Day 52 of the 100 day project

Yes! Past the half way mark!  There have been tiny bits in the garden since I last posted, mostly watering and the kind of weeding where you wander past and pull one thing up.  And no working in the garden today because today I am off to some meetings this morning and then down to London in late afternoon to go to the Chelsea Flower Show tomorrow, thanks to an invitation from a friend.

I am leaving the garden alive with all sorts of bees and blossom.  When you walk around there are places where the noise of insects beats joyously around your head.

I am really looking forward to Chelsea.  I went two or three years ago with the same friend and we had a great day.  The trick for me to Chelsea is not trying to relate what you see to your own space all the time, instinctive although that is.  That is much easier to do when you live somewhere like I do where the garden is high and wildish and grows what it wants to grow rather than some vision of an English garden.  What works for me is trying to look at the show gardens, particularly the smaller ones which are easier to get your head round, from the point of view of how they have been put together, trying to understand the principles at work so that you can see how the designer has thought about the space.  I don't at all mean by this that you lose the emotional response to a garden.  For me a garden is first and foremost about how it makes you feel.  But part of what is interesting about a whole assembly of gardens is trying to understand how that feeling has been created.  So a mixture of feeling and an attempt at some analysis is a very interesting and rewarding way to spend a day and the friend who has invited me is a very good person to do that sort of looking with.

And obviously, a bit of just wandering around dreamily in the sun with a glass of something.