Ok so here's the long promised garden and Reg the veg patch update.
The Story Of The Guessing Gardeners.One day, many moons ago, after living in a weed filled jungle garden for 3 years, and after watching more TV shows about gardening than we care to admit, my mister and I decided to make our garden gorgeous. We bought seeds for flowers and vegetables we'd never really heard of, and planted them in plastic cups and shoe boxes and washing powder bottles, because we couldn't afford plant pots.
We filled our house with little pots of soil...
...and, rather excitingly, things began to grow, and we felt like proud parents. We guessed at which point it was right to re-pot them, and then guessed at which point to plant them into the garden...
And then we cleared a patch of dirt and started to plant our seedlings.
and then, some moons later, we eventually tackled the jungle borders in the garden too. We embarked on this gargantuan journey with the help of our friends whose attendance was motivated with food and booze...
(I took this in one of our 'breaks' which often last most of the afternoon...Lesson number one: drunken gardening is surprisingly effective and fun.)
We guessed which green things were weeds and which ones were not. And we crossed our fingers that we didn't uproot something stunningly rare and beautiful...and told ourselves that of course we didn't, that our gardeners 'instinct' would prevent it. Uh huh.
In the vein of making our garden gorgeous, I also decided to paint our garden furniture, because, if I'm totally honest weeding is horrid and painting garden furniture is much more satisfying...
and friends and neighbours from all around congratulated our efforts most enthusiastically. And I did blush a little.
Meanwhile the seasons progressed. The blossom bloomed then faded....
and the very old tree at the bottom of the garden began to fill up with leaves and throw dappled light on our kitchen walls.
But then our story takes an unfortunate turn. The tender plantlings and seedlings were suddenly and savagely attacked by an army of monsters!
Euch....
Uuuuurrr
Ick
Gross...
We, their proud parents, freaked out and said 'eeeeeuuuwwww' loudly, lots of times and tried desperately to defend our babies. And succeeded. Kind of. There were some casualties, but mainly, the kids are doing OK.
Lesson number 3: Don't get too attached to plants.
Lesson number 4: Diluted ecover washing up liquid kills the little bastards good and proper.
Anyway, on with the story..... We pushed on, through the highs and the lows and eventually started to see results...
We looked at our Marigolds thoughtfully and wondered how they would look at full size...we tought that they consisted of just 1 flower.
but NOPE! They are SHRUBS! (Who knew?)
And we also planted some tiny shrubs in our window boxes, unsure of how they would turn out. Here is our window box before....(marigold on the left at the size we thought it would stay at) and waited for them to grow.
Every morning when we opened our curtains, we realised gleefully that each little plant had almost doubled in size over night! Honestly, I'm not joking! They only grow when your not looking at them though. That's what I learnt.
And now look at them:
Ta da!!! All full and lucsious.. .and still growing too!
And so our plantiling family grew and grew. A friend gave us a teeny courgette plant which quickly grew to look like this...
But now looks like this, with 2 mini courgettes growing! That makes us GRANDPARENTS!
And we also started to to eat from the garden. This was the cherry on the cake.
(heres me picking food! From our very own garden!)
Garden grown lettuces and greens made welcome additions to soups, casseroles, and salads. Potatoes were planted along with basil, chives and thyme, and we dreamed nice dreams, of all the garden grown concoctions we would create in our kitchen...
We also filled the garden will colourful pots...
And marveled at how quickly the sweet peas turned from this...
and then to this...
And now this!
They have now outgrown their supports! Yikes almighty! In a matter of 4 months!
So overall, the garden is looking mighty fine.
But the story goes on. You can't become complacent or rest on your laurels because otherwise the bad green things grow back. Yes they do. We learned that bit the hard way. So tomorrow morning we will dutifully go downstairs and potter round the garden with a cup of tea and pull up the weeds together.
Oh, and try to remember that we are 24 not 64.....
(Listening to
The Invisible, who I saw at the most recent OXO night in Deptford. It is very good long weekend, bopping around the flat, pottering around the garden kind of music.)
(Lovely drawing by Elizabeth Perry, via Apartment Therapy)
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