I did once have a flowerbed in my mother's garden. I grew wallflowers and lupins, forget-me-nots and sunflowers that faced the wrong direction to grow tall. My sister had one too but she never did anything with it. She just hated to be left out, I think.
We moved out of that house when I was 12, into one where the garden was so small there was no space I could call my own. I think the new owners let our old garden run wild, the flowerbeds and fruit bushes my mother had planted with such care left to take over the garden. I wonder what happened to my little patch of colour. Whether there's any sign of it, 13 years later.
When we saw the house we're living in now, it was the fireplace that convinced Bill he wanted to live here, but it was the garden that convinced me. We'd been living in a flat (a beautiful flat converted from a listed office building but still somewhere with no ground to call our own) and my attempts to grow herbs on the windowsill had met with nothing but disaster. I wanted some outside space where I could read in the sunshine. I like to be outside but I don't really like to leave my house.
When we saw the house we're living in now, it was the fireplace that convinced Bill he wanted to live here, but it was the garden that convinced me. We'd been living in a flat (a beautiful flat converted from a listed office building but still somewhere with no ground to call our own) and my attempts to grow herbs on the windowsill had met with nothing but disaster. I wanted some outside space where I could read in the sunshine. I like to be outside but I don't really like to leave my house.
This garden was what I needed. At first, my mum was more excited about it than me. She bought me plants and tools and encouraged me to put things into pots. She also brought me a third generation hand-me-down garden bench that had been my grandad's before it was hers. It's very rickety and old but, when it's sunny, it's a great place to sit with a cup of coffee and a book. Slowly, she's won me over.
I'm not an expert gardener and I won't claim to be one. I'm inclined to be lazy and I already killed my hanging baskets once this year, when I forgot to water them during a warm spell. I hate all the bother of making sure my plants are watered and protected from the frost, but I love having a beautiful space to sit out in. I like the way soil feels under my hands (though not under my fingernails) and I loved that there was a short while when I could cut my own daffodils to put on the mantel. I think if there were a cost/benefit analysis on my garden the plants would probably win.
We rent, so everything is in pots with the exception of a clematis. We inherited it from the previous tenants and, right now, it's beautiful. Pale pink and all over the trellis on the back fence. I hope we can find some way to take it with us when we inevitably move again. Some other gardener must have lived here at some point because the garden keeps surprising me. There were snowdrops pushing up through the lawn in the cold days of early spring and there are bluebells coming up through the gravel now. There's a fushia that looks dead but should come back to life again in the summer.
I'm not an expert gardener and I won't claim to be one. I'm inclined to be lazy and I already killed my hanging baskets once this year, when I forgot to water them during a warm spell. I hate all the bother of making sure my plants are watered and protected from the frost, but I love having a beautiful space to sit out in. I like the way soil feels under my hands (though not under my fingernails) and I loved that there was a short while when I could cut my own daffodils to put on the mantel. I think if there were a cost/benefit analysis on my garden the plants would probably win.
We rent, so everything is in pots with the exception of a clematis. We inherited it from the previous tenants and, right now, it's beautiful. Pale pink and all over the trellis on the back fence. I hope we can find some way to take it with us when we inevitably move again. Some other gardener must have lived here at some point because the garden keeps surprising me. There were snowdrops pushing up through the lawn in the cold days of early spring and there are bluebells coming up through the gravel now. There's a fushia that looks dead but should come back to life again in the summer.I never know what might suddenly burst to life in our garden. That's the thing about gardening, it's like making a gift for your future self.
I like that idea, of future unknown gifts to one's self.
ReplyDeleteWe rent, too, but a few years ago my dad and I planted some excess daffodill bulbs that he had and now whenever I look out the back window of our third floor in the spring, boom, there they are. I'm glad that they'll be there even after we move.