Hello, my name is Paula and I am a garden addict. 8-D … as such, I lurk in garden centres, looking for a fix. For example, at the recent annual Gathering On The Green, I bee-lined it over to the Horticultural tent, twice, coming back with delightful treasures bought dirt-cheap. The second time at half price. Oh, it was a hard-core gardeners dream, I was all ta-wat-ta-woo, what should I do?

Certainly one of the more venial addictions.

Well, and one capable of actually curing many of the other more disastrous types, of addictions that is. Or, perhaps distraction enough to keep your happiness quotient up, as I am so often in the garden, puttering, dirty nails, admiring it all.

A garden, and really plants in general, help you to finally understand, if you let them, that you are really never all alone. I have Fred there, of course, in his neat Chartreuse pot on wheels these 25 years. Even when I didn’t have a garden I had Fred.

So, my findlings were one very generous native grass called Miscanthus I got for TWO BUCKS, two little native Columbines, and three more Golden Creeping Jenny’s to add to the collection that is slowly sweeping along the sidewalk on this side of this old converted High Victorian farmhouse.

Oh, but I couldn’t stop there. God no, found myself, after bringing the raspberry vine and the Jenny’s back, on my way down to Tuckeys Garden Centre and trotting merrily home with an Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’. Really, how on earth could I resist their soft clay gray ferny sprays, and I have no clue whether or not they will even LIKE being so close to a Walnut Tree, but I guess we shall see. One thing might be in their favour, they are out front, which is almost 20 or so feet from the canopy, not sure how far that toxicity range goes.

Now, my star find was that wonderful Black Raspberry, which apparently is a natural companion to a Black Walnut tree, and so I plunked it down in the dirt right beside it, and just to the left of the container of Petunia and potato Vine which, through maybe rose-coloured glasses, I see acting as a smidge of protection from Irish who likes to rampage the hedgerow at unsuspecting doggy’s with the audacity to walk past our domain. I’m thinking that once it takes off it may very well act as a natural deterrent, giving the ol’snoggin’ doggin’ a wee surprise when she goes all ape-shit. teehee.

Taking this between space from the nothing that once lay out my door almost 5 years ago, with lessons learned on borrowed time at the cottage, and that long-ago garden I owned, oh, what, 25 years ago when I was married, and unhappily so; and, this one I merely rent, and maybe that’s why it feels different. Lately, I find myself sitting for hours watching the shadows and hues, of the dark rich dark emerald-green of the cedars, to the kelly green of the hostas, the chartreuse of the Creeping Jenny, the peachy bronze of the Coral Bells, the ferns unfurling, and loving every minute with each and every one. With the birds flitting in for visits to the posh Tiffany watering hole, splashing in the square plate, bugs and other creatures mooching about.