Comparison is the Thief of Garden Joy

Hello from Wednesday night. Georgia and I are on the sofa with a wet dog between us watching Harry Potter...again. She knows all of the words to the first movie so its less relaxing than it sounds. Its been raining all day and my planned trip out to the garden to tie up peas and sow more veg was met with a cloud of midges that doubled as my protein intake for the day, so I am writing tomorrow's email (well, today for you) today in the probably misguided hope that I can get out to the garden tomorrow instead.

There are some years that the garden seems to grow itself. The weather and circumstances align in a way that makes me feel like a green fingered goddess. There are no weeds, only glorious food everywhere.

And then there are years like this.

​The cold weather that lingered, the chickens that scratched up all of the new asparagus bed, the goat that got in, the lack of energy, it has all conspired to make my garden feel like its weeks behind where it *should* be. A quick flick through social media tells me the same. Everyone's garden is further along/ growing more food/ doing better than mine. I told Kevin the other night that we should "just pull it all up and do something else with our lives" as this wasn't working.

Of course thats not true. The garden is fine and perfectly in step with what I should expect given the weather and the chickens and the goat and the tremendous amount of energy it has taken to get events back up and running. Those tomatoes I saw setting fruit in June? In Cornwall. The 12ft of peas I saw at 5ft high and flowering? In Iowa, where the temps are already 35c+. The great rows of tatties all in and hilled? At a farm where they have paid staff. Our garden is doing amazing considering everything and not even behind where it was last year when we only had 2 rows of tatties and some beans in at this stage as we were still putting in the new garden beds.

The thing is, I really should know better. Having gardened pots on a terrace in London, a shade filled garden in Gloucester, a front garden in Stirling, a swamp of a converted bull pen and an ever growing veg patch here, I know that every year brings its successes and failures and thats the same, wherever you are. The trick is always to look at what is growing, not what isn't.

So I will just be here celebrating my 25th straight month of being self sufficient in Kale and ignore the rest...

...until the wind picks up and the midges clear at the very least.

Hope your garden is lush and your kale (or whatever) is plentiful,

Kat

P.S. Speaking of gardening, I have an article all about my love of courgettes on the Rowan & Wren blog this week.