Thursday, June 11, 2009

Getting back to gardening

Today I did a brief stint of real work in the garden for the first time in ages. I began by deadheading a climbing rose I have trained along a fence. It became clear there was a lot of dead wood in it which wasn't so obvious when I pruned it a few months ago, so I cleared most of that out. Doing it carefully took ages: I had to keep going to the back of the little fence to get at bits from the other side. But I always allow gardening to take ages, that's how I like to do things, I am very spendthrift with time.

Then I picked sweet peas, contemplated one of the compost heaps for a while (which needs turning), and then picked all the white currants. I made juice of them and froze it in ice-cubes, as being the form of them most useful to us. Can't remember what I did with them last year. It was 120g. We always get far more of red ones, and blackcurrants. We also had a few blissfully woodlouse-free strawberries, and some mini-cucumbers.

The garden has got to a rather scary stage. I look around at it, and it feels like a child of mine that has gone from childhood to a rather wild adolescence when I wasn't looking. I'm proud of it, but I feel much less in charge than before!

5 comments:

  1. Emily, you are absolutely right - our gardens are changing every day almost on their own, surprising and exciting us. Even my boys noticed that my garden kind of just appeared from nowhere, it was nothing and suddenly - here it is!

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  2. Good grief, living in the south of england is like another world from us in Northern Ireland. All our fruit bushes are just starting to show fruit and the sweet peas have just started to climb!

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  3. It's good to take time to enjoy your day.

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  4. Loved this post. Had to giggle at the garden-child bit. I do have a child that has become a teenager almost instantly and it is quite disconcerting!

    I like slow gardening too. I'm probably not as productive as I could be, but I can't garden in any other way!

    Deb@carrotsandkids

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  5. Tatyana - yours is, I think, the garden I'd most like to see of the people whose blogs I read. But perhaps I'm influenced by it being far away so hard to get to, which makes it more wistfully desirable!

    Carrie - I think it could also be partly the site. Our fruit is in a sheltered suntrap, and the sweetpeas were started in a heated conservatory in the first week of February. They have an unfair advantage, probably! Feb seems ages ago now, when I counted each one up every day.

    Joanne - another one I want to see, and much closer!

    Hello Debs, I will look at your blog now.

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