Its official I am truly obsessed with gardening. The evidence is there to see. When I awake (which in the summer is 4.30 am) as soon as light permits I’m out inspecting the garden, observing looking at the sheer beauty of my tiny garden, looking for problems, making mental notes of things that need staking, chipping, weeding, feeding and/or watering or just pondering about jobs that need to be done and jobs that I can’t put off any longer. My friends despair at being forced to look at plants before they go over or at a single plant that has just flowered and which gives me so much joy that I want to share it with others.
As an addict I can’t understand why others don’t see what I do. The sense of contentment and tranquillity, that comes from observing a single flower or the beauty of a combination of plants. I am truly obsessed with gardening but I don’t care because the essence of why I garden is I love plants. Like many other people, my work is full of differing demands and working with range of personalities. So the sanctuary of my garden offers is a welcome contrast to my working life, which is the second reason I garden.
The joys of mid-summer are all around us as I worry and panic about the endless challenges that gardening raises that I call midsummer madness . This year for the first time the lilies have been hit by vine weevil which means I was unsure about the lilies flowering to their full glory. As they were meant to be the star of the show I was freighting about how to get around the dearth of gorgeous lilies. Its times like this that make me think, why oh, why, did I ever decide to open my garden to public security in midsummer.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.1.255-60)
Madness
“If sad and merry madness equal be”Twelfth Night
