NOTE: The Garden Journals will be a little different from here on, this being the first example. It feels more natural to the way I write and what I had intended the journal to be, which many of you came for, an extension of my garden writing which I began on instagram. Other folks are here because they love gardens but also to possibly learn from what we do. So, instead of me struggling to marry two very different pieces of writing, the very practical and the poetic, they will now appear as this one does. The journal writing first, followed by the practical information that pertains to it. For whatever reason you come to read this journal, thank you for being here, Pip xo
As I dig my small pointed spade into the earth of the Long Border, it comes apart so easily, where the layer of top soil is more than 20cm deep and a rich chocolate brown, that colour we were taught in hort school, was in fact, gold. This layer of growing good fortune, covers every inch of this property, only stopping where it meets the odd granite boulder, which seem to look curated also, so perfectly placed about the property. They are less an inconvenience, as seen by many trying to build on this country for the nightmare of expense and arduous task they are to remove, and more something to behold, something of beauty on the landscape for us. We’ve rather auspiciously managed to avoid them all despite the countless intrusions we’ve made into the earth here. We always seem to just miss them.
I would drop to my knees to give thanks, if not for an old highschool rugby injury, for the top soil many said we’d never find here in “gold country”, the other kind, the yellow kind and the charmed placement of all our granite monoliths. As I hastily plonk one tulip in after the other, hunched over and with all the blood rushing to my head, I make a mental picture in my mind of where they’ve gone in; the tulips, the daffs, the muscari, the spring stars; the colour story they write, deep purples, pale peachy pinks, crisp whites (see planting scheme below). Soon my eye wanders and I steal a moment to stand upright and let the blood return to the rest of my body and think what I often think, this seems a lucky place.
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