Life must be filled up

This is a copycat post inspired by ramblingfancy. Her most recent post is about the joy of notebooks, a pleasure I share. I love them; pretty covers, strokeable covers, all those lovely blank pages. I’m also nostalgic for those shiny red notebooks you used to get in Woolworths, with tables of weights and measures printed on the back cover. In a box near my desk I found the notebook shown above. It was a present and I used it for my garden journal for 1987 to 1990. Yes, in those pre-blog days, I actually wrote a proper garden diary.



I will tell you what; my handwriting is much worse now because I do so much less of it. I see that at the start of the year I was remarking on the mildness of the weather and marvelling at the tender plants which were surviving. Then came frost, snow and ‘what they say is the coldest spell this century’ (sound familiar?) and a few treasures died. It makes me feel tired now to see the time I used to spend on the garden, even in winter. It’s a lovely afternoon here today but so cold I couldn’t possibly do any gardening. I’m glad I’ve kept this diary, even if reading it brings some pain as well as pleasure. Hurrah for notebooks.