May 2nd 2022
I’ve finally got round to fixing the bench in our front yard. It’s made of decking planks supported on 3 brick pillars. It’s comfortable: you can lean back and rest your back on he windowsill. I built it ten years ago, and the pillars have periodically broken as you see. There was nothing wrong with the cement or the bricklaying, but I failed to make allowance for the wood buckling from rainfall, and contracting in winter. So I loosened the screws and passed them through large washers so as to allow for movement. You’ll see the same idea in concrete roads, or tarmacked roads passing across wide-span bridges. Every few yards there’s a gap, filled with a flexible mastic.
You can see how tiny the front yard is: just room enough for an array of bins—general rubbish and recycling. There’s a green bin for garden rubbish, but we don’t have the space, so we share it with our neighbour Mohammed and his family. There’s one little gate for both workers’ cottages.
I try to fill the yard with flowers. You’ll see an array of containers along the low brick wall which separates our property from the narrow pavement—impassible when the bins our out for emptying. I’ve got several planters: from left to right they’re for some pretty hybrid daffodils (from our nearby LIDL); more of the same surrounded by sweet peas; and then fuchsias and nemesia in the grey pots.
The pillars are made from blue-black engineering bricks, impervious to water and used in the tall wide bridges built by the Victorians in the Age of Steam. They merely need repointing every 20 years or so. Mine as you see are left rough, not pointed at all. On top is an ordinary red house brick.
all this effort was wasted because I’d used quick-drying cement, which isn’t suitable for laying bricks. I wasn’t fast enough, anyway
So I bought a ready-made bench, it has served us well till now, with an annual dose of wood preservative.
as it looks today
For my birthday in early March some years ago, my daughter sent me a beautiful Bonsai tree, a Chinese elm. I kept it on a shelf indoors, following the instructions, keeping it fed, watered and pruned according to instructions
In order to best display it to passers-by, I placed it on the window sill. We went to Jamaica for a few days, came back to discover it had died of thirst. I’d forgotten that unlike a grown-up tree in the wild, its roots didn’t grow deep enough to survive a season’s drought.
When we returned, it was past saving. In honour to my daughter I’ve tried ever since to grow another, without success.
Then one day last November I picked up a horse chestnut seed in the park. its shiny seed had cracked and was starting to fall off, aided by a mould, as in the picture opposite.
In the last three weeks it’s grown another inch in height and the leaves have further developed. It’s grown a lot faster than this site suggests. Unlike the Sweet Chestnut, it’s poisonous. But see this site for its medical uses.I was interested to discover this: Bach Original Flower Remedies White Chestnut is a natural flower remedy designed for those who cannot prevent thoughts, ideas, arguments which they do not desire from entering their minds. Thoughts which worry and will remain, or if for a time thrown out, will return.
a wayfarer’s notes 