A Developing Love

I have never been great at gardening, we have lived in our house for nearly 6 years and have never seemed to get the garden right.

To be honest I have never really enjoyed gardening, I am more known for killing plants than my great gardening skills. But it is something that I would love to get right.

We have attempted to renovate our garden many times over the last few years and nothing has worked. We have never enjoyed our garden because it has always been a pigsty.

I would love to be in a situation where I could just let Baba go out and play, but unfortunately we have never been able to as our garden has never been child, or even adult friendly. Mainly because neither Mr L or I have ever had an interest in the garden. I admit that, we do something and then just let it go and let it get into a state of complete and utter ruin, we are rubbish at maintaining the garden that is where we fail.

Last year when we lost Rhianna Lily we were given a lot of lilies, and I was really upset when they all started to die. It was a feeling that it was the one thing that I should have worked hard to keep alive as they had such a personal meaning, and I even let them die.  However this year they have regrown and I am so pleased that there are tiny little shoots forming in the pots.

I can’t believe that they have started to regrow. It has made me so happy that they are still in the pot, and with some help from Mum I have managed to work out the weeds from the plants and I am so pleased that we have these in the pots.

Mum has been helping sort out all the weeds in the pots, and the flower beds in the front garden.

Last year she helped me plant a lot of tulips out in the front and again with all the snow and the rest of the weather we have had over the winter I really didn’t think they would survive and I really couldn’t tell the difference between a tulip and a weed. My mum came in and found the weeds from the plants and helped me to finally get on top of things, as well as bringing us some new plants. You can see all the things we did here.

So at last I was on top of everything, but I had strict instructions to keep on top of it all.

I didn’t think that I would manage it to be honest, after all it isn’t something that I enjoy.

But I have developed a new love.

Sitting on the floor of an evening and finding the little weeds that shouldn’t be there, is something that I never thought I would enjoy.

But I am enjoying it.

I love seeing the flowers without the weeds, the soil around them clean.

Something I never thought that I would love is the anticipation of the flowers coming into bloom.

The tulips have so nearly come out but are still not quite there, every morning Baba and I have a check to see on their progress, and every evening we go out and water them.

Neutering them willing them to go and come out.

They are so nearly there, just a little bit longer!

But most of all sitting in the garden pulling at the weeds, the thing I am beginning to love the most is the quiet.

I love that I can sit and reflect.

Think about things.

Decide things.

And there is something about tending to the flowers, that makes me feel so much closer to Rhianna.

I have a bond with flowers and her, I associate flowers to her.

I go into garden centers, and supermarkets and see a bunch and know that they are the right flowers for our little girl. It is something that has developed in the last year.

It is a time when I can think about her, when the world is quite around me and I can just be me, and my memories of her.

It is something that I would never have imagined to happen, but it has and I am really enjoying spending so much time in the garden and waiting for things to grow, to see the colours, and smell the smells of all the plants around us.