Having It All

This magnet lives on my fridge. It's a quote of Cicero, and translated into English it reads "If you have a garden and a library, then you lack nothing". I bought it over 20 years ago, because it summed up pretty much what I wanted in life. It has faded over the years, but it isn't going to leave my fridge unless it breaks.

Not all feel that way. A friend of mine who was visiting, looked at it and said, "Yes. I need a gardener!"

Yeah, she's not all that much of a garden person. She'd rather spend her time doing other stuff. Reading is a good guess. And I will admit, there are times when it would be terrific to just tell someone to "Go do this, and then do that, and finish off with the other", instead of having to go out and do it yourself.

But there are times when there is so much truth in those words. Like when we're sort of halfway through spring, and these things are in your garden:

That's my cherry tree. It isn't looking at its best because of course, today's weather has been a mess. It's very blustery and has been rather wet. The sun peeks out every now and then, but not for long. But hopefully the weather won't batter the flowers before insects have had a chance to do their thing, so that a few months down the line, I can pick cherries.

  These are some charmingly pointy tulips growing in my driveway. When the sun is out they open up and form a spiky star.

 And further down the driveway I have loads of grape hyacinths. And I love these guys. They are so willing to procreate, that I am gradually getting large swathes of them.

At the moment I am working on making the front garden look better and will have to dig them all up and spread them out after weeding, but in a few years' time, I might have a whole bed of them.







When you get these sorts of beauties cropping up, you feel pretty darn good about being the Head Gardener of your own personal patch of Heaven. Unless of course the weather behaves badly. Like today. That's when your library steps in and takes over.