First there were my lilies - a little dilapidated but still there and highly scented.
The two-coloured Spireae was a present from Hampshire. The day lily came from nowhere and it is a double. One of those mysteries.
This was the only rose that looked reasonable though there were a lot that were battered.
This old rose has been moved once and now is the only one that is struggling on. It is in front of the 'elephant', a clipped holly.
The hanging baskets, by the back door, have been colourful but have now gone mad. The one by the stable door is very different.
This is a productive little apple - a miniature, not quite as tall as me. It is delicious.
There is a story to this little tree. Some years ago we went to North Cypres and visited Bel Paese, where Laurence Durrel lived for a while before the War. I had read his book - Bitter Lemons - and so asked a drinking place man whether his was the one with the Tree of Idleness under which Laurance and his Cypriat friends had drunk. He reached up and took a couple of seed pods from the tree above his head and offered them to me. 'This is the tree' said he. I took them home and sowed the seeds in a pot and put them in a frame and forgot about them. Two years later I saw that one had germinated. This is the very tree which I treasure. My Tree of Idleness.
