Category: Short Stories from Lavender Hill

Walden Pond

Lavender Hill

Walden has been on my mind lately…Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. I read Walden for the first time in the 80s while at art school and I’ve carried that same little paperback with me throughout my adult life.

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In hand today and while walking around my beautiful spring-fed pond the following passage is brought to mind even though Thoreau is writing about his winter pond…

“I look down into the quiet parlour of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” 

This is my Walden pond….I have never seen it so full; still rising daily fed by the land and sky. It is hard to imagine today walking and exploring throughout the bottom of the pond that first fall at Lavender Hill. IMG_1142

The Greenhouse Planting

Lavender Hill

How to plant a greenhouse.

  1. Firstly, begin with a pile of dirt and a second hand greenhouse.
  2. Next look around your garden for 4×4 x16′-long posts and cut to fit under the greenhouse perimeter.
  3. Now the tricky bit: How to move the greenhouse from the grass onto the foundation without anyone to assist?
    1. I shimmied the greenhouse onto 2 pieces of wood. This made sliding it forward much easier than trying to slide it across the grass. I slid it until it was aligned beside the prepared foundation.
    2. Next I placed another piece of wood on top of the foundation and perpendicular to the 2 pieces of wood currently under the greenhouse.
    3. Next I was able to lift the greenhouse (it’s was very light) onto the perpendicular piece of wood and then slide it sideways onto the the foundation continuing to push and slide until the greenhouse was sitting squarely on the foundation.
  4. Next remove the centre piece of wood and screwed/bolt the base of the greenhouse into the wood foundation.
  5. Presto! It looks like it has always been there!

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