It takes two years...

... to knock a garden into shape. By that I mean two years of hard work, and you have a garden (English garden, which equals everything on the property outside the house, rather than the American "garden-being-a-vegetable-patch-only.) I don't mean that the hard work is over, and it's all finished; the work has only just begun. Rather, the framework is there, it's more-or-less under control; you know the problem areas, you've seen two full-year cycles of seasons and weathers and rain/heat/drought, you've planted some perennials and they are growing into their space, some annuals have self-seeded, the first lilies have already multiplied, and people other than yourself-the-gardener can actually visualise what it might eventually look like.

Two years ago, there were no flowers in this garden, except for the privet trees that were standing dumbly around the swimming-pool fence, and the wild blue flax that showed its pretty face down by the creek. Now there are roses and daylillies, there are a few footpaths, I have a vegetable garden and herb garden, lavendar and daffodils and two pomegranate trees which each have more than one flower.

So I can have a cup of tea, surrounded by lipstick salvia, before the next round of weeding.

Pictures shortly!