Beginnings.
It was breaking my back that got me into gardening. That sounds dramatic, doesn't it? I suppose it was.
It wasn't as easy as falling off a log; but not far off it. I actually got thrown off a horse (long story involving a stunt kite) and ended up in the men's ward (another long story but basically there was no room in the ladies' ward) of a London hospital for a month. I had a crush fracture on my T12 which is located slightly lower than your shoulder blades. The choice was an operation or complete bed rest. I didn't want to be poked around so I opted for the waiting game and after four weeks of being stuck on my back, only rolled over by nurses to use a bed pan or have my top changed, I was bound in plaster from hip to armpit, packed off back to Cardiff (where I live) and told to take it easy until the bone knitted together again. It was meant to be for another four weeks but due to a different health authority my request for being cut out of the plaster wasn't picked up for nine weeks.
So I had time on my hands and had always wanted a herb garden. I also, thankfully, had an avid gardener as a neighbour who delighted in a captive audience and rookie pupil. The herb garden wasn't a great success. It was in a damp and shady spot (most herbs want Mediterranean conditions; poor soil, lots of sunshine and not much watering) so it was never really going to work but from the moment I had sweated and toiled in my plastercast; lifting up great slabs of concrete & old electric wires from just outside my kitchen window I was hooked.
I was worried about doing myself some damage and several times I had to stop because of dizzy spells but after months of doing nothing I was out in the open air, doing something creative and loving it.
I came from a family of keen gardeners. I remember my grandparent's two greenhouses; stuffed with trailing tendrils and huge warty cucumbers. The intense heat when I walked in and the overpowering, heady smell of fresh tomatoes is something that has stayed with me all these years. I remembered the excitement of picking sweetcorn straight out of the garden and enjoying it's succulent sweetness ten minutes later, drowning in melted butter (thirty years later I found out that the sugars in sweetcorn start to turn to starch after twenty minutes of being picked so that poor old sweetcorn you purchased in the supermarket could never stand a chance of tasting as good as those freshly picked ones).My dad had an allotment and Mum allowed me to have a little patch of my very own in an attempt to get me into gardening. I didn't try very hard and it just became the pet cemetery when poor old Topsy, our black and white cat, died. It took till I was 32, with a broken back, months off work and a few second hand plants given to me for me to discover the delights of gardening. I was away!
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