O Magnum Mysterium

This was the first piece of sacred polyphony I ever sang in a choir.

Doing this, you forget everything earthly. For just a moment, no worldly thing matters. No worldly thing even exists.



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You don't have to garden like they tell you

Here's an article by a guy who turned his front garden into a little wildflower paradise. He lives in one of those villages in England where everyone told him to pave over his front garden to create "extra parking". They literally think it's a good idea to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

So many people see front gardens as a utility area. How many front gardens really are 'gardens' any more?

Drive through villages, towns and especially cities, and you will more than likely be greeted by row after row of paved over, gravelled over, or even tarmac covered unattractive car parks, resembling the complete opposite of a true garden.

Despite the fact that many of us now have several cars per household, meaning that extra space for a vehicle on the front comes in handy, we need to view front gardens as we used to; a space that is green and nice to look at, catches rainwater and boosts wildlife habitat in the places we live.

For five years, at my previous home, I jumped at the chance of creating a show piece wildlife garden at the front of the property, knowing full well how many heads it would turn in a village where people keep things 'neat and tidy'.

You don't have to live like they tell you. And you don't have to garden that way either.

I've been slowly - bucketful by bucketful - building raised flower and veg beds on the Big Dry Patch since the weather turned. The soil here is really heavy, sticky clay that has serious drainage and compaction issues, so each bed gets dug out, bordered by upright terracotta roofing tiles that we have a mountain of, and filled in with a combination of Annamaria's beautiful, black composted earth, a bit of the clay soil and buckets full of half-composted material from my own compost heap. Then they get planted it with various bibs and bobs as each one gets finished, then the whole thing sprinkled generously with white clover seed, and topped with leaf mulch. I've bought several tins of white clover as a ground cover to help inject some nitrogen into the soil and provide a "green manure" to till back into the soil in the spring.

I bought about 30 daffodil bulbs, since they're far and away my favourite flower. In the beds are red onions, little white spring onions and about 20 garlic plants, as well as a couple of little starter bedding plants of thyme (one regular and one lemon) and a lavender, and I moved my day lilies from the balcony into the bed where they can spread (but I liked them on the terrace outside the kitchen window so much I might have to go find some more). I'm happy to say that the cime di rapa, coriander and other brassicas I put in in September have laughed derisively at the attempts of the frosts to kill them.

But best of all, I've got a whole box full of various wildflower seeds I mostly collected on my stomps around Norcia. When the beds are ready all you have to do is sprinkle them on the surface and cover with leaf mulch. One of the abandoned farm houses (yes, it's a thing in Italy and there are lots of them) is surrounded by hollyhocks that were very prolific, so I've got several jars of these lovelies. Others are blue Nigella Damascena, white and red campion, sunflowers, poppies and wild chamomile and all manner of lovely things.

It's going to be a flowery spring.



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Buona Domenica, Tutti!

Did your Mass sound like this today?



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