I love winter.
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| Icicle growth (Photo credit: thievingjoker) |
And I'm not going to wax lyrical about sharply frosty blue-sky mornings or crunchy snow.
Nope. I love winter because I don't have to feel guilty about the garden.
I was just standing gazing out of my kitchen window looking at my back garden. Well. Let me be totally truthful now. I was standing at the sink guiltily shoveling the last remaining Krispy Kreme doughnut from last nights birthday party into my mouth, whilst invoking the rule that if you eat something standing up it has no calories and the "if no-one saw you eat it, it has no calories" rule." So by my reckoning that doughnut actually was the equivalent of a work-out.
Whatever, while I was doing it I was looking at the garden. At the patchy, muddy, overgrown lawn. At the brown and dormant grapevine. At the dead brown things in my assorted pots. And feeling grateful that because it's winter I feel able to leave it all alone.
I know there are those of you reading who will shout in protest that there are lots of jobs you can do in the garden during the winter months. But because I'm not in the garden trying to enjoy it I can quite happily leave it to fend for itself.
Frankly I'm not exactly Charlie Dimmock ( though have a strange inappropriate crush on Alan Titchmarsh- what's that about?) so even during the spring, summer or autumn you won't find me gagging to get out there and mow, prune and plant.
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| Alan Titchmarsh at a Border's book signing (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
My uncle grows almost all his own veg and my aunt even had her own garden centre for a while. My grandparents deep borders were something to behold but the green finger gene totally passed me by and since DH has about as much interest as me in all things horticultural our garden is not exactly a thing of beauty!
Like most things my enjoyment of the garden focusses round food and drink and friends so what invariably happens every year is that as soon as we get three warmish nice days I invite all my mates round for an inpromptu barbecue. I dash to the garden centre and buy instantly pretty things for the tubs and hanging basket and poor DH gets bullied into mowing and strimming the worst of the nettles. Oh and hoovering. Yes- we have carpet in our garden Don't ask.
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| the gazebo under construction |
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| DS7 testing out his green fingers in my friend's garden |
To be fair my DH is a dab hand at building wooden things so between the decking, pergola and gazebo he designed and built and the giant two storey Wendy house we rolled Eygptian style from a neighbours garden to ours when her children outgrew it, there isn't much garden to garden.And as for the weeds and generally rustic feel to the garden I like to feel I have created ( or allowed to develop) a wildlife reserve for butterflies and things. And whatever likes to live around abandoned plastic ride on toys and rusting bikes.
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| An amazing sunset as seen from my garden. |
