Monday 29 December 2008

from little acorns...

A seed catalogue landed on the mat today. And I've been looking through it slowly, page by page, at the pictures of flowers and vegetables, the fruit bushes, trees. So many colours and shapes of flower and leaf, tempting me, though it's dark outside, turning my mind to summer, to spring...


I know I shouldn't be letting myself imagine the garden in the house we are buying. And I say buying, not bought, because it's not ours yet. Not yet. So I shouldn't be thinking of the little pink and white flowers that could tumble down the wall at the front, or the lavender bushes I could plant at the side of the path. I shouldn't be picking out perennials, annuals, shrubs for the patio. The bird table by the kitchen window, the bird box. And I certainly shouldn't be planning the raised beds at the sunny end of the garden, by the gate into the woods; the potatoes in buckets, tomatoes, aubergines, peas, beans, blueberries, rhubarb, cabbage...

And me in the sun. Digging and weeding and planting, dirt under my nails (maybe even a robin sat on my spade, maybe I could tame him and we could be friends? He could sing to me)


Oh seed catalogue, your full colour spreads and descriptions full of promise, look what you've done...


Patience.

4 comments:

Dana and Daisy said...

they are the joy of every winter arm-chair gardener!

Carol said...

I subscribe to an Australian catalogue called The Diggers' Club and about 4 times a year the most delectable magazines arrive in the mail with flowers, trees, shrubs and best of all, gloriously coloured heirloom vegetables. I can't wait to start our new veggie garden when we move in a few weeks. I also collect frangipani trees and have about 10 waiting to go in the new garden. They are bravely flowering in their pots at the moment so I imagine they'll love to go in the ground. You'll have such a great time in your new garden, it's worth waiting for.

ArtSparker said...

I got a wonderful visual out of that post...of leafy branches radiating from a seed. Those wellies are an extraordinary shade of blue, I don't know if I have seen it before.

Acornmoon said...

but you have got to have a dream, as they say in South Pacific, "If you don't have a dream, then how you gonna have a dream come true?"