Gardening

I feel so lucky to have a garden. It’s certainly not a given in London, and when we were house hunting we had totally reconciled ourselves to not having one, until we found our home which has not only a back garden but a small front garden too.

It is in dreadful condition with tough and cracked clay soil, patchy grass riddled with weeds, and a gang of bold foxes who like to dig and steal and cause chaos. But it’s ours, and I’m determined to eventually make it look a bit less sad and try to teach myself some new skills in the process. 

I’m also really keen for Frida to develop green fingers. We spend a lot of time outdoors with Frida – she knows to smell flowers and will stop in the street to bend over and smell the flowers growing in the street, which makes my heart burst a little bit – but today was the first time she was encouraged to try some “gardening”. 

I bought her a child sized set of gardening tools, demonstrated how to use them, and then let her choose what she wanted to use. Unsurprisingly she wanted to use the watering can.

I am very relaxed about her getting dirty / eating dirt (it’s all good for her immune system) which is probably good as she got filthy! But she had such a good time getting muddy and trying to drink the water from the watering can. We watered some of our plants and she watched as I sowed a little patch of pollinator-friendly wild flowers (I’m not holding my breath but it can’t hurt to try!).

I am very much looking forward to her being a bit older next spring and actively involving her in planting and growing. I would like to give her her own little patch of garden, too, where she can dig freely. And I have grand plans of building a bug hotel, painting a chalk board fence, and maybe buying a little playhouse.

I would also like to build her a rudimentary mud kitchen (I have been saving ideas on Pinterest) but as per the rest of my grand plans I haven’t had the time to sort this out yet. Probably I’ll manage to build one just in time for winter….