extraORDINARY

#0 – The Back Story

This week we pressed RESET on the garden!

It was LONG overdue … but in a season when everything feels to be in RESET mode, it felt timely.

I am always looking to hear what God is whispering to me in the every day ordinary of life … and I know that there is much in this garden RESET journey that I have to hear! So, it seems I may have myself a wee mini series to play with!

The garden came free with the house back when we bought it in 2003! The previous owners confidently told us “the garden looks after itself” … PERFECT! That is our kind of garden!

Over lockdown I learnt a new phrase … “judicious neglect” … had I known that phrase back in 2003 it would have exactly coined what sort of line we would have looked for in the house particulars:

“The house is boundaried by a sizeable walled garden with ample, relaxed, informal planting. The garden showcases rich, vibrant colour in late Spring into early Summer and will thrive best through judicious neglect.”

Over the 17 years that we have lived in the house, we have attended well to the judicious neglect which the garden demanded from us. Woven into that 17 years there have been moments where we have departed from that neglect and dabbled in some planting and maintenance … mainly at the hands of other people – paid and unpaid!!

This week, through the skills of a team of guys, what had become a rambling wilderness of interwoven trees, shrubs, flowers and weeds was transformed into a low maintenance clean slate (well chuckie actually!) of a garden.

Space for the new … with a few remnants of the old!

So where this mini series will take me I have no idea … I do know that there a few things bubbling about within in me about it all … but this, for now, sets the back story!!

And I guess it needs some before … and after … or perhaps more correctly so far! … pictures to bring that back story to life!

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