It Begins

Well, in truth the garden preparation continues but the blog begins.  The planning started last year but was interrupted by an untimely house move and the preparation began a couple of weeks ago with a trip to Lakeland in Windemere but today we went on a shopping spree at Haskins to pick up the actual plants for my new vegetable garden.  I say vegetable garden, in truth it's probably more of a fruit garden but either way - it's my garden!

I used to quite like gardening and had a little patch in my parents garden when I lived at home, if you ask mum and dad they would probably dispute my interest in this 'garden' as I never put much time into it but in my rose-tinted memories I had a lovely little gardening hobby!  My garden was populated with the seeds you get free from magazines which were scattered willy-nilly over barely dug soil but against the odds it was usually full of rambling flowering plants and somehow withstood my tender 'care'.

Since leaving home my gardening efforts have been somewhat understated.  In my first student house we had a garden but it was mainly a place to sit drunkenly around an open fire and aside from tidying up and caring for the few hardy plants that had survived the previous occupants I never added my own plants as I knew it was only temporary and they would be left behind when we moved on. 

Our second house was somewhat lacking in garden.  It had a tiny courtyard out back which was permanently in the shade and barely large enough for 2 chairs.  We tried a herb pot but it never got enough sun to survive so again I was left to care for the plants which came with the house.  There was a beautiful climbing rose in the front garden and my first 'fruit' plant - a massive Quince tree in the back garden.  We checked with the landlord and he was happy for us to treat it as our own so for 2 years the kitchen was filled with the wonderful aromas of Quince Jam and Jelly and all our friends received pots of the heavenly stuff at Christmas.

Finally we come to our current house which has a massive garden and a very practical landlord.  Gardens are regrettably unlikely to survive tenants it seems (both of ours I'm pleased to say were left in a far better state than we found them) and so our current landlord solved the problem by paving/decking/woodchipping the entire thing.  The only thing growing in my garden when we moved in was a tree around which the concrete of the upper-tier had been poured!  I aim to rectify this :D

The garden should be just about perfect for growing things in - it get a nice amount of sunlight but has shaded areas under the decking and it is big enough to take just about as many pots as I can cram into it!

For starters I have picked up Strawberries, Rhubard, Blueberries and Tomatoes in small-plant form and a rather clever looking all-year-round vegetable garden box.  This afternoon the planting will begin and I figured it would be a good idea to keep a record of how things go so that I will be able to do even better next year!

Finally, before I sign off a small tribute to the sole survivor of my tender ministrations over the past 5 years: my unkillable cactus!  This little beauty was a gift from mum & dad my first christmas away from home and has somehow survived my care and is still going strong.  It has survived month upon month without watering only to revive again when I finally remember it languishing behind a curtain on the windowsill and it always comes back to give me beautiful pink flowers year after year.