SEE if you can reach that one going under the slates.’ This month’s column finds me up a ladder, where I have been each March since we clothed the front of the house with that loveliest and most invasive of climbers, the wisteria. The Chief Horticulturalist stands at the bottom, seemingly unconcerned about the imminent risk of widowhood. I lift my head over the fascia so that my chin rests in the gutter and gingerly reach across the roof to find the offending tendril and give it a yank.
As I do so, I reflect on how the characterisation of Adam and Eve makes the story of Man’s original fall in the Book of Genesis so believable. There is a serpentine quality to Wisteria sinensis, China’s finest botanical export. I love the way it winds itself around drain pipes with subtle wiliness, until I have to free its strands before they’re prised from the masonry.
On my ascent this time, I passed last year’s goldfinch nest in a thicket of branches where the fuchsia, the rose and the wisteria meet in a pleasing composition. Higher still, the muddy outline of an old swallow’s nest reminds me that our colony must soon be leaving their winter hideaway in the South African veldt to come home, if they haven’t already.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 17, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 17, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
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Old habits die hard
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It takes the biscuit
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Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
