It has been a few weeks since I wrote. Whilst I always associate the winter months with slowing down, reflection and idle dark nights at home, I am always taken by surprise at how busy life suddenly gets.
December is when Christmas dominates, it always creeps up on me. I forget that nurseries close the week before and invariabley don’t open until new year. That contractors pretty much do the same as the nurseries. So two weeks of the month is spent idle, or at least I wish it was. I over compensate and strat trying to organise deliveries and plant lists for the new year. The last thing on peoples minds are plants. When they do arrive they are no more than a twig in dirt, little to get excited about. Telling people that they have invested several thousand pounds in the “potential” of two tones of soil, with a lot of free black pots is not really a motivating experience. December gets hijacked. I lost all free will and time in late September I think, time just gets booked up. Friends, meals, drinks, visits, family. I keep a paper diary, the Redstone press ones, if you are interested. Spiral bound and one week a page. I have a short row of years past on the shelf over my desk, probably ten or eleven years worth. The joy of these is being able to open them and review your lifes appointments, crossings out, stuck in theatre or cinema tickets. And reviewing past Decembers… little has changed, perhaps only my memory. I want to spend the time reading up on books I have bought during the year, photographing frost scenes or playing with some new software. I have had the intention of tagging all of my photos for years.. but I produce them faster than I can label them.. so finding useful plant associations, examples of the pergola I have proposed is getting harder. Speaking of which I became aware that Leica have released their new M9 camera. I tried to see one this weekend but all were sold out. I have a manual M6 (film) which I consider one of the best pieces of design ever created, and now there is a true digital version. Its so far beyond my budget as to forever remain a dream.. but I like the notion of it always being an ambition to own one.. and I would gladly not change my phone/ car/ pc for several years if that was the way to save.
It seems that our Chelsea garden for 2010 will now be postponed. Despite securing ¾ of the sponsorship needed the remainder just proved to elusive. A miracle may still happen, but I am resigned to not having a garden built in 2010. We had put in over 250hrs and whilst this is a lot of effort for no practical output, the design work is not wasted. I hope that it will be accepted, even if a little modified for 2011. Now I have started to think what I will do with May. I have not had a spring that was not devoted to getting a show garden ready for a few years. Perhaps it is a good time to start thinking of tagging those photographs.
December is when Christmas dominates, it always creeps up on me. I forget that nurseries close the week before and invariabley don’t open until new year. That contractors pretty much do the same as the nurseries. So two weeks of the month is spent idle, or at least I wish it was. I over compensate and strat trying to organise deliveries and plant lists for the new year. The last thing on peoples minds are plants. When they do arrive they are no more than a twig in dirt, little to get excited about. Telling people that they have invested several thousand pounds in the “potential” of two tones of soil, with a lot of free black pots is not really a motivating experience. December gets hijacked. I lost all free will and time in late September I think, time just gets booked up. Friends, meals, drinks, visits, family. I keep a paper diary, the Redstone press ones, if you are interested. Spiral bound and one week a page. I have a short row of years past on the shelf over my desk, probably ten or eleven years worth. The joy of these is being able to open them and review your lifes appointments, crossings out, stuck in theatre or cinema tickets. And reviewing past Decembers… little has changed, perhaps only my memory. I want to spend the time reading up on books I have bought during the year, photographing frost scenes or playing with some new software. I have had the intention of tagging all of my photos for years.. but I produce them faster than I can label them.. so finding useful plant associations, examples of the pergola I have proposed is getting harder. Speaking of which I became aware that Leica have released their new M9 camera. I tried to see one this weekend but all were sold out. I have a manual M6 (film) which I consider one of the best pieces of design ever created, and now there is a true digital version. Its so far beyond my budget as to forever remain a dream.. but I like the notion of it always being an ambition to own one.. and I would gladly not change my phone/ car/ pc for several years if that was the way to save.
It seems that our Chelsea garden for 2010 will now be postponed. Despite securing ¾ of the sponsorship needed the remainder just proved to elusive. A miracle may still happen, but I am resigned to not having a garden built in 2010. We had put in over 250hrs and whilst this is a lot of effort for no practical output, the design work is not wasted. I hope that it will be accepted, even if a little modified for 2011. Now I have started to think what I will do with May. I have not had a spring that was not devoted to getting a show garden ready for a few years. Perhaps it is a good time to start thinking of tagging those photographs.
