Wednesday, 18 August 2010

Day of reckoning.

Big gulp. Today I am going to pluck up courage to go through my gardening receipts since we've been at this house and see just how much I've spent to create our garden to date. We moved in February, after a very cold winter and it's now August 18th. That's seven short months. Since February I have made the black and white border, the pastel border and now the colour border. Luke has created a small vegetable patch but he had most of the seeds already so I'm not including that (plus he pays for all the compost, sand and such like that he has bought to improve the soil and which I've often used. So this is what I've spent on plants alone. Whilst it might not be "good taste" to discuss money, I think it's interesting to see how much the garden has cost and to work out if I think it's been worth that amount. It's a bit like owning a car; you don't want to work out how much it's costing you to run because the amount is probably too high to contemplate and yet you don't want to be without it. If you add up the costs there is the risk that you will feel compelled to live without it when you really know how much better life is with it.

So it is with my garden. So here goes, crunch time!
(twentyfive minutes of adding up later)

My pastel border should be called my friendship garden as I had lots of garden vouchers from my dearest friends for my birthday. Added to that, Luke bought me a weeping pear, 'Pyrus Salicifolia Pendula' from Crocus. So that's about £120 already spent, though not by me. However, all told my plant expenditure is a whopping £557.31 & that's missing off a few casual purchases from places where I didn't get receipts.

Is this where I start justifying it to you and myself? Not really. You see, I should get years of pleasure out of this initial spend, it makes me happy, it's not harmful and it'll add some appeal and value to the house. And now we have the greenhouse we can grow from seed. It's not been cheap but it's been worth it.

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