It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Life at Minion HQ is good. Minion 1 is now a qualified Doctor, Minion 2 is 6ft and hairy, and Minion 3 has flown the nest and is at University studying Computer Science -so still doesn’t go outside much-. Minions 4, 5 and 6 are 17, 10 and 6. How times flies!
The garden has taken a bit of a back seat to work and home improvement, but I feel it’s now time to get back on track. Ive always loved gardening, but after the first few years, Charlie’s interest has waned a little and he has been putting his time and energy into his other hobbies. So, the garden has been more and more neglected as I have struggled a bit to maintain our huge raised beds. This year, as the garden will be mainly my domain, with Minion support of course, it needs to be more user friendly.
Now, raised beds are still the way to go as we have clay soil and live in a country where is rains pretty much all year round, but I do need to be able to dig and weed them comfortably so they need to be less wide. I would also like slabs inbetween the beds to make them more accessible in poor weather, which means a lot of work that is not particularly part of my skill set. Luckily, Charlie has a saying ‘Happy wife, happy life’ so he has agreed to completely rebuild the raised beds for me. That way, I will be free to get back to growing and he will be free to indulge in his leisure pursuits unhindered. So, I got my tape measure out and measured up the garden so I could make a scale drawing of it with my new raised beds.
As I started planning though, there was one glaring issue. Sadly, try as we might, our fox issue has persisted and we have lost three pairs of chickens. Now we have lost the heart to get more chickens and that means chicken run is unoccupied and therefore, wasted space. The first thing I thought would be a good use of that space was a potting shed as the greenhouse fills up too quickly to work in once the growing season takes off. I also thought that I'd like a couple of dwarf apple trees in the space to replace the one we lost. So, I planned out a -very small - woodland garden at the back.
So there's lots to do this year. It’s all very exciting, but I still have a little more time to put my feet up with a cup of tea, and dream of all the growing fun I’ll have this year.
