I love gardening

It’s been a good year for the roses

A few weeks back I wrote an uncharacteristically (I hope) negative post with the title I Hate Gardening (here).

I was grumpy after an afternoon of mud pie potting on which involved constant changing from garden clogs to house clogs with wet soil up to my armpits and sodden gardening gloves no help whatsoever.

Now the view out of my back door looks like this (see above), I’m reminded why I actually love gardening. It makes me so happy.

I also experience intense satisfaction every time I come home and see my front patch, which – advised by my brilliant gardening writer friend Pattie – I have finally settled on a planting scheme for.

I’ve put in a smaller-growing fan palm to echo those in the neighbouring gardens and setting off the fabulous triffid-like fatsia already well established. The rest is all white-flowering shrubs.

Shrubs. Such a grown up word, one that my extraordinarily green-fingered mother used to casually throw about and it makes me feel so grown up to mention my shrubs. Shrubs.

The other thing that has made me understand why I felt driven to write something so moan moan moany about my gardening day, is realising I just don’t have a good set up for potting up.

It’s a very small courtyard and there’s no flat surface big enough, only a very small, unsteady metal table, so I have to do it all on the ground, crouching.

There are few things I find as enervating as extended crouching.

So I think for next spring’s preparations I will have to come up with some kind of temporary arrangement to create a sturdy standing-height bench, that can be stashed away somewhere after use. Something will turn up.

Meanwhile, my daily morning joy at the moment is deadheading (and sniffing) my roses, while the sun shines on them from the east. It’s a gloriously scented rosa Albertine, which I planted in memory of my mother, who had a spectacular one in her garden.

While I do it, I think of her and sing this song in my head, experiencing that full flow state, which is as good as a closed-eyes meditation.

I’ve linked a version with the lyrics, which I consider a thing of wonder. It’s one of the songs that made me fall in love with country music when I was young. The words are just so damn good.

Then that got me thinking about another song I’m currently obsessed with.