Gardening - The Beautiful Passion - Wednesday, 8th July 2015

Well, don't you think so, when your patch of soil as if by magic, brings forth veggies for your hungry appetites, flowers to swoon over, herbs to delight in and a green space to linger in, after busy and frantic day elsewhere!

1st strawberry harvest...



green tomatoes....

My garden is divided between four different locations living as we do in a small flat without a garden.  Kind friends have allowed me to dig up parts of their unwanted, abandoned or grassed-over
garden spaces and I've moved in with vegetable plants and pots, herbs and flowers and pots in an endeavour to be creative, utilising my energy and enthusiasm.

Now this week has so far been incredibly busy - yes, I know it's only Wednesday evening - but this is the first evening of the week so far I've been free to water two of my gardens.  I get to water another one tomorrow and the fourth, potted garden, at the weekend.  Luckily, we've had a good quantity of rainfall since Sunday when I last visited my potted place and watered it madly, so I know it will hold out 'til then, thank goodness.  But the impact and sense of satisfaction that rushes at you, gazing at your garden after a day or two absence is mind-boggling, confirming what you've always known and sometimes, ignored, is that the garden is inspirational, engaging and totally compelling.

runner beans

When a seedling, a flower or edible fruit shows itself,  that compulsion to sow and plant, dig, hoe, weed and harvest anaesthetises you against all backache, broken nails, callouses and exhaustion.  When you carry that green and gorgeous harvest into your kitchen for supper that magic is complete;  you're eating the fruits of your labours, consuming the love and energy you've poured into your growing space and you are the sole victor of your endeavours.  It's bloomin' marvellous!!!

and dwarf green beans and curry plant by the strawberries

So today, I visited my veggie garden to water and pick a strawberry or two, even a tiny red tomato, all of which I did, also watering-in the new plants given to me last week plus my bed of herbs - the lemon  balm and marjoram, the lemon verbena and oregano and a clump of borage bedecked with small blue flowers.  These plants are all crammed into what once was the cold frame now sadly not useful for such a purpose, but still able to house and show off to advantage my bright green herbs.

There's green beans racing up their bean poles, without a  tie or yarn knot to hold them in place, dwarf green beans with their pinky-purple flowers just showing, potato stems and leaves from last year's detritus,  absolutely determined on production again this season, pretty warm-yellow courgette flowers with their mass of green leaves and tiny spiky finger-stems which you hope will turn into small, fat, crunchy fingers to sauté, bake of munch into salads.  Heads of vibrant green parsley, delicate leaves and stems of coriander, spikey waves of slender chives with a few pretty pink heads, a stem of newly planted bay and a mass of orange and apricot coloured nasturtiums with seed heads you could use for mock capers!

the flower garden

In the fruit bed the second-year strawberry plants are bedded down nicely on their straw, the rhubarb plant is resting on its laurels and the curry plant, exuding that wonderfully warm curry scent, is sending our long grey spires covered in bright yellow flowers, as the greenhouse hosts a row of resplendent tomato plants swagged with green fruit, just waiting for the sun to turn them bright red, ready for the eating.

Of course the weeds are resplendent too, poking up their heads wherever and whenever the inclination takes hold so, whatever the state of your growing scene is, your garden will always host an array of  flowers in-the-wrong-place to bring colour and vibrancy to your garden.  And mine is no exception especially since I've been rather disinclined to weed and hoe as much as I did last year!

clumps of fragrant herbs

Ah well, tomorrow is another day for weeding, watering, hoeing and tidying-up and a spot of seedling transplantation in a garden I'm managing for our local WI group; not my garden as such but one does get, attached to the soil one is digging and raking.

and the garden I'm managing for my local WI group - a head of wild seedlings,,,

Soil matters, wouldn't you agree.  That beautiful dark-brown moist and crumbly stuff you dig!  That dry, hard-baked earth when the rain don't fall or the ankle-clinging saturated mud of winter's snow-into-slush-season when you're trying to get ahead of your digging much too early.  Soil is The thing to cultivate if you want and need your green space to develop, grow and bloom.  You simply can't harvest your ambitions without a good bed of soil - unless you grow hydroponically - so grow your compost, practise your digging technique and cultivate a sense of patience for that green space to linger in, after a busy, frantic day elsewhere!

Toodle loo

Daisy xxx

PS all typos under control I hope; apologies for unseen weeds!