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Rock garden rebuilding
Wherever you dig in our garden, you most probably hit a stone. There are so many of them hidden beneath the surface that after each building work in the garden we get a new heap of stones of all sizes. What can you do with all of them? You can either use them or throw them away but you can’t simply dump them into a bin or somewhere, they are heavy and too many. No wonder then that one of our ideas for using the superfluous stones was to build a rock garden and place many of them there, so about 14 years ago my husband and I created our…
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Appeal of gardening
Is gardening an acquired taste or do you need to have particular genes to enjoy working in the garden? I loved my grandma’s garden since childhood but for our children (who actually are not kids any more), our garden represents just hard and repetitive work. Yes mom, the flowers are nice, the gooseberries are good, but don’t pressure us to waste our precious time by performing those tiresome and boring gardening activities… How could I make them understand? Perhaps YOU understand? OK, I won’t torture you by asking such questions, I’ll rather share some of the beauty I find worthy of the gardening effort. First, would you recognise the plants…
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Feel the calm
There are so many unnecessary words written and spoken, the universe hums and resonates with them. So you will surely forgive me when today I won’t add many in this post… … but will share just some colours and the atmosphere of calmness and tranquillity that I found in our garden. May they enrich your day.
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Living Living Stones
Some time ago I told my family that I love succulents and would be happy to get some on the occasion of my birthdays and name days and soon after that I got a little pot from my son with a little succulent called “living stones”. The plant didn’t seem to thrive at first, its leaves were fading, so I decided the pot was way too small and replanted the succulent into a little bigger one. I think it helped but in the first place I had to learn that it is normal that the older leaves shrivel up and also that I need to respect the existence of winter…
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My word for the year and walk in the village
Since 2014, I’ve been choosing my word for the year to be my guide and companion teaching me to grow in some regard. As I’ve explained in my previous posts, I don’t look consciously for the word, it always emerges from somewhere deep inside. This year it wasn’t different. On Christmas Eve I attended a mass and the priest concluded his sermon with an extract from Pope Francis’ Christmas reflection. I don’t like when such extracts are read during sermons, they often sound incomprehensible for ordinary me, but this time the extract ended with thoughts where joy was mentioned among others. When the mass was over, I saw the word “joy” in…
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May in our garden
Do you document regularly or at least here and there your garden, house, flat, I mean the environment you live in? I’m sure I don’t do it often enough… even though I find it interesting to compare the older photos with the current appearance, one quickly forgets. On Sunday I decided to grab my camera and capture some details in our garden and I would like to share some of the photos with you. Paeonia suffruticosa is a flower that has never disappointed me… So elegant. The rhododendron below is a small bush which we bought for just a few bucks in end of season sale in Tesco supermarket and frankly, we didn’t expect…
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Spring in and around the village
This morning my hubby and I took our cameras and went for a walk around the village we live in. Temperatures have dropped significantly lately and cold winter was blowing this morning but spring views made up for the unfavourable weather. First we visited the old local cherry tree orchard where we wanted to take some photos. The orchard is most beautiful in spring when the blossom is out. As you can see in the photo, the cherry blossoms have been partly brown already and I’m not sure whether it means that they are changing into fruits or whether they have been damaged by morning frost that occurred during the last several days. We will see…
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White January
Unlike many previous winters, this year we’ve had beautiful white and frosty January. After the muddy and windy Christmas time it was a welcome change. One morning a few days ago I looked out of the window and saw a beautiful scene lit by early sun rays… I grabbed my camera and ran to the garden, the light and fog and colours felt wondrous and magical… We were lucky not to have many problems with the snow at the part of the Czech Republic where my family live, there were other parts that had to deal with serious problems, but the truth is that after several quite mild winters we’ve…
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Beauty of the ordinary
On Friday we had what might be the coldest morning this winter with its -20°C, which equals -4°F. Actually, it would be the coldest morning in the 15 years we’ve been living in this village. I was a bit afraid that my car wouldn’t start because I was supposed to get to work and to get my children to school so it was a relief to hear the car making up its mind and waking into operation. The gear box was stiff and was moving with slow deliberation but we were on our way and that mattered. It was cold the whole week and we got plenty of snow but…
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Snowy
When I woke up on Sunday morning, the light felt different. I was wondering what was going on but as soon as I got up, I knew the answer. Everything behind the windows was covered with snow and its fresh white colour dominated surroundings of our house. Our garden, neighbours’ garden, our yard… I loved the occasional colourful contrast like in the following photo. Our neighbours across the road are building a new house and its unfinished condition looked wonderful against the snow. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed my camera, opened our kitchen window and took a few photos. I took some also from our dormer window…
