How does your garden grow?

Well, how does your garden grow?

There are so many ways and sometimes, just sometimes it reflects who we are not only inside / outside our homes but inside our heads too. I suspect mine is a haphazard approximation of Mary, Mary, quite contrary fame as I certainly have the silver bells and cockle shells.

Bear with me as I'm on a roll here and think I can prove a point.

Dragon fly on wood shed.

Some garden....
with love and fingers crossed that everything blooms; with technical efficiency reading books, designing plans and well, you get my drift; some have window boxes or vases as they have no space at all; some with outside intervention as they have no time or acknowledge that others have certain skills; with haphazard eclectic and reckless abandon.

I think I'm the latter. If someone knew me and my personality (but, obviously not my garden) was presented with a photo of the outside space of my little cottage I'm pretty sure the majority, if not all, would be able to correctly identify my garden.

A twisted seaweed and wood treasure.

The garden is surrounded by a wall covered in ivy where animals build homes and a viciously thorny red rose, a legacy plant from a previous owner, grows to incredible heights no matter how often I chop it and nods red balloon flowers overhead. As the ivy creeps not only the length of the interior of my garden but has taken up residency on the other side skirted by a footpath I don't suffer from graffiti, what a bonus! There is a woodshed - more like a wooden sentry box - where I store the wood that keeps me warm while I'm writing and prop coffee cups when I set up home in the garden. The garden itself is a mess of half followed through projects, culinary essentials, and found objects and 'treasures' that can't be parted with. This latter selection is scattered amongst the gravel and is something of an oddity to adults but children can be lost for hours, digging and sorting and uncovering jewellery, driftwood and shells.

This latter would probably be a clue for most people who have seen the windowsill in my bedroom as it also contains thin snakelike driftwood covered in salt crusts, sand and even dehydrated seaweed, pebbles, sea glass and mother-of-pearl shells. So what does that tell anyone about my writing I wonder. I think its best to let others judge as my reading of myself is only one interpretation of this propensity to hoard precious finds - like a child.

Violets growing beneath the apple tree.

The culinary side of things comes in the form of a massive array of herbs. In fact they are pretty much the only plants I bother with, the most notable exception being violets but as I also eat them, make the flowers into sorbets and pop the leaves in salads I'm not sure if I'd actually just categorise them as glorified herbs too. I suppose one of the more interesting non-herby inclusions is another legacy plant - an ancient apple tree. The tree is quite gnarly and was less than productive when I moved in having been loped and pruned to keep it contained which seemed a little sad. To combat this constriction it now runs along the wall that borders my neighbours house and up over a now defunct arbour where its branches now replace the missing metal bars. As for apples.... well two years ago not even I could keep up with its bounty.

I'll gloss over the bits of building material and plastic seats that are reminders of work that carries on in the house as I now have a man who comes along and has removed sack loads for me - its a work in progress.

So this is the background of my writing and perhaps my wee brain. What does it tell the outsider I wonder.