It’s quite amazing that we have, all of a sudden, a colourful garden bed near our house. This area has been a bit of a disaster area for the past few years as we’ve had major renovations to the house, had a new patio and paths put in and only had the garden beds bordered with bricks a year ago. These garden beds were really like a war zone with labourers, brickies, scaffolders and decorators working all around them (and over them!) for such a long time.
After the brick borders were put in last year, I got into the beds and did the first attempt to clear the weeds and I gave everything a pretty good prune. Also, in the autumn, I put a lot of the fallen leaves in the beds as mulch. It’s really pleasing to see today just what a nice colourful garden bed we have. It’s putting on a nice show (as my father would have said).
I really don’t know what most of these plants and flowers are, and I’m not really sure what I’m doing in the garden, but it’s fun to just try things and see what happens. I remember very well watching my father work in the garden when I was very young, so I guess some of that had an impression on me even though, at the time, I thought I’d never want to do gardening. It’s interesting how things change.
One thing that’s nice about gardening is that you can have a vision (at least an approximate one) and, if you put in a little effort each year, that vision can gradually come into existence – for example, this colourful garden bed. I find it a nice thing to do and it can be almost meditative (both things the young version of me would have laughed at). And, another good thing is that you can garden quite naturally without using much other than what’s already in the garden (leaves, grass, shredded branches all naturally make good mulch and nutritious feed for the soil), which helps my Use 10 Percent Less initiative.
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