My new semi-circle flower beds waiting for action!
Please do not think that I am in any way dissatisfied with the one I have got, but one does need to play to one’s strengths – and Bill is not a gardener! Twenty minutes of him puffing and blowing when asked to help is more than a girl can take, so I borrowed my brother-in-law for four whole days.
My sister and her husband had been shielding for over a year and I know they were pleased to have some space for a few days, and I was the lucky winner. I had made us a long list of tasks but the most pressing was that of the new flower beds.
After I handed over the reins of the Cross Stitch Guild in January 2017 to the wonderful Andrea Thompson, my first project was to buy a greenhouse and attend a Sarah Raven course at Perch Hill in Sussex. My first course was on creating a cutting garden so I could pick flowers for the house. A garden can be rather like your stash if you are a stitcher – you cannot pick the flowers because they are meant to be in the garden (ditto use fabric from your stash!).
It is now my fourth year of growing flowers for the garden and the house, and I just love it. Even at my most grumpy I can wander the garden and smile. I aim high, of course, in my head for something like Claude Monet’s garden at Giverney, or the garden at Great Dixter! The trouble has been that I have been too successful with a profusion of flowers everywhere. More flower beds were definitely needed.
I have a circle of slate and pebbles on which sits my precious greenhouse, and now I have seven new flower beds surrounded by lovely rusty metal frames… Deep Joy!
As I write I am squeezing myself into the greenhouse because it is stuffed with good things that need to be kept frost free. Two more weeks to go and I will be up to my ears in dahlias and so much more…
Elsewhere in the garden, some beautiful things are waking up… 
Even more new beds!
