Once a friend told me “Gardening is all hard work and disappointment.” Well yes to the hard work, but along with the disappointment you get some successes too: the fantastic buzz of picking your own broad beans, the smell of the lawn just cut, or burying your nose in that wonderful rose with the crazy French name “Cuisse de nymphe emu” (Aroused nymph’s thigh — generally more prudishly labelled “Great Maiden’s Blush” in the UK).
Home & Garden

Home & Garden
I’ve lived in the Cotswolds for over forty years. My first house was a big old house with a ramshackle garden with the bones of good design still visible in the trees and hedges. When we took possession, I couldn’t tell an oak from an ash, had never grown so much as a tomato plant, and had little idea where to begin. But ignorance truly is bliss, and gardening quickly became addictive. I loved all my attempts at tree planting, making borders, growing veg – until they failed.
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