A pot of positive...

This is the pot where I’ve planted some sunshine ready for next year.

It doesn’t look much like sunshine at the moment but when we are through the winter and the soil begins to warm this big pot of home-made bulb fibre it will blaze with the yellows and oranges of over sixty daffodils and narcissus. At least that is my hope.

Yes, they are planted much too closely together, but it will be such a picture - as my mother would say.

I’m planning for the future, waiting for my nasturtiums to finish and the seed pods to dry. It’ll soon be time to collect the seed from this season’s flower heads ready for next year, placing each type in a small paper envelope and sealing it with sticky tape. I do this every year, sometimes with success, sometimes with hardly any at all. But you never know what can happen unless you try, this year I’ve had some fantastic Scabious from last year’s seed.

And I’ve cut my strawberry runners from the parent plant and they seem to be doing well. In a few weeks time I’ll pot them on and put them in a cold frame, well it can’t do any harm to protect them a little from the winter’s frost. I’ll plant them out in the spring. I may try growing some in hanging baskets next year, and I’m going to try a couple in empty plastic water bottles which I’m going to hang in my greenhouse – once I’ve erected it.

And why all of this? I often wonder myself. I guess I'm just getting on with it.

Maybe it’s to feel part of that cycle that nature moves to. Maybe it’s about creating something beautiful or in the case of the strawberries delicious, from almost nothing. Maybe it’s about feeling useful, able to make something, anything, happen - something simple and easy and good. Or maybe it’s about planning for the future and having something to look forward to, hope for.

Truth is – does it matter why? I'm just doing it. It makes me feel better. Isn’t that enough?

An anonymous commenter on my blog left this for me last night, a quote from ‘the late great Stephen Bruton’ as my anonymous follower put it -

"'...what makes you grow old is replacing hope with regret…'” and Anonymous went on to warn "Be careful. Keep the balance. Or it will eat you up inside."

Brrrrr.... Time to plant some more daffodils I think.