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.

Where to begin

I truly believe that books are sent to us, just like the plants you didn't plant are a gift from birds .... or the universe or the creator
The following book was left for me in my local charity shop 'The Solitary Summer' by Elizabeth von Arnim. By my standards the book is small, - 190 pages but what an absolute delight it is to read. First published in 1899, the text is so very well written, the personality, absolutely shouting off the pages. The passage that follows had me spellbound:
"Here was the world wide-awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fragrance breathed only by me, not a living soul hearing the nightingale but me, the sun in a few moments coming up to warm only me."
This 19th century aristocrat and I (a working class council house dweller) share a deep and inspiring love affair with our gardens - gardens that save us, succour us and perplex us, but without which we would flounder.