Simple Pleasures
The other day I was asked if I still bothered to do any gardening at home, or if someone else did it
for me now. ‘Hah!’, was my reply. Well, I suppose folk who don’t grow things can’t quite see why
you would want to keep on doing it yourself if you’ve already been at it for donkey’s years.
All I could say to them was that when my new greenhouse was finally wired up for electricity, I shot
out that very afternoon, bought a small plastic-topped propagator, a packet of coleus and a packet
of cerinthe seeds and sowed them there and then. It was the middle of January. Oh, I told myself
that there was absolutely no need to sow them until March or even early April, but that was not
the point. For a year I had been starved of seed sowing and I couldn’t wait to get cracking again.
I had nothing to prove to anyone, just myself to please. For the rest of the afternoon I couldn’t
stop smiling.
It is always like this. There are moments, of course, when particular bits of my garden don’t work,
and when I am happy to turn my back on them for a few days. But it doesn’t last long. I soon get
stuck in again and try to sort them out, and when they are sorted, then I can’t keep out of them.
But through all this, my greenhouse remains my
sanctuary - the place where I retreat to when the
world outside goes mad, or bad. After years of
growing heaven knows what, I have refined my tastes
and now get huge pleasure from a large collection of
pelargoniums – new ones come every year – some
with scented foliage, others with large and fancy
flowers - and we drool over every new bud that opens
to reveal colours we had not expected.
They stand on tiered staging – making a floral
waterfall at one end of the house. Magical! Yes; in my
greenhouse I suppose I’m a man of simple pleasures,
but then life is none the worse for that.
Alan Titchmarsh
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