Catching up with nature.

Stepping out into the garden each day the first job is always the surveying, the moment where you get your mind into the gear needed for the day's work ahead whether that's light weeding or heavy digging. Often it’s also the moment you have to set your mental blinkers so as to not lose your sight into distractions of landscape and job lists, it's all too easy to set out to do one job only to find yourself knee deep in a different border with a handful of weeds and no where to put them. So often we can get so caught up in creating the perfect garden that we can lose sight of simply enjoying the garden for what it is. Sometimes it can happen the other way round and the garden gets away from us. Nature waits for no person and after the mild winter this is especially so now, so many plants got an early start on growth and many never truly stopped from last year, roses still carried buds from the last season and the less said about the weeds the better.

There is a garden I work, spread over many acres that is not only getting ahead of me but in some areas starting to lap me, parts haven't been touched in years and the wilds of the surrounding countryside are reasserting their dominance. Where once there were beds with weeds there are now simply weeds with the occasional ornamental clinging on, weeds that climb, smother and suffocate out competing the carefully nurtured plants of past years. In a garden of this size I often find myself alongside these plants, feeling as though I too am being dragged back by the sheer scale of it all. Back in the day when it was first created there would have been a small army of full time gardeners, there's now just two of us there part time and I have to admit it's hard not to feel disheartened at times, not to look up and be completely overwhelmed by the task ahead.
The hardest part is knowing that this is just a blip and that though some borders may run away that doesn't mean they can't be caught up again at a later date, what's important is to focus and do the best you can, to bury your hands deep into the soil and garden. After all, that's why we do it.