When I locked the door for the last time on my little house on 27th January, waved most of my belongings off into storage and began a period of nomadic living until I could find my next home, I could not have imagined that almost 7 months later I would still be hunting. I thought maybe by Spring, early Summer at latest, I'd be in but no... Frustratingly, I had found somewhere and almost got to completion, then the seller changed her mind and pulled out. The English legal system is rubbish where house buying is concerned and the money spent on surveys and legal feels is meaningless if the other party lets you down. My personal view is that there should be some compensation - it shouldn't be possible for you to get so far down the line and then have to start again just because someone is a bit fickle.
For the most part, I am living a 75 mile commute from work, thanks to the kindness of a friend, the rest of the time I am on my son's sofa bed so I can spend a bit of time with his little family. It has been challenging, not least because the pandemic has sent the housing market into some kind of madness, but also the lack of certainty about when I can finally settle down again.
It has made me think about what really matters. With almost all my things out of reach, I am questioning how much I really need. Surprising how little you need day to day really. I miss my kitchen and my own bed but everything else? Not so sure. Perhaps I will delight in it again when I finally get to unpack. The things that have really kept me going - and I have felt pretty bleak at times - are the less tangible things... blue skies and sunshine, my grandson's first smiles, the kindness of friends. And always, running through like a thread, the constancy of nature. I think I really understand now how my Mum found solace in the garden - there is something very steadying about losing yourself in the physical and creative effort of painting with plants and then watching the bees, butterflies and birds appear, as if by magic.
Mum loved sweet peas and the first blooms were ready to cut 2 years to the day that she died. They will always make me think of her, with their delicate petals and sweet scent.
I renewed my National Trust membership and took a trip to the rose garden at Anglesey Abbey. The fragrance hung in the air and the photos don't do justice to these beauties.
In the 'resting bed' in the rose garden, bright cosmos with their feathery foliage...
The house I have been staying at was a new build 5 years ago and has the typical 'building site soil' with poor grass. My friend is, of her own admission, no gardener and was happy for me to turn her patch of weedy grass into a garden. This project has probably kept me sane over the last few months. From painting the fences...
To the first few trips to the nurseries...
Marking out the design...
Then hours of digging out the beds, shifting sacks full of builders lime, adding topsoil and well rotted manure (I have never dug a garden before and not found a single worm!) and finally beginning to plant up. The plan is to provide some year round interest and some height to, eventually, shield from the overlooking windows.
Amazing how a little splash of colour begins to make it look like a garden...
Summer sunshine saw the cheap and cheerful bedding plants come into their own and the beginnings of a flower bad taking shape...
And as summer, sadly, draws towards its evening, the grass, deliberately filled out with white clover, looks greener and healthier, the perennials are beginning to spread and the trees are slowly filling out.
It's a long way from 'finished' (what garden ever is?) and I have stopped adding up how much I have spent! There is always space for just one more plant and as the seasons change, I'm sure we will want to keep adding to it. Next plan is Spring bulbs, need to plan and order those, then plant in a month or two. It has kept me looking forward, when there have been days when the future feels a bit pointless and we joke that even when I have my own garden again, I will have to come back every so often to keep this one tidy!
Nature has been therapy in so may ways.
S x
