Late Learner

Since I last had the spare minutes to write a blog - I am in fact busier now than when I was working full-time, I have started two business/enterprise courses. Both are funded and both run by an amazing company Tree Shepherd. A very appropriate name for me as all my interest at the moment is in fulfilling a dream about creating a garden nursery, peaceful space where I can have a workshop to grow my beloved Kokedama (www.kokedamalondon.com), a space above where said Kokedama can hang in all their splendour and where people can come along to see them up close and personal. It would not be too much to ask if then those people who see them and fall in love, as I did, would part with money and buy from me. I would thus be in that happy place where the thing that gives me the most pleasure earns me a living...........

The one thing I know I need to learn the most is how this social media platform works in a joined up way - this week I have been toying with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram - I've spent time with the perfect person who enthused with me about how I might start a business using this amazing array of 'branding' stories on and across the social media solar system - I was away with the virtual highway social media fairies, totally immersed, hurtling along in fact and then I just tried to apply it, on my own, without a 'youngun' in sight - I just spent a few hours (where does that time go?), it's 02.59am......02.59AM!!!!!! I'm writing a blog at 3 in the MORNING.

How much of an impact on he world have I made - err?

Time to stop and go to sleep, I'll see how I got on tomorrow.

If only blogs could smell!

Hyacinths, who knew they smell so powerfully, such a wonderful, heady scent.

I am currently making Kokedama to sell through the coming months, you can see some of them at kokedamalondon.com but I have also been scouring charity shops and boot fairs for bowls in which to plant bulbs. One that I found was so Japanese in nature that I even tried my hand at my first bonsai - it's a crab apple! At the moment I am waiting for the last apples to drop - all the leaves left weeks ago - then I will be cutting down the long branches to form a smaller tree. I am loving all this experimentation. In  the kokedama I planted some dwarf crocus bulbs a couple of months ago and they are just peeping through now.

Can't wait to see if the seeded ones emerge in the spring.

Last night I spruced up my CV and wrote a covering letter which I plan to distribute to my favourite garden centres - got to cover all bases. I will be winning the lottery later on so it is probably a fruitless exercise.

January 2016 - Time for action

Today I woke early, I was going out for a long walk with my sister, she bought me the beautiful piece of indian embroidered cloth above from the exhibition on indian textiles at the V&A. We had planned, if the weather were to be dry, to do the Beverley Brook Walk, roughly from New Malden to Putney following the river. The walk is 6.5 miles and takes (it is said) about 3 hours. The sun was shining at 9am so I was eager to get up, get ready and get going. Unfortunately, big sister was not feeling great, a sore throat and cough - in no condition to go traipsing over wet parks and commons for 3 hours.

I turned my attention to emails, catching up with pre-Xmas jobs, setting my mind once again to trying to stay off benefit and earn some kind of income.

My massage work now has a few clients, my confidence in that is coming along in leaps and bounds but massage for many is a luxury they can't afford. I've decided to try to find an organisation that can offer subsidised massage therapy to people who need it the most but who have not got that kind of money to spare. I'd like to offer the Ayurvedic facial rejuvenation to older people - it's a very loving, nurturing treatment that relieves stress and promotes deep relaxation.

I have been selling on a stall in South Lambeth Road but there aren't many plants available at the moment - at the end of January on 30th (Saturday) I am organising a Boot Fair on Wilcox Close, everyone loves a boot fair don't they?

So, I did the necessary couple of hours on the computer and then just had to leave the house to enjoy some winter sun and fresh air. As is often the case, when I leave the house and need some nature, I make my way to Clapham Common and then up to Richmond, gravitating to Petersham Nurseries for lunch, plants, meadows, fields, river, trees, birds - breath, relax, enjoy.

I did and dreamt of winning or earning enough money to live in the area, near the river, of working in Petersham Nurseries a couple of days a week, of not worrying about the lack of money coming in and my savings getting low.

Life is for living, I really don't want to do anything anymore that doesn't make me happy, that doesn't speak to my soul and enable it to soar.