I do like deadlines. There’s nothing like a date that I can’t change to make me get things done. The nursery opened this morning and looked as spick and span as a new made bed. All the pots weeded, the paths swept, shade netting pinned up and the loos clean. And yes, that’s Dave watering.


But it’s another matter the other side of the yellow rope that marks the boundary between the public area from the private. My mother once told me that as a teenager, I’d go out on a Saturday night looking fabulous(ish), leaving behind a trail of devastation in the bathroom and bedroom. It’s a bit like that here – everything unfit for show has been shoved into a corner somewhere for dealing with later. It’ll all get done eventually but as you can see, it’s a bombsite just now.

This picture is a salutory reminder of what we took on – almost all of the nursery looked like this a few weeks ago.

Anyway, a chilly wind blew up, followed by cold squally showers, so we just had a trickle of customers and some welcome family visitors. But it still felt great to be really open. The next big deadline is the 28th April when the garden opens for NGS. And somehow I need to get back to college.

March 17, 2007