As a small child I spent time with my grandmother in her garden and pleasant memories were planted that have affected my experience of the nature and scope of the earth across the many years since.
Playing in the garden with my grandson – and it ought to be play: gardens are not meant to be taken too seriously – gives me great joy now. This is his garden (which he graciously shares with his parents) and water is an important feature. He’s experimenting with what happens when you mash water in a pail with a rake (face gets wet!) and then we paint with water on the bricks using a broom for a brush (now you see the designs; now you don’t) and then he dumps a bucket of water and stamps in it before all the puddles run away (ooops, gramma thought he had his boots on).
Back in my garden: while persuading the grass to release its hold next to the fence where I wanted to plant scarlet runner beans and cleome (these remind me so much of southern Ontario and my hometown, St. Thomas) I uncovered these hazelnuts. Aha. One of the storage places of the squirrel who stripped the two hazelnut trees last year. Well, thanks for my getting at least a teeny bit of the harvest……
……or so I thought until I gleefully carried the hazelnuts indoors, found the nutcracker (I also use it to open my tubes of paint so discovering its whereabouts can provide a challenge) and……
totally empty. They looked such nice plump nuts, too. It seems the kernels must have faded away across the winter; maybe the casual storage conditions were unsuitable. I hope squirrel fared better with his stored meals across what was a harsh winter.
Earthworms are such a delightful treasure to unearth in the garden. They tell me the soil is workable and getting more so as they go about their business. They always provide one of those mixed feeling occasions in life as I see a worm disappear down the throat of a sleek robin on the grass at dawn being the "early bird…..worm" scenario.
This one was carefully put back into the soft earth once the photo shoot was over.