This plus that equals…. gardening

Here’s the latest instalment in my series of posts all about what makes our lives here at home tick. This week is all about gardening. Now I am actually rubbish at gardening, but I still enjoy it.

Taking Advantage of my Mother in Law

My mother in law loves to garden, really loves it. She is always offering us plants she has grown, or trying to get me to understand why it’s a disaster the weather has happened when it has.

So we pointed out that any plant we received was just shoved in an available patch of ground and we would hope for the best. As this clearly isn’t working maybe she would like to do our garden for us.

Turns out this was a win win situation. She has run out of her own garden to, well garden, she’s on top of that. It’s a finished project just being maintained and tweaked. So she is really happy to have a new project to work on.  For us, we end up with actual flowers and prettiness.

Even better, she genuinely thinks we are doing her the favour!!

L’s Garden

L loves his garden time. It can get a bit chaotic though. Planting seeds, digging, creating a building site etc.

So to protect our flower beds we gave him his own area. It has been the best thing we have ever done.

He loves his building site. His tractors and diggers have somewhere to get good and dirty. He gets to care for his own seeds that he plants. Some grow, some don’t, it doesn’t matter.

He can dig happily and without consequence. He can water his garden until he has created a muddy puddle Peppa would be jealous of.

The only thing I would like to add to his area is a proper mud kitchen, I just know he would love it.

Herbs

The only thing I have ever really been able to grow is herbs and I have a beautiful herb garden.

Thyme, rosemary, chives, fennel, sage, lemon balm, mint. It looks and smells wonderful. I get to use my own herbs when I’m cooking and I can’t tell you how fab that is.

I find this little corner of garden really soothing. I get a great deal of pleasure from it being all mine, but the scents are so calming as well. It also happens to eb a little shady corner that no one else is naturally drawn to. A bit damp, cold and lonely, I love that about it!

Parts I Really Love

We’ve got a gorgeous wisteria, gorgeous. Several amazing mature roses, they smell amazing, really pretty too. One is a deep purple, another covered in tiny white blooms that has covered our trellis, a bright pink and a classic white. Love them. We have a tiny little honeysuckle, which is one of my favourite plants, I’d love to see it do better but the rose and wisteria smother it.

I love our fruit trees but so do the ants and wasps, need to do something about that, hmmm. If we get in there quick enough we get the most tasty greengages and so many cooking apples we could live off crumble.

We could probably do with talking to The Local Tree Experts, it’s just a shame they don’t run in the UK!!!

I mainly love the mix in our garden, the fun play for L. The pretty flowers and tasty fruit. I love that we have a lawn for L to run around on, but patio areas to sit as well. For us it really is perfect.

Future Plans

Due to the extension we are planning my beloved herb garden is going to need to move, so we are going to extend a bed for all my herby plants.

I’d really like to move my honeysuckle to somewhere it will flourish, obviously when I say I’m going to move it, I need to get my Mother in Law to do it! I’d like to plant a Jasmine as well, near the bedroom window if possible, I’d love to have the scent of Jasmine float through the window.

We also need to invest in soe new garden furniture. I’d really like something sturdy enough to be out year round, we use our garden so much a chair or two that could be left out would be amazing. I need to research that.

Finally, I’m linking up with #TwinklyTuesday, #Blogstravaganza, #StayClassyMama and #fortheloveofBLOG

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