In My Garden

When I bought this place years ago, the first thing I did fall for was the amazingly well kept and adorable garden. This I must have!

I had every attention to be a good little gardener and keep it like that, and of course improve it. But as I've said before, I am the truly, madly, deeply the black sheep in my family of green fingered ones, so those intentions have since been up for reevaluation several times... But plans are made to be changed! Period.

I've planted and seeded countless flowers, plants and herbs over the years. Some of them have been a success, most haven't.

Some, few, of the feline members were more than inclined to use the trees to reach the sky. They most certainly didn't get any further than the tree tops. But that's more than enough. And even if the trees in question were rather unhappy to still be alive, it was no fun, at all, to be forced to cut them down... A couple of tuijas and a cherry tree.

I'm not very interested in conifers in my flowerbed, so I did get rid of them almost immediately. I wish they could have gotten a new home elsewhere, but they didn't. They were sent to conifers' heaven.

I threw out the huge compost barrels, they really didn't fit in and well, recycling in all its necessary glory - I don't want to have barrels of mould in my own, smallish garden.

I expanded the flagstone part of the garden and got one of the my dream-must-have-items in a garden - a hammock.

I got rid of the butt ugly wash stand and planted what was to be a huge hosta there instead. I prefer to have my vagrant camp-corner more discreetly placed under the veranda roof. I hate ugly wash stands and hanging your laundry out to dry in plain sight.

Even if this is a perfectly view-free garden, I really very much hate the sight of a wash stand in what's suppose to be a green oasis, an area for contemplation and afterthought.

I'm not very interested in keeping order and looking after a plot of vegetables, and those darn blueberry bushes never really liked it there. So it became a part of the lawn.

And yes, under the lilac hedges is the main place for the eternal feline rest.

I do have a book in which I planned to write down every little thing I planted, every little thing I changed, if the invited green guests liked the nursing ethics or not. I rarely remember to do that. Sometimes I'm just pleasantly surprised about what decides to reappear the next year. Or not.

Years with a hefty amount of rain - like this one - keep the garden looking all green and delightful. Years with just too much sun, and a very small amount of rain, the lawn gets all dried up and dull, the flowers never really reach their ultimate look for the season.

Some flowers are just a gift from the birds above. I like that! Others my mother secretly plant somewhere to see if I've yet learned to distinguish flowers from weeds. Most times I haven't. I'm just happy that so many things like to grow in my garden. Weeds or not.

It's muckin' afazing that they decide to stick around for yet another season, and give it that certain fluff, lush, thriving, irresistible look of a garden hosted by yours truly, with a Master's degree in Non-green fingering.

My favourite plant of them all is most definitely the larger than large clematis - a survivor from the previous gardener of the mansion - who every year keeps getting larger and larger and embed a large part of the garden with the most delectable white flowers. It really takes care of itself in the most gorgeous, exemplary way. And every summer I'm proud to be its host for yet another season.