Gardening and Me

First of all thanks to Scarlett and Verilion for the Thoughtful Blogger Award. Not sure I merit it, but it was kind of you both. Don't worry I won't make a Gwyneth Paltrow type speech! And I'm awarding it/passing it on to all my readers so please feel fre to display the badge as you're all very thoughtful and kind.

All these awards lately, I feel like I'm in the Brownies, although I never did manage to get my button sewing on badge (wonder what it is today, the Velcro sticking badge?).

And I promised Tea and Biscuits I'd do something on seven things about me and gardening.

So here goes:

1.) I first came to love gardens after discovering the garden of an old couple up our street when I was about ten years old. They let me dig for worms in their chicken enclosure to go fishing with. But they had a magical garden full of berries, yellow and red raspberries, strawberries, black currants, and lots of colourful flowers like dahlias. They also had a aviary full of singing canaries, and it felt like Eden to me.

2.) I think on the whole gardeners, grand or humble, are pretty generous people. I've always found them willing to share, to give you bits of things, cuttings or seed or to explain how to look after something.

3.) I love hardy perennials. I love that my garden in Spring is fairly low level, lots of bulbs and things granted, and then in May it just explodes into a fountain of massive foliage and plants, globe thistles, cardoon, crambe cordifolia etc.

4.) In the winter I like to curl up and salivate over seed catalogues, and I also like plant society seed exchanges as often you get really unusual things that you can't readily buy or source.

5.) I think I'm quite green fingered, especially with cuttings, I seem to be able to stick most things in soil and they will grow for me.

6.) I'm not ruthless enough, I let too many things grow in my garden, so it's always a bit on the wild side.

7.) If you can bring the birds into your garden, they reward you with lots of things, their beauty, their ability to eat up pests, black fly especially, and freebie plants. I have a lovely rosa glauca thanks to them. And I suspect they brought me the wild orchid. I've also clipped a hawthorn they brought into a standard with a lollipop top. And have a bit of water as birds love it, as do toads and frogs. I just have two old stone troughs, but the birds love to bathe in them and it is a joy to watch something like a wren bring her young to drink/bathe or a pair of collared doves come down at dusk to freshen up before bed. (If anyone knows where I could get an old galvinised water tank please tell me, as I'd love to use one to make a bigger raised pond.)

So that's it. But also never kid yourself you are in control of your garden. It's merely on loan to you, and it will carry on regardless without you. Oh and plant trees, ones appropriate to your space. And have some fruit of some kind, there's nothing better than picking your own plums while still in your pyjamas.