A calling.....

I started the course, RHS Advanced Level in Horticulture last September at a local collage. I do one night a week, three hours on a Tuesday, but because we were so behind, we had to do some Wednesday's as well last term. This fits perfectly with looking after Jess my daughter. It's tough though because we end up doing about 180 hours for the course, but I think the RHS recommends doing about double that. When you think the Wisley students get to do the same course full-time for a year, if I succeed, I will be sooooooo happy!!!
I can't put into words how weird it is studying again. After the three blurred years at Manc Uni 15 years ago doing Microbiology, I thought that would the end of revising and but for a blip doing professional Market Research exams whilst at Unilever it was......
This time it's different..... This time I really, really, want it. Microbiolgy, was plucked from the air, because I was good at sciences and I thought may a brewery would be a good job.
I never had a calling, a never felt a vocational pull. I drifted into well-paid corporate life at Unilever, floating from meaningless deodorant research to even more meaningless work on technically validating TV ads.
I had my daughter, didn't return to work. Being a mother is the most important job you can have and I would not change a thing, but as a mother who had a life and career before, my brain will not switch off. One day, my husband said "let's grow tomatoes in hanging baskets" in our small garden. Ok - we did - and they grew and in Jess' summer holidays, we were bored and planted French Beans and a several sunny days later we're scoffing our own gorgeous juicy Toms and the greenest, freshest beans . It was magic. And science. A blend I have never previously experienced.....living science....not on a petri dish...something I could use for my family. I am hooked....And I want more.

Our new allotment

We got the allotment on 14th January, but I've been so preoccupied with revising for my first RHS exam, that I've not got round to blogging about it.

We are allotment number 3, in the last 17 remaining allotment in the village. I'm sure Lever would be turning in his grave to know so few plots remained and had been given over to underutilised fields or concrete. I'm proud to be part of the heritage and have inherited the plot from Mrs H, who is Chair of the also dwindling Port Sunlight Horticultural Society. What a work-horse she is. Up until last year she was running 2 of the allotments - at nearly 80 what an achievement, but sadly she was quite poorly last year and though on the mend, she has decided to drop down to just the one allotment. What a beauty our new allotment is.....about 90 x 30 I would say and with a great greenhouse and shed, what more could a newbie allotmenteer want. And at a two minutes walk from my front-door.
As the pictures will testify it's very over-grown and we'll have our work-cut out, but I can almost taste the fresh peas and the bucket-chilled beer......It's a field of dreams. Well almost. Certainly plenty of couch grass!

Garden or Yard?

My garden in Port Sunlight is fairly small. Some people wouldn't call it a garden. Perhaps a courtyard because of it's size and because it is completely walled. After all what is a garden. Definitions seem to suggest it's anything where plants are cultivated. Personally because I have a lawn (albeit a small, boggy, mostly weedy carpet), to me it makes it a garden, as opposed to a yard, but it splitting hairs ...
Previously I am convinced that it was just a yard, that somewhere over the last 120 years has been converted into a "garden". The sizes of the gardens in the village vary enormously, some people enjoying 70 ft plus gardens. I think Mr Lever who created the village intended there to be outdoor space of some sort for all, and there's certainly that....There's an outdoor toilet that acts now as our unorganised shed. The walls give a sense of privacy and lend a lot of shelter to my plants, but we don't get a lot of sun, only at the end and right hand side of the garden, which isn't assited by by the enormous shadow cast by our grade II towering house...