Best foot forward

Being sick for a few days gave me a chance to get to grips with gardening shows and vlogs and instructional videos. It was illuminating to watch how people actually interact with their gardens and what their plants and spaces mean to them. Until now, what I've been feeling myself has mostly been an abstract sort of desire to have a space where I can enter to be refreshed by beauty. Monty Don made me realise that actually, it's possible to just love plants, that that's a valid way to be attached to your garden; as is love of weather gadgetry or love of wildlife or love of a particular type of garden.

One important takeaway from the shows has been the idea that it's your garden and you do what you want with it. It's not like children or pets, where your task is to help them become what they want to and need to become. A garden is yours. If you don't like that tree, get rid of it. If that branch is tripping you every time you walk past, cut it off. If you sort of like those flowers but want to get something else this year, you just do it--you can always do it over next year. Less with the supposed to and more with the just do it.

And so I trimmed the living daylights out of this.