Today, bright and crisp but not too cold, brought me out to garden, the first time this year. I started in the front, a more public source of that feeling, I should be doing better. The Garrya spraying branches in every direction, a rose escaping into ties, fence slat askew and a slurry of leaves and stems, frost bitten bryony and sagging physalis.
First to the fence, returned to its rightful position with the rose pruned and fed through for affixing. A much-loved ivy, rich and elliptical, now trails in huge locks over the slats rather than the pavement. Forgotten raspberry canes were discovered and relocated, tiny green buds now pushing through next to fennel and fleabane and my Grandpa’s rue, transplanted from my childhood home before my parents moved house.
The Garrya canopy was lifted, crossing limbs sawn away to lighten up the neglected bed beneath – Phlomis, more fennel, white Hesperis and bitten down geraniums, a project for February. Lavenders, slightly woody but found in a binbag down the road, dot a new pale border beneath the rose with Santolina and Helichrysum, and the soil is good, richly crumbling and full of worms.
It is mostly still a mountain of cuttings, waiting to be cut to size and used as log piles in the back garden. But as the sun went down and the chill came back I was happy, thankful for this space and its little collection of plants.
a year in the garden 