A subtle sunrise for the solstice. Just a pink stain dawning on the eastern horizon – over there between the Scots pine and the Noble fir around 8.25 this morning.
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The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove.
But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative reclaiming of wasteland. Winding borders of flowers – blue, pink, purple, white – and waving grasses invite butterflies, bees and birds to feed and the wildlife happily obliges. Why not? Plant it right and they will come.
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Pond Cottage nature notes – making a happy mess.
Too hot to do the outside work I had planned. I stay indoors with windows open to invite a cooling breeze while I tweak at words for next year’s Pond Cottage entry in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme 2026 Yellow Book. Is it right?
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The Resilience of Swans: Parenting Lessons from Pond Cottage
On another wet and windy day we return to Pond Cottage after a night away, pausing by the gate to check the postbox. And there’s a surprise package, a gift that brightens the gloom: a delightful sketch of our Mother Swan by the talented artist Rowena Millard.
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Mud pies and memories of freedom
Open the door and there’s a big green velvet curtain to keep the living room warm, in granny’s bedroom a pretty dressing table set decorated with pink – maybe purple? – flowers. A potty tucked discreetly under the bed.
No bathroom. The toilet is outside in a whitewashed washhouse. At bedtime the grandchildren are marched dutifully across with a big red torch until a rabbit appears in the field on the other side of the hedge. And they’re off…
“Freedom! That’s what it was. Freedom to do what we wanted.”
Memories fill the room. Memories and laughter with three grown women, Mary, Anne and Marian, sitting round a table in a room that didn’t exist on their weekend visits to their grandparents at Pond Cottage more than 60 years ago. [Press play to join them.]
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A gift of hope
Green shoots of hope – I’ve just had a lovely message from a generous man, a rare philanthropist, who is offering to match the money we raise this year for CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) through our Scotland’s Gardens Scheme openings.
He means it, he was so impressed by what he learned about CHAS when he visited The Pond Garden two years ago he made a three figure donation. With your support we can help him give more this year.
Rewilding: or how to be led by Nature
Rewilding was not a word in the 1990s when we bought our ten acres of temptingly untended land. Or at least not a word we had heard.
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Autumn on the horizon. Will we know the difference? It has felt like October for much of the summer this year. But today a mischievous sun peeks through fluffy clouds (such flirts!) and in the garden I find a buzz of pollinators partying among the plants. Great opportunists. True survivors. Perhaps they can help me plot a course for 2025.
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Every tree tells a story at Pond Cottage
Planting a tree is to have hope for the future…
The old oak tree
The story so far. On a sunny afternoon in May a small group gathered among the trees at Pond Cottage to explore how storytelling can reconnect people with the natural world. And what we all gain when we do.
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It was a gentle afternoon. No workshops, no break outs, no lectures, and certainly no rants. Just a meandering walk and talk through paths and clearings of our almost natural woodland, sharing thoughts about trees, birds, bats, butterflies. And how much we all enjoy being in a place where you can hear birds sing.
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“Just bees, and things and flowers”
Like a lot of formerly news-hungry journalists these days I can hardly bear to open the many journals I subscribe to. But earlier this year I read the FT’s Life of a Song. And Roy Ayers Sunshine blew Trump thunderstorms away.
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Galanthus “Trumps” at Pond Cottage
Here we are. At the start of our visiting season I’m not in the best of moods but I stop reading the news to take a walk round the garden and I can’t help smiling when I find the snowdrop given by a dear, gardening friend last year. Perky, eye catching, Galanthus “Trumps” could do with a new name, I think, but what a beauty.
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“I just enjoy being among the mountains, that’s good enough, I don’t need to get to the top…” Ronnie Faux, born Burnley 8 November 1935, died Carlisle 16 July 2024.
Before this turbulent 2024 ends, there’s still just time to add one more tree story. We have planted a Himalayan birch in memory of our dear friend Ronnie Faux. It seems a good match for an adventurer who enjoyed clinging to rocky ridges in snowy places.
Continue reading‘And remember to give them hope.’ Alastair Darling, November 2024.
I wrote this for Sceptical Scot’s poetry section in November 2024 when there still seemed some room for sceptical hope. Reposting in March 2025. Where’s the hope for the losers in Rachel Reeves Spring Statement?]
Looking back, the words seem to echo. On 19 December 2023, Rachel Reeves was speaking from the pulpit at the memorial service of Alastair Darling in an overflowing St Mary’s Cathedral, the Episcopal one at Edinburgh’s West End.
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