Life Unexpected

The surprise warm weather this week has been quite an added boost for my garden where I have just planted my winter vegetables (I have blogged about the wonder of winter veg over on my other blog if you're interested in growing your own). I love being in my garden, which as I have mentioned before is tiny, mostly in shade and could quite easily appear to be not much good for anything at all. But yet it yield me blueberries for my porridge and salads all summer long and now plenty more veg for the winter season. What it also brings me, when I'm pottering about in it, is some time to reflect and this week has been no different. I like to call this 'garden wisdom' and I thought I share some of it here!

Inside my box of winter baby plants I also received two chilli pepper plants that now live inside my house. Today as I was doing some ironing and enjoying a bit of peace and quiet in my sun-filled living room I thought about how much my chilli plants would like it in the living room window. I hadn't put them there because it seems a bit odd to grow food in your living room and the table I have in the window is an antique one from my Grandma's house but with the quick addition of some bright blue table mats my chilli plants are basking in the sunshine and I've decided to keep them there.

It always amazes me how the simplest daily tasks can flick a switch that makes sense of something if you slow down long enough to allow it to. Perhaps it might seem a little silly to get so much from two chilli plants but I realised the reason I didn't want to move them into the living room originally, even though I'm fully aware it is the sunniest room in the house, was because I was worried about appearances. My living room is hardly styled to perfection, it's a rented place and is painted bright yellow for one thing which is pretty hard to make appear chic! But when I moved the plants though and saw them coming to life and bearing fruit it made me so happy that I couldn't care less if my living room looks like an allotment and began planning what else I could put there and what brightly coloured tubs I could paint to house them. It reminded me what my home is for, a place to live, not a show home and that my life itself is the same, there to be lived not something designed to impress others.

This week I've also been sharing my garden with a robin. As I dug the beds ready for a new season's growing I unearthed some worms providing a feast for my new friend. He rewarded me by standing on the side of my tubs as I planted my plants tilting his head to one side and looking intently at me. Even when he dug up some of my baby plants that night (presumably looking for worms!) I couldn't be too angry at him and now it seems he has moved in for good and my garden is as much his as it is mine. I'm quite happy with that and it reminded me to hold loosely to what I own and share when I can. My little garden reminds me to make the best of what I have and be generous with it, So the robins, the worms, the lettuces and me can all live a happy existence in one small, unexpected patch of garden in the city.