A Brief History

I have dreamed for years of a potager where one walks between the meandering flower borders, through a rose garlanded arch walkway and into a large, walled vegetable garden that gives onto an orchard of gnarly, wind-sculpted trees ..........

My problem is, although on a very small scale, starting from scratch I had just finally achieved something coming close to this dream in my previous garden when I was forced to move house

I was dreadfully depressed when we moved house and I would wake up and look at the small, narrow, sloping, modern brick and paviored strip that was now my back garden and despair ...

I went from living and breathing for my gardening to total dis-interest.

The depression at moving eventually wore off but I still hated this new garden and although initially I tried to make an effort -putting up some trellising and planting the odd shrub, nothing seemed right about it.

I developed a total mental block -I couldn't find anything positive or see any potential in the space at all.

Sporadically, over the years, I've had periods of fresh enthusiasm where I've tried to make a new start. I would think up grand plans and be really upbeat about them for a while but eventually, I would just give up again.

Other than keeping it tidy and weeding, it seemed I had just completely lost all heart and all interest in gardening...or rather, I had left them in my old garden.

That was eight years ago and in the last two of these, I became so apathetic about the whole thing that I even gave up with the weeding and tidying!!

Then, a few weeks ago, I woke up and looked out the window at the garden and thought how very sad it looked and how odd it was that I just couldn't feel about it the same way I had about my other garden.

So, on the advice of a friend, I went to see the doctor and told him how I've felt about my garden all these years. He told me about something called bi-polar disaffective disorder.....

So i'm going to go out and dig and see if I can't dig up myself at the same time.......