Come to my bed

I've added a new page to the blog - The Guest Bed. I never really 'got' the world of blogging, Twitter and internet chat until starting my own blog. Sure I had a stab at a dodgy music blog years ago but it didn't last. This time however I've come across, I mean discovered all sorts of writers and creative expressions about all manner of garden related things from chickens on Twitter to home foodies and I wanted to tap into that creativity, and at the same time show that gardening is about more than just the perfect patch. 

So I've been asking a handful of people who have been sharing their own garden tales to write a guest post on an emotion of their choice for the blog which I'll collect in the guest bed. 

I'll post them on the main page so please do add comments and follow links to the writers' own blogs for more.

I'm thrilled to introduce my first guest Sophie (@tastebudsgarden). She writes not only about her London garden but throws in recipes and travel tales from the more picturesque parts of the UK. Highly recommended. Thank you Sophie!

LOVE

The real love that dare not speak its name

by Sophie (@Tastebudsgarden)

Love is not a word usually associated with the garden.  Hobby, pass-time, pleasure, keen, weekend, amateur are all more commonly linked with the acts of sowing and growing, planting and mowing.  However, having been asked by the Hapless Gardener to write a guest post for his blog, Love is what I want to write about.

For the relationship between garden and gardener has taken the Hapless Gardener and me completely (and independently) by surprise.  It has been so overwhelming that we have both chosen to write about it in our blogs.

Let me explain.

The Love between garden and gardener is based on a few simple principles.  First, it is undemanding:  the garden asks nothing of the gardener except that which the gardener knows the gardener can give; light, warmth, water, time.  The garden, in return, rewards the gardener with stunning results year after year. 

Second, the Love between garden and gardener is unconditional.  Only if the gardener fails to nourish the relationship completely and for a prolonged period, will it wither and die.  Otherwise, the relationship is a constant, that survives the many changes life brings.  Once acquainted, the garden and gardener cannot imagine being without each other.

Together the garden and gardener share the miracle of new life.  The perfect combination of nature and nurture.  I know I am not alone in arriving home and rushing to the window sill/propagator/greenhouse to see whether my seeds have germinated.  Or in experiencing that flush of excitement in January when the first green shoots of spring start to appear.  (I fear I may be alone in encouraging my Delicata Cornell squash seeds to germinate by placing them, in their pots, on a hot water bottle topped up with hot water every four hours.)

The relationship between garden and gardener is about the fundamentals in life: light, colour, air, water.  It endows the garden and the gardener with a richness and a sense of harmony, otherwise often lost in the furore of modern life.

So whether you have a window box, a herb patch, a pot of flowers outside the front door: an allotment, a London garden, or a huge, formal garden with sweeping lawns, Love your garden, see the best in it, cherish its strengths and work with its weaknesses.   And when you are lowering your tired muscles into a hot bath at the end of a long day in the garden, or marvelling at a bee sucking from a flower full of nectar, or cooking a simple meal to share from the produce that the garden has provided, celebrate all that the garden gives you.  

Love and Life and Health and Happiness.