Pottering About

I love gardening.  My Dad loved gardening.   I remember him giving me my first little patch of ground just outside the greenhouse.  Admittedly it was only 1 foot by 2 foot and full of candytuft but it was a start and it was mine. 

An early memory is being chauffered to the allotment in the wheelbarrow.  Such style.  Fortunately, I have never suffered from sea-sickness.   Of course I had to walk back, said wheelbarrow being full of goodies from the allotment.

In the meantime, I grew up, married, had children, watched children depart for university and jobs, hither and yon.  The bare patches on the lawn grew green.  Or blue, depending on how well the speedwell is doing in any one year.  Sometimes it’s dotted white with daises.  Now and then it’s green but that is the moss.

In the meantime I pottered in the garden.  Dad always liked bedding out plants.  Twice a year all plants were removed.  Summer bedding made way in the autumn for spring bedding.  I did the same.  For a while! 

Our garden is quite large.  Bedding out plants have been replaced with perennials and shrubs.  It’s taken 41 years to mature.  However, now, when I have the time, I find lack of stamina means I spend that time in short bursts rather than the, all day while the boys play in the sandpit, sort of time.

Consequently I work very fast and then ache everywhere afterwards.  But oh, the bliss of a hot bubbly bath, and oh, the stiffness when scrambling out afterwards.

I wear gardening gloves now.  It is of course too late.  My hands and lower part of my arms are covered in brown splodges.  There is no way they could be described as freckles.   Too much sun on bare arms! 

There seemed to be more sun then.