Five years or so ago I signed off from this little blog space in a somewhat downbeat manner having just experienced what I felt was a rather lacklustre response to our second open gardens event in Sandgate. I expressed my wish for things to change, for pastures new even. The intervening years have indeed brought many changes to our lives, some good, some not, and it's at this time of year that one traditionally reflects on what has gone before in order to plan ahead. So I feel a brief resume of these missing five years might be appropriate; in short we've moved, twice! The whys and wherefores are not really of interest to anyone else, suffice to say, country living, even semi rural, is not for us, and we are now settled in our forever home.
Just a couple of miles along the coast from our house and garden in Sandgate, our new (well newish now, we've been here eighteen months) home provides all we need, including a garden that is both challenging and interesting, at least to us. The estate agent's blurb described the house as having 'once landscaped gardens' and, as we have discovered over the last season, these must indeed have been glorious. We moved in during the late summer of 2016 having had much work done to make the house comfortable for us. Part of this refurbishment was to have tree surgery to several mature trees in both the front and back gardens. This was both terrifying and exciting in equal measure as the trees in question were very large having grown for fifty years or so seemingly unchecked. While they were good, healthy in most part, specimens they had clearly outgrown the space allotted to them and showed some signs of decay. An arborist and the council agreed they should go. After three or four days of loud, hot and messy work, we were left with piles of bark chippings, some rather ugly stumps, and a feeling that we'd rather nuked the garden. However, the upside was amazing since we now have clear views across the town to the sea from all the front windows, and the neighbours behind have improved views too.
Many aspects of our lives have altered since I last blogged but one constant that remains with me is my love of the garden, not just ours but 'the garden' in its widest sense and with that in mind I intend to rekindle this blog to record any changes we make to our garden, to log any visits we may make to other gardens and to document our time here.
Today has been grey, wet and mostly very wintry although an amazing sunset gave the most glorious light through the house for a few minutes just now. Earlier, in a bid to shake off the New Year lethargy I took a short stroll around the lanes near us, returning via the front garden to take some pictures, specifically with this post in mind. The pictures are not good, so I will spare you the pain of viewing them however, there is promise already in the borders with one hellebore, primroses and bergenia in flower along with lots of spring bulb leaves pushing their noses through the soil. Now, since we're past the shortest day we can look forward to the garden coming back to life, so watch this space for updates. Happy 2018!
I very much forward to the future and your garden ramblings.
ReplyDelete