Did someone just shoot a starting pistol? It’s 5 a.m and and I am up, dressed, booted and out in the garden as though I am at army camp! And it already feels like a special day; one of those fabulously warm summer mornings that is simply loaded with potential. I am always out in the garden really early in the growing season. Being in the garden is a good place for creative, non- linear thoughts which usually lead in a happy, random, meandering way towards a healing solutions which are just right for me. There is just one little problem, well, lots of them actually. For there are bugs, gnats and Horse flies buzzing around me as if I was a honey jar. And they all mad for biting me in this sultry, steamy weather. These ‘Thunder Bugs’ and little critters want to eat me alive! I roll on bug repellent like war paint and head out to the meadow garden, a bandanna on my head and with the spirit of the warrior in my heart. I recklessly agreed to have an open day in my garden in aid of St Luke’s Hospice on the 11^th July, so trust me, there has been war to be waged on the weeds and chaos which ordinarily would just be let go as ‘natural’ or ‘country style’.

I am making a new Potager style garden and this is how it started and looked on June 3rd.

And after  a few weeks of work and planting I think I am beginning to see a little progress and feel that things might just be ready in time.

Would you like to come? Oh please do! It is for such a good cause and I have some lovely flowers and vegetables and a variety of weeds which you may not have seen before in quite such profusion! But if the sun shines and the Bug Hotel is ready in time and the bees buzz in the Poppies and Comfrey…you may just get to see and feel why I love it here so much.