Becoming a gardener

ELLIE MARY, QUITE CONTRARY,
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
WITH LOTS OF SNAILS, AND WAGGING TAILS
AND MY BULBS UPSIDE DOWN IN A ROW..ROW.. ROW..
MY BULBS UPSIDE DOWN IN A ROW!

Hello again,

This week I have had an urge to become a gardener as the sun is out and it feels like spring is here. Unfortunately I am not a very experienced gardener and planting things in pots is about my level, but I felt inspired to have a go. It is a very small garden at the new house but I see that as a plus point rather than a negative. In the last house the garden was probably three times the size but this meant the boys tried to play football in it, and if I ever tried to plant things in pots they always ended up snapped off and sad looking after having footballs land on them. They also had a trampoline which took over all the space and had a game that involved throwing shoes and trying to hit each other with them whilst bouncing. It wasn’t necessarily a game I approved of or authorised, but somehow it still seemed to happen and apart from having to ask the neighbour to throw shoes back, they also landed in any flowers I tried to plant.

The garden I have now is big enough for a patio set, a bench and a bar-b-que but that’s about it so I have claimed it as an "adult’s garden". As we live in a cul-de-sac now, there is plenty of space out the front with hardly any cars around for the boys to play football and on their bikes and scooters. This is a much better arrangement and I now want to get the back garden looking lovely in time for the start of bar-b-que season. I don’t think it matters what size a garden is, you can still make it your own little piece of tranquillity and once the sun comes out I am never inside the house.

I started by painting my old and ancient garden bench a very bright Mediterranean blue colour, inspired by the blue and white you see everywhere in the Greek islands. It’s actually a bit of an heir loom as it was my granny’s old bench but after the paint job it looks brand new again. I then bought some trays of pansies and primroses at the garden centre to fill all the pots. That was a hair raising trip as Luke wanted to help me and insisted on pushing the garden trolley for me. After nearly running down a person, and then bashing into a big pile of ceramic pots and making them wobble I decided I should push the trolley! I didn’t want to discourage his interest in gardening though, so when we got back I had great fun with a mad dog trying to dig and a 7 year old both "helping" to get the compost and plants into the pots. Despite the odds, the end result now looks very pretty! I also put up some of the solar powered lights on a string all along the back fence. Along with the blue lights running round my conservatory roof I now think it looks lovely at night, but must admit I am slightly worried the planes flying over to Bristol airport might think my house is a runway!

I also bought some Dahlia bulbs but quickly realised I had no idea which way up to plant them as there were no helpful diagrams on the back of the packet. We are not all natural gardeners; would it hurt to have a picture?! In the end I went for sprouty bits upwards but after discussing my dilemma in the school playground I was told that was upside down so had to dig them all up again and turn them round! Some of the knobbly bits fell off during this process so I am not holding my breath to see what comes up. Never mind, I seem to have about a million snails out there anyway so I expect they just would have eaten them anyway! I also saw some metal flower decorations when out shopping so bought 4 of those as I thought at least being metal I couldn’t actually do anything wrong and kill them!

I also finished off my birthday celebrations this week at the pub quiz with my work collegues.Unlike some pub quizzes this one has no real prize and is free to enter so it’s all just fun. We did pretty well but couldn’t agree on "What do chefs call the master spice?" Some said salt but I said it can’t be salt as salt isn’t a spice, then we thought maybe pepper but the more we thought about it the more other options we came up with. In the end we went for Saffron as it’s one of the most expensive and so could be called a "master" spice, but it turned out to be pepper after all! Always go with your first instinct! It was lovely to see everyone away from the workplace and we all had a nice evening. I had to stop every person there buying me a glass of wine for my birthday though as there were 8 people. Since I had work the next day and one of the people there was my boss 8 glasses of wine would have been a bad idea!

I hope wherever you are you have been enjoying the sunshine too and perhaps planting your bulbs more successfully than me! I will keep you posted as to whether anything actually comes up!

Thanks for reading,

Elle

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