Becoming Domestic

Blimey what a heavenly weekend - all four of us spent it in the garden doing loads of work to our rented house’s garden.

We moved into this house last summer just as the heat wave began and had lots of unpacking and getting settled to be done. Last year we simply enjoyed the huge amount of space around us and the kids loved running round the lawn but this year I just have to have some flowers to nuture and enjoy. As the garden consists of a 100ft x 100ft of grass (plus a veg patch at the back) it needed some serious elbow grease to create some flower beds and a lot of plants, seeds to bring in a splash of colour. My previous garden was a joy but super-small at 50×20ft one plant would fill up a large section of border in no time.

While I weeded and dug over our new vegetable patch, Bealers dug dug dug and then dug some more until he’d created a triangle flower bed for me where there had previously only been lawn, a blessed little bin lid pond raised up on some large rocks he’d unearthed AND THEN he dragged an old shabby table up from the mouldy basement and created a potting table for us by the back wall. My hero!

The kids ran around climbing trees, using the swing we got from Freecycle, watering plants and had their first picnic of 2007. What an absolute joy!

Time and time again Bealers and I grinned at each other across the lawn and agreed that we were so thrilled to be living our new lives in the countryside, being out in the fresh air and enjoying simple garden based pursuits. Buzzards soared around overhead as did the noisy pheasant family and we looked forward to many more hours of digging, planting and exercising in our little piece of heaven.

Eden’s Garden

I conducted a little audit of the seeds I’ve collected over the past year and started jotting down what we had and when things should be sown. The tomatoes and chillis got planted lovingly into pots of seed compost and watered with luxury luke warm water and labelled. Next will be lettuce, sweet peas and geranium seeds (can’t believe I bought a pack of geranium seeds for £4 and when I got home saw that it only has 10 seeds in it!).

Exciting times! Just as well we never use our front room as it has been turned into a plants-only zone, all over the piano, coffee tabl, foot stool, and basically ever flat surface which isn’t floor.

Posted on March 27th, 2007 under Gardening • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback