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Easter




Set to work getting my friends' garden together for this year. I'm turning their back garden into a wildflower haven (I think I've only mentioned this once before around here). I dug some; spaded in sand, gravel and black compost. The soil here is claggy-clayey - wet and heavy; it smears shiny blue-grey. Can't do much with it till it's cultivated. There's a horrible boggy patch that sucks muddily when dug; I sigh, fill it with gravel, and commend it to God.

It'll be years before the soil's favourable for anything except gorse and broom; but nothing wrong with that - great shrubs both they are. Gorse flowers smell of coconuts.

The rest of the garden's okay, the soil's a bit better, mainly thanks to my garden-ignorant friends putting too much compost in years ago. It was too dry and spongy for ages, and nothing would grow right in it; but it's got a fine tilth now; moist and crumbly. I'm planning St. John's herbs and toadflax, lady's bedstraw and devil's paintbrushes for that bit, amongst others.

My hands are raw and rough, and still hot and fat though hours have passed.