If there’s one thing more exciting than a week at Chelsea, it’s coming home to find broad-bodied chaser dragonflies have moved into your pond (with a bit of identification help from the ongoingly wonderful Pete the Pond).

I always cry at Chelsea. Of course, I pretend I’ve got something in my eye, or that the hay fever season has come a little early, but each year I shed a tear or two. Or three or four. I’ve already started and we haven’t even got to the awards yet; that’ll be the next time to reach for the hankie, bright and early at 7am tomorrow morning.

I think I probably ought to stop worrying.

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.

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.

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.

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 →