What will this year bring me?

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Tis 2010 and I am asking myself. How did I get here? When I was young the year 2010 didn’t even exist! It was in that vague future and I didn’t even think that it might even come in my life time. And now it is here and am IN it.

Then? HOW did I get into this gardening thingie? My mother had some roses in the back and for all I know, never even looked after it. That they survived is a miracle to me!

In 1979 I moved from an apartment to a townhouse and I asked the management of the townhouses rental complex, for a few bushes to be moved around the side of the house. I had a corner unit and thought that I might perhaps be allowed to plant some of my own plants there. Only to discover, that the management felt, that They should pay for whatever plants I wanted to plant there. I told, them that I was already greatful to be allowed to plant my own plants. So every year at springtime, I was given help just to dig up my little patch and sometimes I would come home from work, to find some of the gardeners, watering my little patch!

Then I moved away and it was winter and I couldn’t take any of my plants with me. I moved to a housing complex where we were given a townhouse, with all sorts of staircases inside and a huuuge deck.

My hub being a carpenter, made me huge wooden containers and I started container gardening. There was a gent who came to check up, on what I had done and adviced me to apply for one of the townhouses with a garden at the back. I didn’t know we could do that. so I put our name in and in the beginning of the summer of 1992, we were given a townhouse with a bare garden. Only grass and a teeeny patio… and as the winter went into spring, I noticed that it was flooded in the spring from all the water, coming down to it, from the huge manmade hill behind our home and the waterpipe.

So here the dutch heritage came in and I thought of raising the garden and making a little underground canal at the side. Hub, Being Canadian and thinking that I was backward… didn’t initially wanted to listen to me, on this little canalbuilding to divert the water, which also came from the waterpipe… to the main outside part where there were the communal grass grounds….

He had no idea what I meant with a raised garden either. So I had to draw it out and still, he didn’t believe me… But, he did make an effort…. With time, he has come to realize, that it was best just to follow my request and not question it, for they were always sound and worked out great.

Then came the year where we for the 3rd time won an award and a little tiny amount of money… for we had a great garden. I was amazed that people even paid that much attention to what was just a thing of trying this, that or the other, outside. I wan’t really gardening, nor an expert, just somebody, who read gardening magazines like a madperson and was inundated with shelves and shelves of gardening and horticultural info in books.

Alsoo, every summer, I dragged my hub around with me, around the neighbourhood and around our Coop, to just enjoy to see what others had done.. it didn’t take long, before he began to realize, that I knew a bit more about plants and gardening, than he was used to….That summer of 1993 was the one, I saw one puffed up hub walking beside me… I didn’t understand his puffy-up ego.. I wasn’t gardening after all, I was just trying my hand at different things. And the garden was the one thing between many.

People were amazed that veggies and fruits grew in between my flowers… Yet all I ACTUALLY DID, was play around to see, whether or what would do what in this or that spot!

The first spring in 1993, when all them tulips, brought in from the Netherlands bloomed at the back. People were attracted to it, in droves. Nothing like it, did they ever see… sometimes, I was highly amused. for many wanted to see the garden, but didn’t want me to see them! So often I would hear them say to one another: Is she home?" I ALWAYS was able to see them, but because of my long sheers hanging in front of the sliding door, they couldn’t see me sitting indoors and watching them.

NOW my garden has changed so many times. BUT it has kept attracting people. The pond is gone now and we have a little tiny patio there too. But where the mirror hangs, is now underneath a large shelve. painted in the colour of cedar wood and teeny tiny herbs in all sorts of pots grow there, as well as some herbs… We have a tiny waterfall in an old pot and there is now a birdbath in the garden..

This year the front garden wall, has got to be fixed up and that wall has to be redone, as it has developed a lean. Just because of snow that became ice. has pushed the whole lot aside.

Gardening always means, something has to be done or changed or added to… Or the gardening lady has a bee in her bonnet again and gone crazy! Just as my brainwaves for my Christmas decorations are brainwaves. so also my gardens and my baskets..

Gardening is not work for me, nor a job, but a passtime, whereby I always think: "mmmm, let’s see if this or that will work. Otherwise? I’ll have to transplant you next year or do something else.

NOW I also have roses. Something I told myself, I would not get into.. but guess what? am the sucker who can’t stay away from them….

My cat isn’t alive anymore and I miss her company outside… But it does mean that I get more birdies to visit me birdbath… and perhaps? oooh sooo perhaps? me hub might make that little birdhouse, for some kind of little birdie to come along and make its nest there… OH! I DO hope soo, that he will not forget and make it!! AND that mother nature, will send me too, one of her little birdies to nest in it..

aah, tis March and the sun is shining every day. The temps have been just marvellous and who knows? What summer will bring me this year…

OH! almost forgot! We have to look for new rattan garden chairs for around our Victorian garden table….

pfff, the prices of these are unbelievable… I hope somebody up there, will take mercy on me and help me get one good buy and price for them!

ah, this is me, rattling along… by my little ol’ self.

• 6 Mar, 2010
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