Spring is officially a few days away still, but nature is telling us she’s already here. I spotted the first bee of spring, happily buzzing around a daisy bringing with it the energy that the oncoming season will bring to our modest patch.

Everywhere I visit lately is showing me the break from winter torpor. I recently visited a mate Jack’s (Dad’s) place and it is looking stunning, with healthy citrus, fruit trees in bloom, veg garden preped and a nice patch of stinging nettle (pity it had just been weed sprayed!).

The Graceview patch is also alive, which we admired on a recent visit when we arrived for a working bee, making more garden beds and laying a base layer of straw mulch. That place has come to life these past few weeks, with blossoms bringing colour and joy to the garden. Graceview has so much charm, just like our good friends Em and JB who own the place.

Over the last few months JB has been working tirelessly planting fruit trees, clearing weeds and bushes and building the vegetable patch big enough to feed three households. The place has come alive! You can see how proud he is when we do a garden tour, he’s always eager to show me his progress. If only I could transfer this enthusiasm to other people.

The progress at Graceview. Only three more beds and we’ll be set and ready for summer.

My girls really love the soil!

We’re now finally at the stage of propagating a range of veg for our phase one planting for spring. I say phase one, because I tend to plant in waves, so as to avoid a glut of the one type of veg. Like a wave of fierce Spitfires from a RAF base we’ve started the attack!

Growing your own food I’m sure will have to become a necessity in the future. This believe reaffirmed recently whilst watching David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals series, were we learned more about the fall of the Mayans. Explained by the wise man himself, the Mayans had advanced their agricultural technology so much so that they farmed the crap out of the land that provided for their cities, their very life blood. This encouraged a population explosion that eventually overwhelmed the carrying capacity of the land. The inevitable came thereafter, reduced soil fertility, then poor crops and finally famine enough for the civilisation to collapse. We’re talking 1500 plus years ago, and what have we learned? Fuck all! Does it not make you think? Food is the key to our survival and equally our downfall. Yes I’m pessimistic, but I don’t see the world changing. There is still more emphasis on the ‘importance’ of material and wealth acquisition compared to the contentedness that living simply and within our means can bring. It’s embedded in the human psyche to out-do one another, hence my dislike of competitive sports, well competitive anything really. We ought to strip back all the rubbish on TV, Cinema and radio and concentrate on helping one another, and ourselves. But I fear we are far too selfish. In the meantime, I for one shall continue to propagate, and one will preservere, in a state of denial, waiting for the day I can harvest this next season bounty.

Garlic and Broccoletti