I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that May is whizzing by all too quickly. I’m trying desperately, in amongst the general panic of too much to do-ness, to find time to stop and appreciate what is one of my most favourite times of the year. So I’m taking a quick pit-stop to write a bit about what May means to me.
May means:
– late night, torch-light fleecing at the plot
– an emptying greenhouse
– overflowing cold frames
– a car boot full of plants ready to be planted out
– the joy of the first alliums opening
– despair at discovering the first of many holes in my hostas
– forgetting AGAIN to do the Chelsea chop
– and, thereby resigning myself to a summer of staking and floppy plants
– pickings of stock Matthiola incana, the most intoxicating of scents
– panic that I haven’t sown enough and I’ve missed the boat for another year
– panic that I have sown way too much and where is it all going to go
– chive flowers in full bloom lining my fruit beds at the plot
– watering my plot at twilight to the sound of birds
– anticipation after spotting the first swelling fruits on my strawberries
– too many weeds
– the first rose on ‘Gertrude Jekyll’
– the smell of my warm greenhouse
– the miraculous sprouting into life of the overwintered twigs in a pot otherwise known as lemon verbena
– and finally the exhaustion that accompanies all of this. Everything comes at once and it all feels a bit relentless, but then I see the burgeoning garden and I pick some salad leaves, and I know why I do it. This is what keeps me going – along with tea and chocolate of course. Oh!, and the distant glimmer of hope that I might be able to sit down at some point soon. I’d love to know what May means to you.
Have a fabulous weekend everyone!