Summer's lease

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I see that my last blog celebrated the arrival of summer. Well, as the Bard said, ’summer’s lease hath all too short a date’. The main comfort to be gained from the grey skies and rain is that flowers tend to last longer and there isn’t a need to water the garden.

While sitting in the garden during the brief summer interlude, it occurred to me that one of the things which gardeners experience is seasonality. In fact, it’s something that gardeners, like farmers, can’t escape from. It also means that gardening involves looking back and evaluating performance in the current season as it passes and looking forward to planning and preparing for the seasons to come. Given that so much everyday life has been isolated from seasonality — most of all in the availability of all year round produce in the supermarket — it’s salutary to be reminded that ultimately everything that we eat and enjoy is seasonally determined.

So, green thoughts in a green shade inevitably turn to next season, and such questions as to whether I’ll sow sweet peas in the autumn (in pots) to bring through the winter to have a head start next spring. Amazingly, doing this actually worked, and the seedlings, under glass, survived the worst winter in decades, and, transplanted to parts of the south face border, and by the uprights to the arch at the end of the garden, are now flowering. Which justifies thinking and acting ahead for the season still to come.

• 10 Jun, 2010
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