Welcome to the Garden

Hi!

I’m Tina, I love my garden and would like to share with you some of the pleasure I get from it and the birds and creatures, which inhabit it. I don’t do computers, the Internet, anything like that. Technology I do not do. Therefore I will just write my accounts of the garden and send them to
my very dear friend the Crystal Lady, she is just great at all of this computer stuff. She’s a real wiz. I will take some pictures of the garden, it loves to be photographed. I can manage that, the camera is more or less idiot proof.
The only thing I have to write about is the garden, and that creates itself with a little help.
Well, I know that you all lead busy lives, so make yourself a cup of tea, coffee or whatever you feel like. Maybe a biscuit or two, no, put the packet back in the cupboard we must not over indulge, and spend a few quiet moments in the garden.

The garden is situated between the rolling countryside and the sea. It is really magical and I am so lucky to live here with my better half, who is both my husband and my best friend. He also does all the landscaping and construction work, without him it would have been impossible to make a garden from the weeds, brambles and nettles which covered the site when we purchased the house 15 years ago. He is also the commonsense part of our partnership as some of my ideas can be a bit off the wall.

The months of September and October have
been really wonderful, so warm, just perfect
for the garden. But! My plants are confused,
the passion flower is still flowering. Up until
last week there were roses and sweetpeas,
and the spring bulbs, they are already coming
up. ‘Don’t do this I tell them, it is much too
early’. So all I can do is cover them with a little
more soil and fallen leaves.

Already, I have raked the fallen leaves up from the paths and patio. Not for the bonfire, that is such a waste but onto the flowerbeds, it is just like a duvet for the plants and bulbs over the winter. By the summer each year I wonder ‘where did they go?’, as they have gone down into the soil to enrich it. But the strange thing is, I never notice this happening, and also it is much cheaper than commercial mulches.

The garden is all organic, not a slug pellet or weed killer to be seen. The birds do this job, they live in the copse and other bushes and hedges in the garden, and the frogs from the small stream. I do not feed the birds with nuts and seed, so they do not become reliant on me, they feed themselves from the berries on the shrubs and hedges, which are planted. Also an area is left wild and so produces seeds on the grasses and wild flowers. Water is essential, so I keep the
birdbaths filled, if the rain does not do it for me.

But, Mr. Blackbird likes a wider diet, he can be seen picking up snails in his beak and bashing them on the path or patio until the shell breaks, it is fascinating to watch. Also, together with his mate they have almost the whole crop from the mulberry tree. This year however for the first time I had some grapes on the vine which I planted last year, and I am sure you can imagine who had those as well.

As I mentioned before, I have the spring bulbs planted.
Today it is a bright sunny day if a little cold, so I will
be covering an orange and a lemon tree which I have
in pots with fleece, then placing them up to the fence
to help keep off the cold winds. There we are, tucked
up for the winter.



Maybe we will have a cold winter as there are so many berries on the ivy, hawthorn and lots of rose hips, and I have never seen the holly so full of flowers, promising the berries to come.

So the garden is going to sleep for the winter, my better half and I will make our numerous walks each day around the garden and the birds will come and greet us, and we will be grateful for such a wonderful gift.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to the garden and that you were not too bored, maybe you could visit again. Well that is if I have not made too much of a hash of it this time.

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Your green fingered friend,

Tina

(This was featured in the Creative Crafting Magazine Dec 2010 issue.)

This is my little mascot Charlie, he loves Christmas.