Dyffryn's wintry gardens

After our usual Saturday pancake breakfast, we drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for our first visit of the year on a rather cold, dull morning. The house is still closed to visitors for adaptations and restoration work and the tea room annexe only serving take-away snacks and drinks to consume at picnic tables on the terrace.  The garden layout is still in the process of revision or restoration of original Edwardian design features, so some areas are cordoned off. 

A noticeable number of trees have been felled in the woodland area, removing older damaged ones to let in more light and make space for new trees to grow. In the vegetable garden, information panels explained how different ground cover measures were in place to reduce light, suppressing weeds and promoting healthy soil. One technique involves using biodegradable permeable matting leaving ground fallow for several years, the other a plant that generates thick ground coverage, then dies back and nourishes soil.

It's been cold enough this week for a skin of ice to form on the garden pond and the fountain pool. Small kids took delight in fishing out chunks of ice and skidding them across the surface. A few bushes had buds ready to burst open and camelias were in full flower. Flower beds in front of the house were empty apart from patches of snowdrops, and just a couple of daffodils in full flower - the first of the year! Daffodils flower a month earlier compared to when I was young because of climate change.

After a sandwich and a drink for lunch we returned home. I went out and walked for another hour down to the Taff. I counted four football and one rugby game going on at the same time in Pontcanna Fields, a sign of a return to normality, as covid the omicron covid infection case rate keeps dropping. I dare to start wondering when international travel controls will ease off to the point where the risk of booking a flight to somewhere south of here will be worth taking.

Fr Stewart, Roath Ministry Area leader, now responsible for St German's has been in touch about rota assignments for the next quarter. Responsibility for the Tuesday 'Class Mass' will be taken in future by his ministry team, freeing me from a weekly trip across town. I'll miss the fun of working with kids but, to be honest, not the effort of being out of the house and driving an hour earlier than usual. Mthr Frances has also asked me to cover several services at St John's on days when she has training days to attend. I hope, for her sake that these are worthwhile, given the extra demands of being one short in the full time clergy team.

After a delicious fish pie supper, I completed tomorrow's sermon with a break to watch half an hour of comedy recordings of the Morecambe and Wise show from fifty years ago. Much of their comic routine relies on the fact that they were both great actors with immaculate timing. From working the stage in the musical halls they moved to working the TV camera at close quarters brilliantly. Much of their material is corny, unconnected from our day and age, almost innocent in its use of mockery, never savage. It's the drama of their comic interactions which still makes it watchable.