I spent all of December and much of January with my newly-rearranged foot propped up on the sofa (it’s perfectly functional now, thanks for asking. It’s not yet ready for 4″ heels but frankly never was). On the plus side a horizontal life gave me a short opportunity to find and read all the gardening blogs I had ever heard of and a few more besides. Some, it must be said, are a little pedestrian and these I have quickly forgotten.

But out there, nestling quietly in servers in the digital ether, I have stumbled on some absolute beauties, wonderful writing that wriggles under my skin, ideas that unfold before me in full colour 3D, stories and perspectives on the world that rebound unbidden in the middle of a poor night’s sleep. Collectively they are a treasure-trove that I will plunder for as long as they exist. I admire their authors and adore the writing. I’m not going to pick them out individually, but try the ‘Favourite Gardening Blogs’ list on the right.

There is always a price for such pleasure. I now know even more clearly than I did before that my own writing is not ‘great’. It is generally quite good, sometimes average, sometimes really rather good. My blog posts have even been known to raise a wry smile. But my writing is never sublime, never magical, never wondrous. In a word, it is mediocre. I have the same feeling I had when I first read Jeanette Winterson’s ‘The Passion’. It was one thing to read Wuthering Heights and feel the intense creative magic of Emily Bronte’s extraordinary novel, brewed as it was in the emotional cauldron of a constricted life in 19th century rural Yorkshire. It was quite another thing to read the words of a modern woman much the same age as me, albeit with little else in common. (I have met her twice at book signings. Both times I said something stupid and she replied with the fixed grimace of the tortured writer on tour). Around then I stopped messing around with an abysmal embryonic novel I had barely started. I’m grateful to JW for sparing me the obvious waste of my time.

But I’m older and a little wiser now. I am not put off from finishing my new work-in-progress despite the knowledge that it will not be world-class. Accepting my place in the hierarchy of garden writing is just a question of understanding what I can and can’t do. I can write clearly and invitingly about plants. I can bring to life the pleasures and problems of running a nursery. I can explain, explore and clarify. But I can’t write deeply emotive prose that leaves the reader on the edge of tears. I can’t produce mind-blowing metaphors that stretch the imagination beyond breaking point. And my word-pictures won’t keep you awake at night. But that’s fine by me. I’m content where I am. (Incidentally, JW seems to have run out of creative steam. It is the curse of the precocious talent.)

Well, I’m much happier now that I’ve got that out of my system. And much happier too that I’m off my backside and back in the nursery full time. The first delivery of 1500 bare root plants has arrived in fifty neat open-topped cardboard boxes. I am torn between delight at the prospect of their summer beauty and panic at the potting workload (it’s just the first batch…). Each box is packed tight with mounds of pert little shoots standing proud of a spidery tangle of bare and rapidly drying roots. For now the boxes are stacked up somewhat precariously in the tea room because it’s dark and cool in there. Tomorrow Janet and Sally start the marathon task of potting them up, so my job today was to lay a new floor in the back polytunnel ready for the newly potted plants to stand inside for a few weeks before facing the harsh world outside.

It was an algae-covered, lump-ridden area yesterday, but looks great now – well worth the hours spent levelling the soil underneath, trampling and raking it flat, laying out the mypex and crawling around on my hands and knees nailing it in place through wood batten to the polytunnel base rail. Peter and I steadily lifted and relaid all the central path slabs on top of the new fabric, finishing off just as the light faded.

The front polytunnel has had its winter clear up too. All the plants have been cut back, fed with controlled release fertiliser and topped up with fresh compost. And at the top of the nursery, Ewan is creating a series of wide terraces as a growing on area. By the end of today we’ll finally have space to decide where best to put each group of plants, instead of squashing them in where we can. At last I’m beginning to feel that we have the place under control.

February 2, 2011