Growing Green

One of the things I want to do at this new house is to grow veggies now we have a garden; part of this includes a greenhouse for the obvious suspects – tomatoes, peppers and chillies – so with this in mind Jean-Luc and I (mainly Jean-Luc) spent the latter half of our holiday week after Easter sorting out the base for said greenhouse.

This is where it's going - next to the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden.

 

The trenches for the sleepers which the greenhouse will sit upon and the sleepers that will go in them.

The sleepers were originally all 8 foot long and Jean-Luc cut two of them down to 6 foot with a handsaw! My hero.

                           

The path dug out and the edging in place.  All we need to do now is break up the base soil and get the greenhouse up.  

The greenhouse arrives on Friday, just in time for us to spend the May bank holiday weekend putting it up.

This has all happened due to the wonderful Jean-Luc who has worked like a Trojan and done a fantastic job of building this foundation.  It's amazing watching a man build something from scratch; having the skills to do this - even more so when you know his day job is desk jockeying in IT management. Guess that's why I love him.

The Rightness of Spring

Well here I am and welcome to my new blog on a new host.

I’ve changed the name of my blog as the old one (deconstructed smallholding) had passed its purpose and my life has changed considerably (in a good way I like to think) since I started it.  So here I am at ‘Always Coming Home’.  I chose this name as it’s the title of Ursula Le Guins’ wonderful book – an archaeology of a society living in a possible future in a valley in what would be present day California.  I love this book; the evocative and imaginative prose; the mixture of poetry, stories, cultural exploration… I really can’t do justice to it but it resonates and has been a firm favourite for over 20 years now.  

I also thought how perfectly I feel about my life and home now.  At the ripe age of 50 I feel I am coming home to myself and my life as I want to lead it. Simply, sustainably and mindfully.  I feel hugely grateful for the opportunity and I want to make the most of it.  I want our home to be warm, creative, welcoming and happy.  I want to be able to express the joy I feel at creating something rather than buying it, at learning new skills, at growing food and at using money as a possible ingredient in creating a solution rather than as a solution in its own right.

It is (as they say in such a cringe making way on some TV talent shows) a journey.  I know at times I will stumble, sometimes fall, find paths that are hard or easy or damned impossible; I know I will have to change course sometimes and completely rethink destinations or courses but that doesn’t matter because I will be learning and living and hopefully growing in a loving home; and what more, as humans, could we possibly ask for?

So I’m sitting here in the summer house on a sunny April day, looking at the garden all glowing and green and thinking ‘thank the gods it’s spring!’  And to celebrate here are some moments of loveliness from the garden.

A glorious array of spring flowers, including the lovely apple tree finally free of its pot after 4 years and reveling in having  a garden to grow in.