Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a girl named Anne decided (what with one thing and another) to leave her bustling home town and return to an island (let’s call it Gabriola) off the west coast of Canada where she also had a home.
Sadly, while she had been away from her house on Gabriola, the garden, which she’d laboured (with the help of her neighbour Pat) to create, had gone to rack and ruin.
This made Anne very sad.
So she vowed that when she was back on Gabriola she would rejuvenate her poor garden. Visions of year-round home grown crops danced through her head (as did flower beds and something to sit on which wasn’t the ruins of an old bench).
But before she left her bustling home town, there were many, many people she needed to see and bid farewell. Quite a few of them also lived in her bustling home town and she was able to catch up with most of them in one go at one of her favourite places.
But then there was her friend Rory, who lived many miles away in Cornwall and couldn’t come to her favourite place.
So Anne went to visit Rory.
One morning, while she was visiting Rory, they got to talking about creative things – like dancing (which Rory used to do professionally) and writing (which Anne used to do rather a lot of). Anne told Rory how sad it was that she never seemed to have (or find) the time to do any writing. Rory raised an eyebrow – as well he might. This eloquent eyebrow of Rory’s was telling Anne that she was full of something that was good for gardens, that if she really, truly wanted to write, she would somehow find the time.
Right then and there, Anne made a promise to Rory (and to herself) that when she got back to Gabriola she would (at a minimum) write something for an hour every morning when she got out of bed. It didn’t have to be fiction. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as she was writing something. It could be a letter to a friend or a journal entry. It could be anything, including – oh, yes, this is a good idea – a blog about her garden project.
And so she returned to Gabriola. On the very first morning she started writing a garden journal. Eventually she remembered that this journal was supposed to be a blog.
Like the bench and flowerbed parts of her vision, the blog went well. (Unfortunately the year-round home grown produce part was a far from resounding success.)
Then one day a funny thing happened. She switched her computer on in the morning, but instead of writing about crap soil, she found herself writing. Honest to god, make it up as you go along fiction.
Anne was very, very excited. It had been so long since she’d been on a roll like this. She kept on writing, writing, writing, in her exhilaration all but forgetting about her blog and the many followers (well, four) who’d been left in the lurch.
After a day spent planting bulbs, she decided she really should correct that.
So, here’s the final score:
Peas 0
Beets 0
Carrots 0
Broccoli 0
Pumpkins 0
Squash 0
Cantaloupe 0
Red peppers 1 (see above)
Tomatoes tons
Blackberries tons (for which garden project can take no credit)
Resolutions 1 (next year I will build the raised beds and get some bloody topsoil)
Now that the rains have come, turns out the soil in the vegetable patch can support life – it is covered in happy weeds which will need to be dug up before I empty the bottom half of the compost box on the patch and dig it in.
And now I really must go. There are fictional characters calling my name, eager to find out what they are going to do next.
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