18th July

Ronald Hutton recently asked Jim...when going home to Rhos Hill, where do you cross the Tiefi?  We thought that was a very good question; the Tiefi (pronounced like ivy with a t) runs from the Cambrian hills to the east of us, and can be spotted running from the Lampeter area all the way to Newcastle Emlyn  then onwards into the bay of Cardigan. We must cross it at some juncture when driving from the M4 to home. But where? As far as we can tell, we cross it at the Llandysul bypass, but although we can see this on the map, we can't see it as we drive. Perhaps there is a conduit under the road.


We know where we cross it at Newcastle Emlyn, the river winds around the ruins of the castle then under the bridge we take home.

We traced some of the river when Claire Peacock came to stay. She stayed for three nights, which was a magnificent chance to discover more about the area. I was glad of the company because Jim was staying with his aunt, Dot, while she was in the very last stages of her fight against cancer.


 Claire is an old nursing friend of mine (not that old, of course) and she loves gardening so she was quite a welcome kind of guest, weeding flower beds and digging vegetable beds, so huge thanks to Claire. We did enjoyed Newcastle Emlyn, tracing the river around the ruins of the castle, where it runs in a loop forming a natural moat. We also went to the Cenarth Falls, where the coracle centre is, on the way to Cardigan and Poppet Sands.The border between Camarthenshire and Ceredigion runs entirely along the Tiefy, and so, as you cross the bridge at Cenarth, you move from one county to another. The Welsh seem to have a particular affinity with their rivers...everywhere we go, they have called their houses, there businesses, their pubs and cafes, their villages and towns, after rivers. Note that, next time you talk about Abergevenny, Aberystwyth, or even Cardigan, because it's Welsh name is Aberteify.


Once we’d had our fill of the Teifi in all its aspects, we found Castell Henllys, a reconstructed iron age fort with several roundhouses and people sitting around fires in Celtic costume. It's well worth a visit, especially the Celtic herb garden.

After Claire left, the weekend passed traumatically and we both felt exhausted at the end of it. We were invited to a wedding party, but for me, it was the wedding that never was. Simon and Henrietta were getting married at the Guild Hall in Bath, and then having their party at Dick Willows, a cider farm and garden centre with a lovely cafe; we’d eaten there before.  We were really looking forward to it, as Simon and Henrietta were getting wed in Indian dress and the food was going to be traditionally prepared Valencian paellas. On the way there, we dropped in to see Bill, my cousin. He’s was Frenchay hospital after breaking his hip. He fractured his neck of femur in Southmead hospital, having gone in for a simple routine procedure. We arrived to find him extremely ill, after contracting the Norovirus in the ward after his operation.  I have to say I was upset by what I found. The ward was so short of staff; one nurse walked off the ward sick while we were there. He’d been isolated in a side ward because of his infection, he was left for long periods, confused and semi comatose.  As a huge coincidence, Claire’s partner, Steffan (yes, he is from Wales), works on the ward that Bill was on...although I’m certainly not blaming him for the way things were. Jim went on to the wedding party to deliver our gift and send our apologies and he had a great time for a few hours. He came back and we decided to stay the night, so that we could care for Bill for a little longer. He only lost his wife two years ago. She was my Godmother, but he looked after her for almost 40 years as she got progressively worse with rheumatoid arthritis, so I felt it was particularly cruel that this had happened to him only 18 months later.

Bill died on Monday, so I’m very glad we stayed with him. Jim’s aunt Dot died last Tuesday; so we have two funerals to get through in the next week or so.  We feel a little shaken up by these events, but Branwen (our adopted granddaughter) is coming to stay this weekend, and I know she’ll cheer us up. We may even try tracing the Teifi again!

June the 28th

Now, we are fully-fledged and paid-up members of the Rhydlewis Gardening Club, people drop in and see us, wave and hoot as they pass us by, and generally keep an eye on our garden from a distance.

               ‘I see you’ve taken down some trees,’ they all said (one after the other), when went to Norwood Gardens for an evening out. I hadn’t thought before...because the trees behind our house are gone, we can see out, right over the beautiful landscape. But it also means people can see in...and the back of the house is the most unsightly area of our garden, full of stones and boulders, a wrecked base for an old extension, uneven and unmown grass and a tarped pile of logs.

               Norwood House, 15 minutes away from Rhos Hill, was an interesting place. Only 6 acres in length, it was bought a few years ago by a man who was head gardener at a much bigger house and gardens in the south. He built a gravel path the entire length (700 feet), and from this central walkway,  created many varied microgardens. This makes a visit there very interesting for people who have smaller plots, because he’s developed, and is developing, a series of ideas and inspirations for the gardener, who can directly use his landscaping and planting schemes. Each garden had a colour or sculptural theme and I loved the way a person could gain individual inspiration and ideas.

It’s always very nice to visit the huge gardens for a day, but 10 acres of rhododendrons can hardly be a copied in a 30ft town garden.

               The owner, Crispin, was a man after our own heart; nothing goes to waste. He uses the rocks he digs from the soil (know how that feels!) to build retaining walls and keeps the smaller pebbles to line paths. He carved old pallet boards and used them for fencing. He saved the turves he raised to make flowerbeds and turned them into raised banks to section some of the gardens and in one case to form a little hill as part of a garden’s design. He even found a length of marine rope, ten metres long and as thick as his wrist, on a beach, hauling it home in his car and using it to create wonderful undulating effect along a boundary.

This is exactly what we plan to do ourselves (to the beach! to the beach!). Our pile of stones from the polytunnel dig is massive, and now I’m collecting stones from the second bed, which is still in the process of development, but I’ve already got some more lettuce seedling in. (We are living on lettuce. We shall soon grow white fluffy tails). I’m separating these stones in buckets; tiny and middle sized stay in the buckets ready to become the path inside the polytunnel; larger ones go on the pile ready for Joe’s dry stone wall.

 We have so much wood, we’ll never want for pea sticks or bean poles or rustic trellis. The big, flat discs from the trunks might make attractive flowerbed retainers. The fencing that ran along the middle of the field can be used to retain the hens when we get them, and their posts were commandeered for Joe’s steps. We’re making our own bank to prevent run-off etc from Gino’s field, using the turves of grass we slice off. We’ve become proficient in getting them off leaving as much soil as possible and sometimes manage to take away huge pieces, up to 2½ feet square. As we move them, they feel like animal pelts...the fur of the land.

This autumn, we’ll take our first cuttings to propagate, and collect the seed heads. And I’ve already tried my first go at taking mistletoe seeds from my own plant on the mountain ash in Fanshawe Road and rubbing them into the tiny cuts on the bark of our ash trees. You never know.

Afterwards, we ate in the local pub, and we particularly met Lyn and Len, who have just retired from running an open garden themselves, concentrating on plants from abroad. They’ve now retired and moved to the Preseli hills, quite near the dolman – we’re see their house at the next meeting. There wasn’t much they didn’t know about plants and gardening, which made us both feel like complete beginners, but, although there is a wealth of knowledge inside the club, there are also people like us, some with a bit of land, some with only a cottage garden, but all keen to work outside in the glorious Welsh air where the red kites call.

So, yes, we’re paid-up members now, and cemented this fact by winning the raffle. We never win raffles! And honestly, the two china mugs will come in really handy.