Thursday 17 October 2013

Cares melt when you kneel in your garden

Soil . . . scoop up a handful of the magic stuff. Look at it closely. What wonders it holds as it lies there in your palm. Tiny sharp grains of sand, little faggots of wood and leaf fiber, infinitely small round pieces of marble, fragments of shell, specks of black carbon, a section of vertebrae from some minute creature. And mingling with it all the dust of countless generations of plants and flowers, trees, animals and – yes – our own, age-long forgotten forebears, gardeners of long ago. Can this incredible composition be the common soil?
 - Stuart Maddox Masters, The Seasons Through 

It's that magic stuff, the soil, that keeps me gardening, and then it is watching each little seedling I planted growing stronger and more beautiful every day, responding to my little chats and watering, feeding and touching - I am convinced that plants respond to attention and affection the same way we humans do, with radiance and a smile! 


Plump, 2 or 3-lobed Nasturtium seeds - I've got a thing for them! I can spend hours sifting through nasturtium plants in search of these little beauties. Just a glimpse of them through the leaves sends me scurrying for a little container. I'm addicted to it. And then the planting of them. It is totally relaxing sitting flat on the freshly-turned ground, poking holes into the soft ground with your finger and dropping the seeds in one by one, knowing that, in just a couple of days, little plants will be popping through. 

Nasturtium seeds peeping through! 


Pure joy as the little plants start appearing! 

 




Naturtiums in the garden, nasturtiums in pots, nasturtiums everywhere! 

Every winter I bring some of my most prized potted cacti inside for over-wintering and this year I also included a nasturtium to see of I could perhaps prolong the flowering season and have some colour inside. And I did! Even though he (she) got a bit scraggly trying to find sunshine, I was rewarded with lots of flowers, brightening up this little corner in my laundry. Most of the plants, including the Nasturtium, are outside now and enjoying nature again.

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