My matchbox entry got chosen for the Curiovan matchbox gallery http://www.curiovan.org/. I've been waiting to know, waiting, and wishing. I'm very happy. 

I have lived in my home for some time, which means that both the garden and the house carry some personal history and memories. When my granny died, a fair few years ago, I transplanted a small clump of wild cyclamen from her beautiful, much loved garden into mine and these are now flowering. Seeing them makes me think of her, she was a very smart and charismatic woman, quite fierce but generally fair in her judgement. The flowers of these cyclamen are much smaller and more delicate than the cultivated ones that flower in the autumn which are from planted out pots bought from local market and plant stalls.

  

I've just finished reading this wonderful book, "Strands - A Year of Discoveries on the Beach" by Jean Sprackland (pub Vintage Books). It is beautifully written and I hope I won't be breaching any copyright laws by quoting the last paragraph. I wanted to share, and to make a note of the book in case I should forget.

"Each tide brings in another cargo of mysteries; there's always something, once you get used to looking. But the real thrill is in the chance nature of these encounters. Like so many of our happiest meetings, they are coincidental. You happen to be walking along the right part of the shore, just as something is delivered there by the tide. The two of you are on separate journeys. You come from one direction, it comes from another, and your paths intersect"

Isn't that lovely ?

I also discovered a strawberry flower.

Gardening today, again. It's been a funny old week, too many dark spirits haunting my thoughts. Gardening is always tonic for my soul, and, as I've also had a plasterer in, skimming my new work space, it seemed like a good idea to get out of his way and make myself busy outside. 
I've mentioned my compost heap in other blogs. I sift the third bin, and then turn the other two into the bin to the left, leaving me with an empty bin ready and waiting to be filled. This time I used the twigs and clinker from the sifting to mulch the bed under the two redwoods. There is a sarcococca confusa is to one side, it is not a huge bush but it is thriving in the dry, and I imagine acid soil, under these trees. Apart from that there are bluebells, snowdrops and ramsons, all of which will look better for a dark background. 
The redwoods are in flower at the moment, so too is the sarcococca and the lonerica fragrantissima and the viburnum. They are all delicate and fragrant, their smell more obvious than their looks. 
I was joined by two robins today. Yesterday I was also sifting my compost and the same robins came to "help", their song is quite something on a chill january day. Though the morning chill soon passed and it has been quite springlike in the sunshine. 
I am still not through with sorting out my compost bins so tomorrow will be another day of sifting and shifting, I think.       

A last email 

Avoiding deflected denied ignoring go away

I’m I’m I I’m I I

I I I’d you you I you we you me I you you’re you I You I

Not don’t can’t won’t want don’t 
nothing at all too much

I you your your I you 
we’d drift apart nobody gets hurt
I you myself

You

Jx

It's a form of poetry that I have been pondering since I came across it last autumn. The idea is that words are taken from a piece of prose to make a kind of poem. I don't know if it works but I suppose I am testing the water, seeing if it feels o.k to put scraps of writing on my blog. The original prose was not mine.