Blooming 'eck

Management is hard

Getting the balance between being in control and letting your charges express themselves is a trick that even the best managers find stressful

Take too much control and things can start to go wrong. Slowly at first but eventually overtime to an unnatural position where pent up feelings can be unleashed. Things happening without explanation, and before you know it the world isn't behaving as you want it to.

On the flip side, delegate everything and who know what will happen. Chaos as everyday boundaries vanish and things go off in all sorts of directions like fireworks accidentally going off at once.

The results can be spectacular... (click me)

So let me ask you, what type of gardener are you? The one that has to have everything in a neat row, marked out according to plan. Perfectly trimmed borders? Or do you live and let live, trust the garden to decide what's best?

I reckon I have a foot in both camps. In my mind a wonderfully ordered world, but in reality? Well, you've seen the pictures. Sometimes though, you think 'yes, I can trust this plant to get on with itself. It's grown up enough to know what to do. A bit of help every now and again but it'll never let me down.

In my case this plant is my rose. A present from my mum 2 years ago, it has given me two years of cracking creamy white roses.

Prolific in bloom, it is a rare flower in an otherwise edible garden. The mild winter caused a bit of a stir with some early blooms just after Christmas but in a moment of ' I'm sure I didn't ask you to do that, but blooming 'eck, well done you...

...it flowered pink! Sometimes the things you look after can surprise you.

Now, is this because I managed it well and let it do its own thing?

Or is it just a freak?

PS - forgive all this management talk, I've been interviewing all week, I need to get out a lot more!

Pruning my rose bush

I am.

I made friends for life at school, played football, got the grades, went to university.

I made friends for life at uni, played drinking games (safely mum, safely),  got the grades, went to London

I made friends for life in London, I rubbed shoulders with the political elite, partied in the deepest of underground holes and ate canapes and drank from the classiest towers. My work literally took me to the heights.

A one-off visit to the top of Canary Wharf

From the window on the other side

I then took on a new life out west - less glamour, less Tube, more responsibility. Yet still young. still man.

So what has happened? Out alone in the garden? No hangover. No to being social. What about all my friends for life? Surely I'm not ditching them?

Maybe it's the stubborn side of me. Having dead-headed the rose, I was desperate to then hold it up so that it didn't drop its petals over the soil I need for veg. And then I needed to cut it back to stop if going crazy growth. I wasn't going to stop until it was sorted.

Or perhaps, its the slow appreciation that comes with age (and evidence) that your body can't take the heavy nights out Friday after friday, activities weekend after weekend, along with day after day of work pressures.

I promise you it's nothing to do with helping the rose to flower it's gorgeous creamy white flowers with that wonderful sweet vanilla scent. No, this is a veg garden where the potatoes rule and flowers are purely practical. A concession to the reality of bees.

Real men prune