The Garden and other things

The more it looks like this will be our last summer here, the more time I want to spend in the garden, with its brambles and blue butterflies and rampaging honeysuckle. The smell is just heavenly, it permeates everything until you leave it behind at the top of the garden and go into the little grove. There's a sharp acrid pong up there; foxes, used to being undisturbed. The pond is overgrown with reeds, it's full of fine fat frogs.

I sit under the trees, it's so crazy wild pretty. The sapling I rescued from a box of water sedge, which was identified for me as an ash tree, turned out to be an alder. It's growing strong. Mythologically it's aligned to Bran the Blessed, to ravens and the Tower of London, to Wales and Venice, Chronos and Orpheus. My earlier plans to plant it in a friend's pasture were all wrong, it will flourish best on the banks of a river. Not an issue yet, as it is still small enough to become a fine salad for a family of rabbits, but in a couple of years, I have a thought or two on where it would grow well.

Thanks to my dear larians I will be spending the week of my 50th birthday in Granada, seeing my mum. She's in her 70s now. It makes me feel strange, I just want to tell her everything that has happened, but I don't think it would be good for her, mentally or emotionally. So instead, I'm going to see if we can visit all those places she is always telling me about; the tomb of Isabella Du Solis, the Seat of the Moor, the Last Sigh of the Moor, I'll see if I can get her to accompany me to Sacramonte (a place she generally eschews due to her misgivings about gypsies) She'll shake her head at my fat fingers and then feed me churros and chocolate every morning, after which she'll take me to the cafe bar Porras for tapas each afternoon. The family will want me to go out to the villa; new clothes, or at least a new bikini will be needed. We'll see the Alhambra and wander along the Darro and through the Albayzin again. I'll be staying at a hotel in the middle of Granada,which will give me some precious me-time. Then I will come home for the weekend, and my love and I will celebrate together.

My whole life is changing. It is beautiful but strange. I am very lucky to have this man to share it with me.

Did you know you can suck pollen/honey/whatever it is is out of honeysuckle flowers? a bit like acacia flowers only much less, a tiny jolt of sweetness. I like it, but don't do it very much. One small rush for me, a big deal for a bee.