Back to the Garden

The last time I looked at this blog was August 2013 when I did a post about a trip to Dublin. It is now December 2014. Those past 18 months have been spent shovelling an awful lot of sad and horrible sh*t under the bridge. The upshot (much aided by insane London house values) is that we have exchanged a small Victorian terrace for a whole house with a magic garden in a Sussex village.

I am originally from 'round these parts' (to be said in Sussex accent) so I guess I should just see it as finally coming home after a 33 year trip. In that 33 years I have always lived in cities - London, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Dubai - and spent a lot of time in many others. I like cities. I enjoy being stuck in an empathetic crush of anonymous humanity so I will miss it.

However, being in the new garden has also made me realise just how much of  my rural childhood environment I have carried around with me. There is a palpable and familiar exhilaration at the changing light, colours, textures, sounds and smells. What makes this garden magic though, is an awesome variety of plants that are also familiar from those 33 years of travelling. There are Japanese Maples, Cedars, Pines and Cherries, Chinese Willows, Black, White and Sacred Bamboos, mosses, a Golden Rain tree, a Tulip tree, an Iranian Honey Locust, an Indian Bean tree, Cacti, Magnolias, tropical looking ferns and others I haven't even begun to identify yet.

I am sure we would have left London before we keeled over and died but the combination of circumstances, and finding a house that we weren't even looking for, means that anyone viewing this blog will now be inundated with photographs of plants. So if you don't like the colour green, look away now.....