100 days of the 100 day project!

Well it is day 100 plus 3 of the 100 day project.  So how did it go and was it worthwhile?  Did I enjoy it?  What did it do to how I feel about the garden and what did it do to the garden itself?  Time for some thinking.

I decided not to do too much wondering about the project while I was in the middle of it as the whole point seemed to be the gently repeated doing so I just let the time pass and committed myself to doing something connected with the garden every day.  When we were here that tended to be something practical and outside, anything from an afternoon of serious hard work to the pulling up of a solitary creeping buttercup.

When we were away with children and grandchildren or visiting friends I tried to keep my gardening mind engaged.  Sometimes that was reading although I notice I did not return to my vast numbers of gardening books.  Reading was something I did on the internet or in a magazine.  I am quite surprised I did not go back to reading my books.  I have a huge collection and for years they were my staple bedside reading.  Some of them, like Mirabel Osler, Monty Don or Christopher Lloyd are not "how to" books at all and are a pleasure to read for themselves and it is odd in some ways that I haven't picked them up again.  Perhaps they reflect a particular form of being in love with the garden that I have been holding myself back from.  Exactly why will become clear later in the post.  I also watched garden programmes on the TV, looked at other people's gardens and thought a lot about our own.  So I think I can truly say that there has not been a day in that 100 days when I have not engaged with the garden in one way or another.

I don't think I set out with any real idea of what I hoped to gain from the project, other than perhaps a tidier garden, but I suppose I did wonder if it would make me reconnect after a period of disconnection.  And has it?  Yes it has.  The garden looks more loved and lived in (and undoubtedly tidier in those very few places where tidiness is the aim).  And I really know what is going on.  The daily engagement means you really look at the garden, time and time again.  I know what is about to flower, what is doing well in the heat and what has struggled with the sun and dryness of this last couple of months.  It reminds me of dealing with young children.  Spending repeated time with a child or with a garden makes you understand more deeply and makes you able to read what is happening differently. 

I think I have seen things more clearly with the repeated call to go outside seen the shifts as the season changes from week to week.  This is the view out from the garden on the 6th April, day 6 of the project.  There are no leaves yet on the hawthorn hedge, the honeysuckle or the clematis.  Three months later there is so much growth I shall have to cut some of it back to make sure the window on Moel Arthur, the rounded Iron Age hillfort in the distance, is still open.

Here is the same spot in May, five weeks later.  Everything is intensely green and the clematis is falling over itself.  The trees have burst into leaf.  That extraordinary May freshness is smelling of green.

Early June was all about roses.  Most of the roses here are old or species roses and flower once in June in a great cataract of flower.  Some of the most beautiful are the wild roses which grow in the hedges.  Sometimes I wonder if we should have more repeat flowerers but the tough species roses look at home up here somehow and it does make the June explosion very special.

And by the end of June the hardy geraniums and alchemilla had surged through the flower beds.  It has been very hot and dry and the grass is brown in the side garden and in front of the cottage.  The orchard and field have fared better.  I haven't done  much watering despite the drought although Ian has been watering the vegetables daily and the crops look abundant with the watering and the heat.  We have just had a heavy shower for the first time for weeks and it was a real pleasure to see the rain bouncing off the path and to hear it gurgling into the water butts.

So I am glad to have done the project.  I think it has made me look properly at the garden and looking at it and caring about it has made it thrive.  But I am keeping a little bit of my heart back because after thirteen very happy years here we have bought a building plot to fulfil another dream of building a house of our own.  So this house is on the market to fund the building of the new one.  I hope whoever buys it will love it as much as we have and will love the garden and the views and the sense of being in your own little world that comes with this place.  Who knows how long it will take to sell but while we are here we will still enjoy it and the garden and the holiday cottage.  I am pretty sure it will be somebody's dream, as it has been ours!