Cicero, one of those thinky people in the seemingly endless legion of thinky people that were floating around Rome in ancient times, once said something akin to ‘if you have a garden and a library you have all you need’ (though I hasten to add dogs, wine and chocolate to that short list).
Suddenly finding myself in possession of half an acre of semi cultivated garden then I might further update that to ‘if you have a garden and a library (and a house and a dog) then you probably won’t have time for anything else’. Or, to put it another way, ‘if you want to get rid of drama from your life, get a garden’ (is that a quote yet? Because if it’s not, it should be).
All this is a very roundabout way of saying that my new green patch has quite rapidly taken over my life and thoughts. I’ve suddenly found an urgent need for all those slightly ratty clothes that I kept aside for ‘outside work’ (that were in reality just collecting in small piles in the back of my wardrobe) and work boots have become my go-to shoes. It’s all still pretty dormant out there in garden-land but I’m looking forward to reaping the rewards of the crops already in place (berries, I’m looking at you) and discovering some surprise pop-up additions to my already impressive range of cottage plants.
There’s a standard piece of advice in permaculture circles along the lines of waiting for a year before getting stuck into anything too serious but there are certainly a lot of smaller jobs and planning to do that will keep me busy enough for the next 12 months. But with spring only a few weeks away, there’s a lot of planning to be getting on with.
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