The Patient Gardener’s Weblog

……this beautiful wooden circular pergola. 

I know its wrong to covert something and that I should keep the green eyed monster well in check but this took my breath away at our local garden centre. I can see one of these snaking up my garden with low level lush, jungly planting  along the edges and the wooden hooped tops showing up above the plants.  Make me go  all  tingly at the thought.

The reality is though that I doubt I would ever be able to afford something like this.  My apprentice joiner son says that it is made with laminated wood which has been bent and then the sections joined together.  Lot of work therefore lot of money, well  for me anyway.

But I would still settle for one of these circles as an entrance way.  Maybe I will start to do the lottery again, you never know

Today I have been playing hookey – well I have taken a day off  work sick.  I don’t have a cold or flu or any other ailment etc I am just tired, in fact exhausted.  I haven’t been sleeping very  well for months now, in fact since my sister died suddenly last October.  I am out like a light each  night but am waking  any time from 3am to 5am and then can’t get back to sleep.  On top of  that this week I have had a niggling headache maybe due to the lack of sleep.  This morning it all got too much – I got ready for work, made a pack lunch etc but my eyes were so tired and to be honest I  don’t think it would have taken much for me to burst into tears.  So after a chat with my boss I went back to bed for the morning. I have now been out and got some stronger headache tablets and some herbal remedies which hopefully will help me sleep  properly.

On my drive  to the chemist I  found my mind  waundering and contemplating life  and why I might not be sleeping.  Work isn’t helping.  Whilst I love my job it  is constantly stressful and  I really don’t feel that I am on top of things in fact as I told my boss this morning I feel completely overwhelmed.  My boss wondered if my sleep problems were a delayed  reaction to the loss of my sister and maybe this is true.  My Mum thinks I have got into the habit of waking early.  I don’t know if either of them is right or whether it is something deeper.

I  find myself wondering whether I have the work/life balance right.  I normally  say I love my job but at the moment it is just tiring and draining.  I  find myself hankering to be  at home – actually in the garden.  I have worked all my adult life and often long hours as well as bringing  up two children on  my own  for  the  last 15 years.  I have always been sensible and responsible  but there is part of me that  hankers to throw caution to the wind and do something different.  Maybe this  is a bit of a mid-life  crisis.  

I have found my attitude to life has changed since my sister died.  Losing someone well before their time, she was 37, makes you look at life differently.  I have already blown the money I had saved for a new dining room suite on taking the boys on holiday to Italy in July and I am wondering if this change of attitude is behind some of my tiredness.  Work is not satisfying me, I am envious of others who don’t have to be in an office from 9 to 5, who can explore their passions for gardening and plants but I know that at the moment  I am just not in a position to  give up a full time salary. I really want my own  nursery but know that this is unlikely to provide sufficient income to pay my mortgage so I am hoping that this lethergy is a temporary thing and that the herbal remedies I bought today will help to redress my sleep problem.

Part of me wonders if I am suffering with some form of depression and maybe this is so.  However, whilst I am struggling to get a decent night sleep and work is proving too much I have got a new man in my life  who has been a wonderful support over the last few months. We have a shared love of growing things, although his is for vegetables whilst mine is flowers, and spending time with him  and his friends has been a real tonic.

Maybe this is all  part of the grieving process and I need to give myself more time.  In the meantime I am focusing all my spare energy and time on getting the garden ready in time for the Meet@Malvern event and looking forward to meeting lots  more garden bloggers.

When I did my end of  month view a  couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had a few projects lined up for the coming year which I would keep a diary of during the year.  However, there have been exciting goings on since then as VP and I have been hatching plans for the http://malvernmeet.blogspot.com/ event.  I think initially we both thought that we would be meeting up with a handful of UK bloggers that we already knew and who normally go to the Malvern show.  Not so, the event has taken on a life of its own as you will see if you visit the blog VP  has  set up for the event.  Not only do we have UK bloggers coming but also Yolanda for the Netherlands and today Frances and Gail have confirmed that they will be popping over the pond from the US to join in the fun.  We had anticipated that some people may stay overnight and we might decide to have a meal out on one of the evenings but with the amazing amount of interest we have had we are now in the situation where we have  between 10-20 attending the  evening event on both Friday and  Saturday.  Now Malvern is  a small provincial town and  so there aren’t many eating establishments that can cope with these sorts of numbers.  In a moment of complete madness I merrily said to VP, “Well if it comes to  it everyone can come round to mine for a party”.  Oh dear.  On current numbers I have around 14 confirmed as coming to my house on the Friday evening and about 10 additional possibles!!!!!

Consequently, I have now become completely panic-stricken.  Not about all these people in my house (luckily I had a new kitchen and bathroom installed last year), nor about feeding them all (whilst we haven’t a great choice of restaurants in Malvern we do have a lot of  take aways).  No I am panic-stricken about my garden.  There will be a bunch of very discerning gardeners visiting.  I won’t be able to hide the areas that don’t appear on the blog from them.  Some of them will be garden designers by profession – I haven’t got a clue about design and it  shows.  Argh!!!  So my couple of projects have become more pressing and on  top of them I have to address the front garden once and for all. 

