Wednesday 2 July 2014

The Secret to a Successful Vegetable Garden is Little and Often



We are all busy people. Whether what we do is of value to the next person is irrelevant. Before I became a mother, I took any course or class that stirred my interest, travelled around the country and abroad to live concerts I couldn’t miss, had endless energy to spread around, endless patience for other people. I certainly knew I was happy and appreciated that, but I didn’t realise how easy it was to make myself happy when I was only responsible for my own actions. No matter how stressful a moment in time was, I always had the reassurance that I’d soon return to my personal freedom. Now I have to work harder to balance the responsibility of a child with the desire to always be doing something of joy and value. My garden makes this so much easier. My eight-month-old son will sit happily beside me while I weed, plant and sing him nursery rhymes. If he bores of looking at me, there are birds and cats to watch and unexpected breezes to make him gasp and laugh.


To truly perfect an art requires so much of your time. It is the reason that brilliant people are often considered eccentric – they don’t thin themselves to entertain peripheral distractions. For those of us walking the more mainstream line, we need to find a way to juggle all the boring bits of life to allow for those moments of pleasure and satisfaction. I rarely spend more than a solid hour in the garden. I might pop in and out twenty times in one day, picking a few weeds here, planting a seed there. It is the accumulation of these miniscule efforts that keep the vegetable garden surviving through the seasons.


On the 21st of June I spent a few minutes planting two borlotti beans at either side of a branch. Only for the entry in my diary I would have barely remembered the act. This was the result yesterday, twelve days later:




This is the glorious sight of the original bean, it's red outer coating discarded beside it, split in two to allow the new shoot to escape. The moment I saw it, I was immediately grateful that I had taken the little time to dig the ground and bury two seeds.


I instantly planted two more.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear your comments...if only to know that someone is reading this blog!