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The tenant-owner's association where Lindorm and I lives has a garden, a rather neglected one which now is mine to play with.
In April I signed up to help with the gardening and was met with both enthusiasm and scepticism, many people before me had said they would help but nothing or very little ever happened.
I was given a small amount of money and told I could use them to create a little herb garden or whatever I wanted and I guess they expected me to give up halfway there.
The houses and the garden is situated near a former clay pit and the they used old and deformed bricks, bits of concrete and stone to fill out between the houses when the building was done and the gardens where created. There is a little slope up to the wall of the neighbouring garden which was completely over grown with shrubbery and it was talk about hiring a a contractor to clean up the mess. It's a lovely garden with lilacs and elders as old as the houses and it has great potential but the soil is a nightmare to work with.
Now, instead of of running to the nearest garden centre, the minute I got the money, I took some time and made a plan and planted some seeds that would fit in no matter how things ended up.
I found surviving herbs and strawberries from an earlier garden attempt beneath the weed and shrubbery and used that as a starting point.
I soon realised that a good part of the shrubbery had to go, or my little herb plot wouldn't get enough sun, I also realised that I had to either elevate the herb bed or dig deep into the hard clay-soil mixing it with sandy soil and peat if I wanted whatever I planted to survive (it holds moist very well but when it gets dry it kills the plants in two days).
I started to cut down the shrubbery single handedly (the one the wanted to hire a contractor to deal with) it took me about two days, I dug up the Strawberries from the old lot and placed them in a bucket with water, I dug up a Lemon Balm and planted it where the shrubbery had been together with a Lovage who had been hiding in there for I don't know how many years. Then I started to prepare the old lot by removing all weed. I bought a wooden frame about 45 cm high and good quality soil to fill it with and a couple of nice ceramic pots and then I was out of money.
However my efforts didn't past unnoticed and on the common house and garden work day got help to buy more soil for the little slope so I could plant the strawberries (that had been relocated to the herb bed) where I wanted them.
Today I and a member of the tenant-owner's association board here went to a very nice garden centre and bought herbs and flowers. I got a lot of praise and apparently the whole board is impressed by all the hard work I have put in to the gardening, I was also told that I'm now in charge of the garden and have pretty much free hands to do what I want as long as it doesn't end up being very expensive.
This afternoon I planted the herbs, cleared another old flowerbed of weed and planted Sunflowers sprouts in it, planted the 4'o clock in a big pot together with purple Lobelia and planted a Steppe Sage in a matching pot. I also managed to spray my self with the water sprinkler...
I'm such a dirt monkey, leave me unattended in a garden for five minutes and I will be dirty or wet all over (preferably both) when you comeback!
I'm ridiculously happy right now, I get to do something I love to do and somebody else is paying for the material (and enjoying the results)!
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