And so we come to the end of another year. As I approach the tenth year of this blog – look forward to the anniversary celebrations in the summer – I reflect on the joys of the garden and allotment … Continue reading Reclaiming Paradise Awards 2023
Since the title of my blog come’s from Joni Mitchell’s song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ , it seems appropriate to wish her a happy eightieth birthday. Her song lyrics from 1970 are just as important today – ‘they paved paradise, put up a parking lot’. I’ve been trying to reclaim paradise for nearly thirty years, through growing stuff in the parking places that I found in the house I live in now and my previous house – see my about page -I hope I’ve done my little bit to reclaim paradise: Continue reading Happy Birthday Joni Mitchell
I was sitting beside our patio doors, watching Bella, watching the garden and realised that none of this was here when we moved to the house fourteen years ago: the rhubarb, the complete tangle of wild flowers, the pond and … Continue reading Summering
As we approach the end of 2022 and venture into the wilds of 2023, this post celebrates all that has been joyful, exciting or downright disappointing in my garden and allotment this year. This year my main achievement was my challenge to harvest sixty different vegetables, fruit, herbs, or edible flowers or weeds in the garden and allotment. In fact, my list reached sixty nine. This was an interesting challenge for me and I didn’t do anything very different from usual other than try some new varieties of veg that I’d grown before and make sure I recorded every new … Continue reading Reclaiming Paradise Awards 2022
We woke up to a winter wonderland this morning. The first thing that struck me was the animal tracks in the snow. A tiny mouse had walked across the patio to the pond: A fox, I think, had wandered all … Continue reading Tracks in the snow
This weekend has been the Big Garden Bird Watch, the weekend when everyone tries to count the birds in their gardens, and the birds go off for their holidays somewhere else. This weekend the birds in my garden had two very good excuses not to hang about: on Saturday storm Malik blew most of them away, apart from a couple of brave wood pigeons; and on Sunday this impressive beast decided to sunbathe in the garden, scaring off the birds somewhat. Sorry it’s a bit blurred. I didn’t want to get too close in case I scared it away. It … Continue reading Birds’ Eye View
We come to the end of another year. What is there to say about 2021? Too much really but here on Reclaiming Paradise it is time to celebrate all that has been good, surprising or downright disappointing in the garden and allotment. Wonderful weather The winter brought some wonderful frost, snow and ice The cowometer came back into use – for a view of its highest reading since records began, see here We also had impressive thunderstorms and flooding in July (no photos) but the award goes to the ice on the pond in February which enabled Bella to perfect … Continue reading Reclaiming Paradise Awards 2021
And so we come to the end of June and the end of the #30DaysWild Challenge. Some people set out to do something wild every day, taking them on all sorts of adventures. My wildness has been rather urban and rather garden based. I just look for something wild every day. Here’s a summary of what I’ve seen in June. That wasn’t everything but there were a lot of bees, a lot of wildflowers and quite a lot of the cygnets and herons on Inverleith Pond. I’ve been watching these swan fluffballs since they were tiny. They’re quite big now … Continue reading A wild month
So sad to hear today of the death of Eric Carle, author and illustrator of one of the world’s most favourite children’s books ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. It was also a favourite in our house and I’ve blogged about it before, along with some of our other favourite children’s books involving gardening or wildlife. As I wrote, back in 2014, one of the things about this book is that it makes you much more sympathetic to the more destructive creatures in the garden: they have to eat after all. So RIP Eric Carle and thank you for bringing us such … Continue reading Very Hungry Caterpillars – in memory of Eric Carle
It’s all go in the garden just now and somehow I’ve forgotten to blog about it. I missed SixonSaturday so here’s a wee update of sixish on Tuesday. These gorgeous self-seeded wallflowers are flowering in funny little corners of the front garden: 2. I got along to the allotment last week and used some spare bits of wood to create a sort of terrace for one of the beds which was threatening to overflow down the hill. Here it is in all its glory. Please excuse the weeds and note the almost complete lack of broad beans in this bed, … Continue reading Six on Tuesday
Reclaiming Paradise 