Day 2 – An Accidental Gardener
I got out into my garden today; not for very long, but I managed an hour out there and started a bit of cutting back to reinstate order from the chaos. Mine is a fairly small garden but, strangely, needs quite a lot of maintenance partly because it is densely planted and partly because I’m fighting an on-going battle with bindweed, nettles and brambles. These come back year after year, despite my best efforts. It’s almost enough to make me resort to heavy duty weed-killer; almost but not quite. I’m not claiming to be organic but I do try to have as little negative impact on the environment as possible.
We’ve got a vine growing along one fence. It produces tiny, purple grapes at the end of the summer. There is always an abundance of them but they are like little bullets, and are no good for either eating or wine-making but they look pretty. In the bed beneath them is a tangle of winter jasmine, quince, pieris, honeysuckle, ivy and a straggly rose. When they were first planted, by the previous owners, I’m sure they would have been a well-ordered arrangement but, in the intervening years, they have grown over, through and across each other and now need some major work.
Today is the first day, since last summer, that I’ve been able to get outside. I don’t understand how it is that, since I retired from full-time work, I seem to have less time to spend in my garden. The reason, I suppose, is obvious, I have packed too much into the week and, almost everything has more importance than the garden.
I am not a great gardener but I really enjoy it. I do not have in-depth knowledge of soil types, plants etc. but I know bits and pieces; enough to get by. I think of myself as an accidental gardener. I plant things, I water them and, usually, they grow. Occasionally, I have failures but not enough to stop me trying again. There is something so satisfying about seeing something you have planted and nurtured, grow and flourish.
I know I have to make more time, in the coming months, to get my garden organised. When the summer finally comes, I want to the able to enjoy it but I have a long, long way to go.
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