My fingers aren't green...

I am lucky enough to have a fairly large garden and I love spending time in it. What I don't like is the gardening.

Mr Squidge cuts the lawn but on the whole, the rest of it falls to me. I suppose I'd describe myself as a pot-luck gardener; if it grows where I put it, it was meant to be. If it dies, so be it. We had the garden landscaped about ten, eleven years ago. The blank canvas was great - I had a ball picking my flowers and bushes and planting everything up. It looked fantastic.

But then everything started growing - as it does - and over the last couple of years the garden has gone to pot. Not sure why, exactly...

Our neighbour had a HUGE bramble growing between our fence and his brick pile (a pile now converted into a garage, thank goodness) which has given us the most wonderful berries for the last three years. The neighbour, having access to the roots, has cut them. Which left a massive dead bramble for me to sort out on our side of the fence. Done today - there are scratches all up my arm to prove it.

And the nettles...they're sneaky little blighters, running their roots under the ground and popping up somewhere totally unexpected, usually in the middle of another plant so they catch you unaware when they sting you.

Stickyweed...ugh! I try to catch it before it seeds, but end up covered in a rash.

And ground ivy...it's ruined the fence down one side of the garden; we're going to have to replace no end of the topping strips.

There are lots of a feathery leaved red flower (a bit like a campion) which self seeds and grows like the clappers, suffocating everything in sight. Very pretty, but extremely rampant.

It sounds like the garden's all weeds - it's not, honest! At the moment, there are patches of forget-me-nots and bluebells, the lavender's sprouting and the lilac's forming on the tree. I've got aquilegias all over the place - and the caterpillars haven't found them yet! There's a lovely yellow-flowered bush under the blossom-filled pear tree, and the forsythia is just going over. Today, I've bought a few sweet peas, hoping to put them in next weekend when the threat of frost goes...and I've got some dahlia tubers from Mother's Day to plant out. I keep saying I'll get veg seeds in and bulbs...but I never have much success as I'm too impatient to prepare the ground properly.

I really envy folk with lovely looking gardens. I have to keep telling myself I could have a nicer looking garden; ultimately, it's down to how much effort I'm prepared to put in, isn't it?

I just wish my fingers were naturally a little greener...