Now I am writing this blog more regularly I
will try to tell you more about the travelling life, and the shows I do, places
I visit. At the moment though I’m facing
the prospect of the down time – January through April, when there are no shows
and I’m permanently in my yard near Chester.
So until the shows restart in May I’ll tell you something of my daily
life and what I get up to during this quiet season..
I’ve talked a little about the garden that
I am working on here. I spent more time
on it today, clearing the rest of the years of accumulated detritus from the
greenhouses and paths. I love the
rediscovery of the old garden, totally overgrown and neglected but with a few
hints that at sometime in the past it was loved and cared for. There are three greenhouses! One is very large and has an old vine with
dead bunches of last year’s grapes still in place and a great deal of overgrown
weeds and plants, some of which may be ok.
I’m leaving this one till last as the other two are chocker with pots of
some dead and some just living plants. I
cleared out one of those today and found to my great surprise a rusting pipe
stove that must have heated this greenhouse many years ago. It was full of rubbish and rotting stuff, but
when I had cleared it out I decided to try to light a fire in it and amazingly
it worked fine. Before long the whole
greenhouse was warm and cosy. I almost
heard the plants say ‘OOOOHHH that’s loverly’ and when I then watered them all
and cleared out the dead ones it felt as though I had blown a new breath of
life into the place. It was blowing a
new breath of life into me too and I finished clearing the paths around the
garden and now the area is ready for some real creative work.
Tomorrow I will start digging. There is a large space that I shall make a into
a vegetable plot and concentrate on some early potatoes, spinach, beetroot and
French beans. A little later on I will
go for all the tasty salad stuff, rocket and lettuce, spring onions and
radish. I want LOADS of fruit too. There is already a big strawberry patch I
found, totally overgrown with weeds and too many plants so an early job is
going to be thinning that out and weeding it so we can have some yummy fruit
salads in the summer. Maybe grapes too
if I can find out how to maintain the vine! I’m going to plant raspberries and
thornless blackberries around the veg patch.
It will be great to take a fridgeful of homegrown goodies on the road in
the summer.
I read Candide by Voltaire years ago and
recently listened to In Your Time on Radio 4 which had the book as the
subject. Candide at the end of all his
adventures finds himself with his childhood sweetheart, cultivating his garden (hence the title of this blog). Even though I never had a childhood sweetheart,
I am cultivating my garden, and I still hope to have a few more
adventures. It will be great to return
to a garden though. And the sweetheart? Well who knows!
Tonight I’m relaxing writing this and
listening to an audio book – The Hunger Games - a brilliant scifi trilogy, now
a film too I think, but I will read the book first before seeing the film. Always the best way round I think. I’m not a great reader – my eyes
become tired very quickly but I love listening to a good story and this one has
already hooked me. I love strong female
heroines and this one has a great one. So writing this now, there’s almost the
sense of the worst being over and some hope on the horizon today! Not drinking has certainly helped. I don’t even think about it now, and there’s
still some beers in the fridge which have stopped beckoning to me every time I
open the door!
Finally I had some very nice feedback from
one of my regular readers. It’s great to
hear that there is someone out there.
Please let me know if you’ve read this and what you think. All respectful criticism gratefully received!
And any unwanted plants!!!
All the best from a road near you,
Mr Alexander
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