For Charleen

Was talking to Charleen the other night and she jokingly chided me over my lack of blogging, so my lovely friend, this one's for you.

My heads all awhirl with ideas for the land around me and the garden. Things seem to have picked up some momentum, and as the seasons start to change, so inspiration and dreaming is taking Casey and I into action. Our first land-related projects involve firstly, developing a vegetable garden (not having ever grown a single vegetable other than the odd tomato here and there, and some potatoes - by accident, when I was about 10 years old, this job is going to be a challenging one), and next in line is sorting out a rather large pond we have, a task which will too be one of mammoth proportion.

So, where do we start with these adventures? By calling on our neighbor, Farmer Tim, a local man of the West-Country land, who knows all there is to know about plowing and dredging and planting and hedging and all sorts that us city slickers haven't a clue about - and even more important , he has the heavy duty machinery to make it all happen ( at a small fee of course).

Tim popped round the other day to look though a sketch I'd done of our plans for said projects. Secretly I hoped I'd earned a few "street cred" points in his eyes by having my ideas all down on paper and talking vaguely as though I knew what I wanted to happen. His wisdom soon came in handy as he offered me hope - by telling me that the site earmarked for the veg plot may well not all be clay soil (where we are geographically the subsoil is clay, think red oozy sticky clay that you could pretty much dig up and mould into some object d' art if so inspired, the only problem is that growing anything - especially anything that is intended to be eaten, in clay like that, is pretty much impossible - I'd feared that CLAY was going to be my BIG problem.) Turns out that it is highly likely to be OK topsoil, and even better news, we have 2 big mounds of our own topsoil down the bottom of the sand arena that we can use to supplement and build up the raised beds for the veg plot. Excellent!! So, hopefully early next week, in will come the plough and the digger, and 1 x veg plot will appear, as if by magic ( of the mechanical variety).

The pond on the other hand, may require a little more patience. Basically , our pond was dug out back in the 70's, it is unlined, and because of the clay soil, was simply dug out, the soil had been compacted tightly , so it is pretty water-tight-ish, and then filled with water from the mill leat that runs alongside our house. The water is good quality, we often get fish coming in for a quick visit via the inlet pipe, along with a few eels ( not my personal favourites, but anyway), and wild ducks are nesting on the little willow island as I write this. SO , not a bad setup altogether, however, if anything, the pond has suffered many years of neglect. The willow trees on the island had happily been dropping their leaves into the water every autumn. You can imagine that 30 years of accumulated decomposing leaves, and silt and such brought in from elsewhere has taken it's toll - which we realised when trying to plant a long suffering water lily and iris, were were up to the knees in sludge before we knew it, and had to wade through very sinky, stinky silt - as Charleen well knows.

So in our renovation of the pond plan - Casey and I cut the willow trees back last year - what a job! We made a good team, with the help of Emily and our little boat, no more leaves for a while. The next step - call on Tim, once again for his sage advice. The plan now, to drain the pond, dig out all the silt, and the bulrushes that are threatening to take over, try to improve the flow of the water, reinforce the banks - which have been peeling off and melting into the water, leaving me watching in horror as the pond gets bigger, and BIGGER. And develop a really lovely planting plan, to hopefully transform a rather dull, characterless body of water, into a thing of serenity and beauty. For this though, we have to wait for the fields to dry out ( they are still pretty muddy from the rain) before all the dredging and digging equipment can come in. So - sometime in the spring... .

After putting all this down in writing, I realise we've got our work cut out... and to be honest, it's a teensy bit overwhelming... . So I think what I am going to do is make a cup of tea, put on my wellies and gardening gloves, and give some attention to my 'pet' front garden which is not so huge and scary, and which I am more than able to manage without the aid of the farmer next door. I've got some lovely climbers to plant , a rose and a jasmine, and a beautiful ornamental quince called Geisha Girl, all whilst I dream of summers to come in the garden, surrounded by the heady scent of rose perfume, stone walls dripping in gorgeous blooms, me harvesting my bountiful crops in the veggie garden ....( Charleen - I hear you giggling - enough already and indulge me this flight of fantasy! And you better bring your wellies and be prepared to get them dirty when you next come and visit - as we have work to do !!)