End of day 1: ground work

When we first moved into this house we had the sofa by the patio doors. At some point during the intervening two years we moved it to the other end of the living room, facing away from the garden, so that Ryan could have a corner for his ‘office’. It means we miss on on seeing a lot of the antics of the wild birds we entice into the garden with the feeders, which is a shame. In an ideal world we’d have a conservatory, but unfortunately it would take up too much of the garden. We’re pondering whether to move things around again, but in the meantime we need to make more of an effort to look out the window!

Day 3 started with the delivery of the aggregate and sand, and ended with quite a lot of the blocks being laid. We’re not allowed to walk on them yet, though!

Last Monday evening I wandered out into the garden to shoo off a pigeon that was wandering around in my leek bed. On my way back inside I noticed the first flowers were appearing on my courgettes, and I did a little happy dance. Then, because this is the 21st century, I took a photo and posted it on twitter.

It’s at this time of year, I think, that a polytunnel or greenhouse really comes in handy in the garden. Over the summer it may just be a tangle of tomato vines – productive, but a space that you really only go in to keep up with the watering chore, or to harvest ripe tomatoes. You know you’re going to come out with green stains on your clothes and hands that smell funny – tomatoes are like that. Those tomatoes will hang on longer into the autumn than you thought they would, and by the time you’ve cleared out the polytunnel the season will be so far advanced that it will be cold and dark and your crop of overwintering salads will barely be growing – just marking time until the days are long enough for them to actually grow.

Well, it’s the last day of National Gardening Week, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the vicarious harvests from my garden! I have enjoyed really focusing on what’s in season, and what we should be (and are!) harvesting and eating. It’s easy for me to forget that this garden is still very young, and it’s still maturing and I am still learning its quirks.

We half-finished the back garden last year, in that we installed and planted half of the raised beds. In truth, we did a lot more than half, as we had all of the paving done and installed the two sheds. But the wet weather over the winter stalled progress, and it has remained unfinished. It has been frustrating, but has become even more so since the sowing season arrived and I faced the fact that the plants I wanted to grow this year had no home to go to. And so it is with great excitement that I can say that weather, time and energy coincided over the weekend, and we have broken new ground!

Here in the UK it’s traditional to take a couple of weeks off work over the summer and head off to somewhere with better weather – or at least somewhere that you can get away from it all for a little while. It’s one of the ironies of life that this takes you away from the garden at a time when it really could use your help. If you have a gardening neighbour then you can rely on them to take care of your garden while you’re away, but if you don’t and don’t want to come home to dead plants, weeds and giant marrows then there are a few things you can do to prepare your garden for your absence.

Earlier this year I was absolutely horrified when the flat footed fence fitters trampled all over my wild garlic. It was just starting to leaf out, and I don’t know why the sudden garlic smell wafting up from their feet didn’t give them pause, but it didn’t!

This week is National Gardening Week, and the theme for 2019 is Edible Britain – a chance for gardeners across the country to show their love of home-grown produce.

Today, the first Saturday in May, is World Naked Gardening Day. The idea is to pop out and do some gardening in the altogether (‘as nature intended’) to help improve our sense of what is normal and acceptable in terms of body shapes and sizes.

By the end of the day on Friday, the landscapers had finished edging the paths. The garden has a very different feel to it now – it feels like you’re standing in something, rather than the blank canvas that was there before. It’s taking shape, and it’s very exciting. The patio already has a magnetic quality, drawing you out of the patio doors (although it’s currently a big step down!) into the garden.

I have been out in the garden a bit more over the last week. Rather than wait until later in the day, when I generally don’t feel like going outside, I have started going out to do something first thing in the morning, before I sit down at my desk. The weather is very mild, and a lot of days have been dank and overcast, but on the brighter mornings I can happily potter about for an hour before coming inside. It’s quite often the nicest part of the day, weather-wise.