I  am one of those people who doesn’t enjoy gardening in my front garden.  Since I moved here I have planted a Laurel and  Beech hedge to get some privacy and also  some  trees but apart from them there is a lack of cohesion, design or anything else desirable.  I tend to  park  the car and go straight in the  front door without a second look at the garden but this will be the first impression my gardening gurus will have.  So I have been looking out of the upstairs window to try to  decide  what  to do.  I think the shape of the lawn (see above) is  OK – I just need to sort out the planting.  According to the countdown on Meet@Malvern I have 88 days to sort things – better get going.

I have finally finished my first proper watercolour.  I started a botanical drawing class back in September and am now on my second term.  Whilst I have done art classes before (pastel, life etc) I haven’t done watercolours or neat or precise etc so this is proving to be  a real challenge.

My art class have been rather amused as I actually hate beetroot but I have learned to love my beetroot.  The colours when you look closely (and if you wash it and polish it with olive oil) are amazing. I have struggled with doing the fine roots, they should be finer but I am getting better and  to my mind the leaves arent that good but then they were made up as the beetroot I had didn’t have leaves.

Next week I have been told to take a pot of snowdrops – which sounds even more fiddly and my tutor says (or threatens) that  I aam also going to do the bulbs.

For an insight into my progress to date see my posts  here  and here

This weekend we ventured out in the ice and snowy slush to a garden centre.  Its not my local garden centre but Three Shires Garden Centre near Newent in Gloucestershire which is about 30 mins from here.  It was so nice to be looking forward to spring instead of worrying about rescuing plants from the snow and wondering if they will reshoot come the spring.  Although the sun was shining the garden centre wasn’t that busy particularly the outside area.  Only the hardiest  of gardeners were exploring the plant section which was a pity as its an ideal time to buy and plant shrubs and trees providing you can dig the ground of course.  I was looking for something light and airy and tall to go in a corner of the front garden near the house but mainly to hide next door’s garage – I had been looking at bamboo but having seen the price tag of £50 I may be rethinking this plan!

I was fascinating by these trays of bulbs. I have never seen sprouting bulbs sold like this – just as if they were bedding plants.  It did seem rather bizarre to me but I suppose it isn’t that different to planting snowdrops and bluebells in the green.  It just seems wrong to me.  Its also more expensive than planting bulbs back in the autumn but I suppose there are those who don’t think that far ahead.

As you  would expect at this  time of year there  were masses of Primulas and Pansies for planting  out – whilst I have lots Primulas at home I did love the colours on display.  Although we did disagree over whether the red Primulas were spring like.

I didn’t succumb to any of the bulbs having planted mine out in autumn but I did succumb to some summer bulbs – a couple of Lilies, some Agapanthus, some Gladiolus, a couple of Dahlias and some packets  of seeds – would you expect anything less from me.  We had  actually  gone to the garden centre so the new man in my life could get his veg seeds and seed potatos, I was only going to buy a ball  of  garden twine – well thats what he thought  but now my plant addiction has been revealed!!!!

Well the start of a new year so I  have changed my vantage points for the End  of Month posts.  Iam going to try really hard to  take photos from the same four points at the end of each month, unlike last year when only the first shoot was from the same point each month.  This year the four shoots will be of four areas I want to improve during the year to see if I make any progress.

The top  shoot is  of what I  call the pond border – you can just see the pond to the left of the  photo.  Last year I started to make this  into  a hot border so I  am planning to continue  and improve on that plus hopefully plan in some structure so there is  winter interest which as you can see is distinctly lacking at the moment.

Point 2: I call this the gravel path border as there is  a path just to the left of the border.  This was a new border last year and as yet I haven’t found an identity for it.  The back of the border is very shady and the soil gets quite dry in the summer due to the tree which is just by where I took the photo so I need to find plants  to add height at the back as well as interest.  Think some Japanese Anemone will feature here as I have loads which I need to move.

Point 3: This border has been fustrating me for a while as well.  I have alot of perennials lurking in it but there is no structure or cohesion so I need to address that.  If there is to be a theme I suspect any flowers will be of a pastel  pallette.

Point 4: The Bank – I have already started  to make progress on this.  As the wind whips across my garden despite the trees and everything seems to bend over I have decided to use plants that are used to moving in the wind.  So I have started to incorporate grasses and some wiry stemmed plants like Salvias and Verbena bonariensis

So those are my challenges for this year.  Why not join me in posting End of Month views and leave a link in the comments box.

I was tidying up in the garden last weekend, clearing up the fallen leaves etc and was surprised to discover these baby Primulas.  I have a lot of Primulas,  of all types, and I have never seen them send out runners with baby Primulas before.  I had assumed that they propogated themselves through seed or by bulking up maybe its because there was lots of leaf litter on the border.  For any one interested this is Primula ‘Green Lace’ which has lovely flowers fringed with green