Hunkering Down

Returning to the garden after nearly a month away, and having left our lovely team behind working without us for the first time, we are so overwhelmingly grateful to be home again, seeing the work that's been done, scrunching through the fallen leaves, smelling the lovely musty autumn air, and picking the last few flowers of the year. Our snack tin in the bothy, usually filled with wholesome homemade cake, is now crammed with sweet treats from Greece, where we've been staying. Happily we have thousands of bulbs still to plant, so we'll be working off the calories with all the digging!  It is magic to be here in the autumn.  The atmosphere at the garden is completely different: no more deadlines, no exhausted lolling on the grass, no scent of flowers wafting about, no fruits to pick and snack on.  In the autumn we are all keen to cut back perennials, dig up weeds, push wheelbarrows around and generally warm up.  Breaks are rather short because we all want to get on with the job in hand; there is a strong feeling that every effort we can produce now will result in a greater bounty of abundant flowers next spring and summer.