January

A sudden jolt and a couple of clicks later and what was an impulse has, in 30 seconds turned into a blog. This is about my garden and me and how I garden and how the family uses "my" garden, how local wild life is trying to reclaim my garden - all through the year. I am a keen gardener but do it my way as I am too lazy to read all the way through a latin name or a set of instructions for anything. This normally results in spectacular and monetary failure of some kind - but often it doesn't. You don't have to be an expert to garden - just have some space, water and light - be persistent and learn from (in my case) many many mistakes.


So first - my garden. Pictures will follow. Its about 6 or 7 yards wide and about 20 yards long. Well I guess that's about it - I'll pace it out on the weekend to see if thats right. It feels too small in winter and way too big in summer at the height of the pruning, picking and weeding season - I still work and have a life outside the garden. It belongs to an 1920's semi in Bexhill, East Sussex and had been there a while - though most of the green stuff in it is not that old. It backs on to a railway - or as I like to think of it as my private nature reserve as we have a large wide embankment above the rails covered in shrubs and trees and its home to many species of bird, an occasional squirrel and a family of foxes - more of them no doubt later on and also acts as a nice barrier to the occasional breeze! We moved here 4 years ago and the garden was simply a long piece of grass with two one yard wide flower beds either side of the grass running to the end of the garden culminating in a muddy patch with a huge Bramley apple tree. Then there was nothing much else in it really. Other half was happy with that. Green square with a shrub in each corner - that's her perfect garden. Not mine.


Now there is not much space for anything more. But the grass is still there - sacrosanct - The only thing I am not allowed to remove By Order of the family.


Still I love it as it is south facing and because of the railway, not over looked giving a nice "open sky" feel for a garden in the middle of a town and because we are close to the sea ( a few hundred yards) there is the light and climate that only a southern seaside town has - warm, bright, salty and glittery - and battered to death in winter by winds.


So here is my blog