I don’t know what comes in to your mind when you think about a garden re-awaking after winter. Traditionally, for me, I see the bright heads of daffodils popping open, the blue haze of forget-me-nots covering the ground and the uncurling of fresh green leaf buds erupting from a skeleton of branches.
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The garden has been both the bane and the medicine of my life this month. I had one of the most stressful weeks I can remember, although admittedly, it does sound a bit ridiculous writing it down. It was over a vegetable garden that I felt this immense stress. We’d asked someone to come in and build the garden for us, and he neither built what we asked for, nor would listen to anything I said and all in all was a thoroughly unpleasant man. When this happens in your garden, and you’re me, it feels a little as though your heart has been ripped out. And we are now left with a half-finished, totally off-brief and out of character vegetable garden, a lot less money in the bank and a whole host of decisions to be made.
If I had a pound for everyone who said there can’t be much for me to do in the garden at this time of year…..well, I think I could probably employ an army of men, who could perhaps help me achieve at least half of my very long list of winter jobs.
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I vividly remember, this time last year, walking over the little stone bridge across the stream in our new garden, upon our return from the Falklands. I remember just standing there, looking, and then my eyes welling up and a couple of tears rolling down my face. It seemed I had got over having to leave the penguins behind; these were tears of overwhelming, happy wonderment.
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And so. The biggies. Ten this year. Here they are, in the order presented in the RHS Show guide: Continue reading
It’s Chelsea. And if there’s one thing to tear me away from my beloved garden, this is it. It’s almost impossible to describe the pure magic of it. At 7am this morning the sun was shining over the Royal Hospital and there wasn’t a place in the world I’d rather be. Continue reading
It would be fair to say that I wasn’t overly excited about our pending trip to the Falkland Islands. Paul has these silly ideas every so often and usually if I lie low they seem to disappear. But having played the ‘maybe’, ‘we’ll see’, ‘we can have a think about it’ card for more than six months, I decided I’d better just go along with it. Continue reading
Well, after almost two years away from Australia, I managed to time my very first trip back, in early December, to exactly coincide with the heaviest snowfall our village had seen in a decade. I was sad to miss the snow, but very much cheered up when photos of our very white garden kept popping up on my phone. Our lovely cleaner, next door neighbour and neighbouring farmer all kindly thought of me missing this moment and without being asked, popped over to capture our snowy garden for us. How grateful it made me feel to have such a thoughtful community around us in our new home. Continue reading
After three years of super hard work, today is the end of an era. Assuming I pass my final module, today I completed the very last piece of my master’s. Phew. Continue reading
I’m feeling really rather lucky to be living in such a very special part of the world this week. Not only am I about two minutes walk from a certain flower show, but the streets all around me are ‘paved’ with flowers right now. Continue reading
