With restrictions on movement and socialising for much of the year, 2021 was definitely the year to remember times past, be it visits to favourite haunts or thinking about friends and family. As it was in the real world so it was in the blogging world.

In January my memories took me across the sea to Ireland and a visit to Clonegal, in Co. Carlow. Ireland is a beautiful country with an ancient history. The visit to Huntington Castle, very much still a family home, was very worthwhile as the building itself was interesting, and the gardens, perhaps because they weren’t ornate, relaxing to walk around. A visit to the cellars is a must for it is now a Temple dedicated to Isis. The Fellowship of Isis, started by members of the family, was recognised as a world faith in 1993. I found the ornate decoration rather too theatrical for my taste, reminding me of a scene from an Agatha Christie novel. Take a look at the post by clicking on the link here and tell me what you think.

By February the earliest signs of the forthcoming spring are beginning to show. In the garden snowdrops and aconites are in full flower; in favoured spots early daffodils are starting to bloom. In the hedgerows hazel catkins hang in clusters shedding clouds of their golden pollen in the slightest breeze. Hazel, a native shrub, is also a useful one to grow in the garden. It’s pliable stems can be used in a myriad of ways – cut as pea-sticks, or growing into intriguing living tunnels. February’s blog post concentrated on these uses and looked at the ancient art of coppicing – a method of extending the life of the plant and providing plentiful cover for wild birds, animals and flowers. Described as an art, it is however, a very simple technique. Click on the link here to find out more.

International Women’s Day occurs in March and I focused on the life of Lettice Fisher, the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother & Child in 1918. Later, the charity changed its name to Gingerbread. A suffragette and economist, Lettice was also a cousin of my father and so family history came to the fore in this post (link here). Later in the year, the focus turned to her husband, H A L Fisher and his story but for March Lettice was the rightful star of the show.

In April, I was able to visit friends for a long weekend, a real treat after all the restrictions. I took the opportunity to go for a long walk in beautiful countryside. Rutland is England’s smallest county and was also the home of the poverty-stricken ‘peasant poet’ John Clare born in 1793. The walk took me past the old lime kiln where he worked and the village where he was raised – his poem The Ruins of Pickworth can be read in the blog post (link here) and there are lots of photos of the ruins as well as views along the paths and byways I walked. Several hours later, when I returned to my friend’s home, I was especially thrilled to have seen a group of wild fallow deer which included amongst them, a rare white hart,

By May, spring is well and truly established and plants in the garden are flourishing. Everything is growing so fast that it can become overwhelming and with so many tasks to carry out, early supporting with canes and twigs can easily be forgotten until it is too late. Although this can’t be done to every tall plant in the garden, the Chelsea Chop is a drastic but very successful method of treating herbaceous plants so that they don’t need staking at all. The biggest hurdle to overcome with this technique is finding the courage to actually do it! By clicking on the link here you will find a step-by-step guide. Even if you don’t do it to many plants, I would highly recommend that you do it to the Ice Plant, Sedum spectabile which always collapses just as it comes into flower – once you have, you’ll wonder why you’ve never done it before.

For June, it was back out into the countryside to check the state of a venerable old ash tree. Ash Dieback is a serious, recently imported disease that threatens to eradicate one of the most important trees in the British landscape. Younger trees in our parts of the Cotswolds are already showing signs of it, some much more severely than others. The farm where we keep our horses has one ancient tree that has stood sentinel over the adjoining fields for centuries (lots of pictures on the link here). It’s trunk is hollow and owls and bats roost within it; it must have seen generations of them leave its shelter at night. Likewise, it must have sheltered in the day many a farm labourer seeking shade during hot, summer harvests. It will be a sad day when it dies and we just have to hope that it may show some resistance to this new disease. I, all too well, remember as a child when a similar fate overtook elm trees and changed the English landscape forever. Let’s pray that it doesn’t come to that.

If it sounds as if this review is ending on a sad note, don’t despair – July to December will be following shortly and there’s plenty of posts on an upbeat note there. My family’s fascinating exploits feature in some of them. Covid restrictions have given me plenty of time to root out the old stories of them – to be honest, I never knew what an interesting and, sometimes, brave bunch they are!!