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Veggie ventures

Well this week has been an exciting one as we’ve started a new adventure here at LBH HQ. I’ve always loved gardening but don’t have the space at home to fulfil all my gardeningambitions. We have an average sized house with a smallish garden, and wanting both chickens and vegetables, it soon became apparent that it was an either or situation ……………. the chickens won, putting my veggie growing aspirations on the back burner.

A few months ago a friend suggested that they may know someone who has the garden but not the time to do it justice,and would we be interested in taking on such a project.  My initial thoughts were to grab the opportunity with both hands,then my sensible head kicked in and so we had to give it some serious thought, weighing up all the pros and cons.  We went to see the garden and meet the people concerned and that sealed the deal. What a wonderful place and a lovely family.

From being a little girl I have many happy memories of my dad and granddads pottering in their veggie gardens, and me “helping them” from an early age wielding a spade, fork or just being sent in to pick peas and beans from plants taller than me. I’m hoping that I learned something from them along the way. I guess one thing I picked up was the serenity of the garden and how happy dad was to see, and enjoy eating the fruits of his labour.

Now I hear most of you saying that I must be mad as I’m always busy and wouldn’t have the time for such a huge undertaking ( well a 48ft by 35ft undertaking to be precise) but isn’t there a saying about if you want something doing,ask a busy person? I’ve given it a huge amount of thought and my thinking is that there are days when I just don’t get out of the kitchen and into the fresh air. It’s easy to ignore my garden at home because it’s there, and there are always a million and one other things which need doing first, so the temptation to ignore it can be quite high. My rational for undertaking someone else’s garden is that I wouldn’t want to let them down, and because it’s away from our house I will have to make the effort to get there to see to things.  As I’ve mentioned before I’ve always been quite good at juggling tasks and time, so it’ll just be another project to juggle. It might mean early mornings or late evenings but hopefully we’ll see the products of our labours over the next year.

So this weekend we bit the bullet and made a start on the garden. Bearing in mind that it’s not been used as a veggie garden for a number of years we hired a rotavator and started to clear the plot. We’ve wrestled machines, wielded spades, forks, rakes and secateurs.  We’ve lifted paving stones, cleared paths, found paths, fought brambles to name but a few jobs, but we’ve now mostly cleared the site and so we have a better idea of what we taking on. Rain stopped play today but I can’t believe how much the two of us have managed to achieve over the last two days. Needless to say there are a few aching limbs but happy hearts and a feeling of excitement, as I can only hope that the garden will look like it does in my head come next July. I hope that you’ll join us on our journey and see how we get on. I’m sure there will be ups and downs, but if anyone knows how to get rid of artichokes please let me know as I fear they will be haunting me for the foreseeable future (in more ways than one)