There are certainties in gardening: every year the circle turns, the seasons come and go and there will be gardening somewhere, by someone; this feels certain.
There are also uncertainties: will it be a cold or mild winter? A long or short winter? Will it rain too much or too little? Will the summer be hot or not? There is so much that can happen and some of it will.
For people like me who garden for pleasure, there can be some joy in the uncertainty. Yet even so some days it would be lovely to be able to predict. This year I am growing the wedding flowers for my daughter's wedding, you will hear more of this (maybe too much) but it adds in a whole level of pressure about performance and blooms that usually I let wash over me. Of course nature refuses to deliver such certainty. It does not want that element of predictableness in our lives and in reality that in my view that still is the glory of nature. It is truly wild and even in our controlled gardens it laughs in the face of our efforts to control it.
So I shall more write of my progress this year when for once I need to produce flowers for a set date. I will get a glimmer of what it is like to need to do this day in, day out (but without my livelihood depending on it). I have bought a good book to on growing wedding flowers to give me some advice and I am hoping to go on a workshop about growing wedding flowers as well. Flower seeds and plant orders have been made and the veg borders are being turned over almost completely to flower production.
Wish me luck!
