Kaspar, the friendly fountain

Before - the conifer with over-big ideas

Now - fountains, after all, don't grow

Now here’s something unexpected for Tone Deaf – a gardening triumph! In twelve years’  blogging I’ve recorded few of those.

Note I didn’t say I was responsible. True, I did the choosing and the buying but it was Martin, my super-tough gardener, who strung it all together and made it work. Bending and lifting are not my forte these days; in fact they never were. But I’ve always been a relentless critic.

And the fact is the conifer, central feature of the Before pic, had got out of hand. Planted twenty years ago it had spread upwards and outwards, blotting out the view from the kitchen and potentially irritating the chef. Lopping off the top was misguided, made it look worse. And, to the right, the ground-cover conifer (I don’t do plant/tree names) had simply covered ground, nothing else.

Back in Kingston-upon-Thames we installed a tiny fountain in our tiny back garden.  No great spout of water, y’unnerstand, just a bubbling, tinkling sound; a beguiling comfort when late and unlamented Concord flew over our house.

This time we’ve gone a step further. A cluster of LEDs, otherwise invisible, illuminates the uprush of water, giving it a ghostly appearance at dusk. I’ll need to experiment with the camera to achieve a precise record but this will do for the moment.

I said “a gardening triumph” but I’d have to add “partial”. Among my many failures with gardening is an inability to get my head round the seasons. Fountains have only one function and that’s to provide an agreeable focus when sitting down, sipping a white burgundy that cost at least £30. But the burgundy-sipping season is past now, and true appreciation must wait until 2022.

But heck, it’s there! It works! Hedgehog or perhaps Pineapple.

Next step a snake feature.