SuburbanGaze

This is a lazy post so that the photographs can speak for themselves.  Over the last few weeks we have been visiting National Trust gardens as the lockdown phase begins to ease.  It's been an absolute joy. Often being the first few people to be let in to enjoy the vast, diverse and beautiful spaces.  Baddesley Clinton Croft Castle Hidcote

This whole pandemic has been an odd one for me.   I continue to work from home on a full-time basis whilst I observe many who appear to be either bored or, enjoying learning loads  of new skills - if that is gardening then the more the merrier.    I think I've probably gardened less this year.  This is due a number of factors including my change in working arrangements.  To add to this, like many, m y current office is the same place that I normally relax in the evenings.  I have therefore partly swapped gardening for running, sometimes up-to 5 times a week.  It is a way to free my mind of work commitments, to meditate, to find oneness, and to re-energise.  When I originally wrote this post, I was reflecting on life post-marriage, and it was timed for a Spring publication date that I never got round to sending.  That seems to be a pattern at the moment.  Although, to give me credit, I have begun reading The Jungle Garden ...

Last year I promised the garden that I would  bring new gardening practises and refinement, new plants and cohesion.  I'm not sure if I managed the refinement and cohesion but I definitely kept my other promises. I didn't use any chemical pesticides in the garden at all.  I had thought that this would be really challenging.  There are aisles full of various killing products in the garden centres, they've even made their way into the supermarket. They are so easy to just pop in your basket. Well it's been a simple adjustment.  It has meant thinking differently about the garden and its place in the wider ecosystem where one creepy-crawly eating a leaf is feeding a frog, that is feeding a bird and so on.   During 2019 I opting for two types of nematodes to combat my biggest issues in the garden, namely slugs/snails and vine weevils. I also brewed some nettles and made a concentrated spray that helps with aphids.  I've noticed a big diffe...