The best-laid plans...

I was all set to write a ranty post tonight. All about Halloween and the nightmare it is for the overthinkers among us (that would be me, in case you were wondering). But, frankly, I'm too tired for ranting. Or even overthinking - which may well be a first.

I spent the afternoon in the garden, planting. Not weeding, planting. The fun part of the whole gardening game. The bare patch of blah under Mr6's window is now full of planty goodness. Things that we hope will grow in an area that offers nothing but hot, blinding afternoon sun, or complete shade for the rest of the day. Not for the faint-hearted.

The whole thing took me by surprise. I'd planned an afternoon of vacuuming and paper reading (less of the former, more of the latter). Instead, we spent some quality time at the garden centre, trailed around by two little boys who rate Garden Centres right up there with 'looking at houses' and 'buying antiques' on their list of least-favourite ways to spend a Sunday. Mr3 is easily bought off with the notion that Garden Centre also usually means that he will spend the next few hours up to his neck in dirt, digging, watering and generally making a mess. Mr6? Not so much.

Home we went with our load of gold-plated (well, one had to assume, given the price) plants, and straight into it. The trouble with planting is that it brings you very close to the garden. Close enough to see the weeds that you may have overlooked had you just been, you know, walking past. But I was a woman with a mission. I was not there to be taunted distracted by weeds. Or that's what I told The Builder when he wandered past at one stage and pointed out a few prize specimens.

"I'm not weeding today," I said. "I'm planting."

The look he gave me suggested that one could do both, but I was not to be waylaid by such tactics.

Having dug holes for, planted in and mulched around 30 plants, I'm here to vouch for the effectiveness of gardening as exercise. I'm shattered. In that wholesome, muscle-fatigue kind of way. Not that angsty, overthinking kind of way.

I can't wait to see how my new little charges fare over the next few weeks.  That's the beautiful thing about gardening. If you put all the right elements into place, technically it should all work well. But there are always surprises. Plants that succeed against the odds. And those that fail to thrive.

Ah well, it all just gives me something else to overthink.

{image: KetiArt/etsy}

Starting afresh

While autumn is not generally a time associated with new life, I’m focussed on green. Leaves from the Liquid Amber next door are falling softly, blanketing the ground in next season’s compost. The Japanese Maple, also next door though I try to pretend it’s on my side of the fence, is a dome of fiery red. My Japanese Maple, about knee-high to a grasshopper and looking as though it wished it lived next door, is shrivelling quietly, the edges of its tiny leaves crisping up to brown.

But I’m not looking at all that show-off stuff.

Mr3 and I spent a day in the garden last week. We ripped out the last of the summer basil, carefully stripping off every useable leaf to make into pesto. We uprooted the capsicum shrubs, so leafy, so green, so fruitless for so long. The two shallots that survived were dispatched to the compost bin. We dug and weeded, weeded and dug.

We had seedlings to plant.

When you’re planting seedlings with a three-year-old you need two things: a good supply of little tools (because he’ll want whatever you’re using) and a sharp eye. Two rows of spinach went in without incident. Two rows of cauliflower – at the other end of the bed – were also planted with no fuss. Once we got to the middle, however…well, that was a different story.

When you’re three, the best place to be when you’re gardening is in the garden bed. And while you’re okay with keeping a weather eye on the plants in front of you, you’re not so on the ball with the ones under your feet. Or your bottom, as the case may be.

A row of lettuces, a row of shallots, a row of celery – all flattened twice by a person who looks small on the outside of the garden bed, and like Ian Thorpe, all size 14 feet, on the inside of it.

But we did it. One garden bed, all neatly planted out. We go out and check them every day, and he’s practising watering them softly – “like rain, Mummy”. He removes the snails, placing them carefully on the other side of the garden (from where I hope it will take them at least a week to return). And we both watch, anxiously, to see if they’ll survive the slug onslaught that’s bound to occur any day now.

If all goes to plan, we have the makings of a fine vegetable soup in that garden. If it doesn’t, there’s always rhubarb.

{image: Burgon and Ball}