The evenings are good and long at the moment, add to this, we are both working from home, and the weather is mainly dry these factors allow us to go into our garden almost immediately after signing off from our computers each evening. We are gaining a nice chunk of productive time when we would normally both would be driving home. For me, our garden is becoming a head clearing space, the extra time we gain allows us to do something almost every evening before having our tea.
This evening the garden manager requested a small raised bed for some flowers. An easy task completed in minutes, total time including planting if say less than an hour. It’s not fancy, painted or lined but allows some flowers to be planted on and these will provide fragrant cutting plants later in the summer.
Many evenings when we finish whatever we are doing we find ourselves having a little garden tour, just the two of us and the dog, a daily review of progress so to speak, it’s nice time for us to see the fruits of the work we are doing. New arrivals, flowers on the potatoes, melon tendrils extending and tiny melons on the way, sweet peas climbing, more strawberries turning red, the stalks of the tomatoes in tunnel #2 strengthening every day and producing yellow flowers that will develop into ripe tomatoes very soon . This evening’s highlight, the first two pea pods (picture above) with flowers on their ends, nowhere near ‘fat’ of peas yet, but progressing none the less.
Admittedly, its not all blooming marvellous, there is always weeds to be pulled and a lot of work has to be done to get to this point. but I find it rewarding, satisfying and brilliant to be able to wander out the back and pick a little lettuce, a radish and little spring onion for a lunchtime sandwich or before dinner to gather a bowl of healthy salad accompaniment for dinner. I especially like it when my lovely wife makes a little something with the strawberries.
I know it’s a cliché but all with absolutely zero food miles and negligible monetary cost. The little garden helps our wellbeing by allowing us to clear our heads of the daily complications of work. I think it helps each of us with a lovely sense of purpose, not that we are short of purpose in the first place. The garden gives me a feeling of accomplishment and add to that, the fact that we benefit from fresh produce on our table. Lastly the garden makes me proud of my wife, what she can do, the skills she has inherited and the love of working to make something good. The patience, skill and knowledge she has constantly amaze me.
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