Sundial

A little while before we exchanged Essex for Lancashire a friend in Harlow gave us the top part of a sundial.  It remained on our coffee table, like an oversized circular paperweight until we moved and unpacked.

By now we had established from both from observation and the use of my mother's old hiking compass that our back garden here on the avenue, faces almost due north.  We began a process of filling the terracotta and other pots we had been kindly left by the previous owner with sturdy bedding - winter pansies, clyclamen and hellebores - and arranged these in semi-circular fashion under our bay windows to make the most of the front southerly aspect. 

But what to do with the sundial?  Not for nothing have we spent nine years allotmenteering and improvising.  Take one ornamental chimney pot originally from the back lawn, a bag of gravel discovered in the garage, a circular plant holder.  Now our sundial sits atop its pot on our front patio embedded in gravel awaiting the morning rays.  This being the north, its improvised holder has filled with rain, sleet and latterly hail.   We empty out the water and wait for the spring.