A cottage garden dream

I don’t know if it’s the rains or just that time of the year; I always seem to pause and look back on the year that was right about this time. But today, I go a little over the year and look back at the time when this farm and this farmer avatar was all but a distant dream. And every single time, I wish I had gotten to this earlier, almost a decade earlier but I don’t discount all the learnings and all the frustrations and all the factors that took for universe to show me what I truly aspired. So, now this wiser me, just gives herself grace for not wishing it had happened earlier and instead fills every ounce of her heart space with gratitude for what is! I wouldn’t trade anything for how things came to be, not even the hardships and the heartaches. I needed every bit of every experience I went through to get to where I am today. Everything happens at the right time.

Since the time we started work on the farm, every year saw phenomenal growth and expansion. Every thing I envisioned seemed unachievable only till we stepped up and made it happen.
This year too I had some goals for my farm; this year was an experiment on increasing certain produce to process and store them for longer periods and the other pipe dream of mine was to start some flowering bulbs and give my farmhouse a cottage-style feel. A cottage garden dream…
A cottage garden says – come in, wander, stay awhile…
The riot of colours and happy clutter that would add character to the farmhouse and the space around. Vines clambering up, roses twinning over an arbor, flowers over-flowing their beds tossed along with a mix of herbs and edible weeds. Sounds charming right?

So, I ordered some flowering bulbs early on, well before the rains hit and audaciously bought some lavender seeds too! (YES, LAVENDER) Can you believe me? Even I can’t believe I did that. Lavender in Chennai? Foolish of me but this fool just has some audacious dreams like that. So, they arrived and I meticulously followed the instructions on the package. It said that the seeds needed to a simulation of winter conditions to start germinating and so I had to keep the seeds in a wet paper towel in the refrigerator for A MONTH and low and behold, it germinated! I have captured a video as proof. But alas, the transplants didn’t survive…Hmmm, I wonder why! Well, there are lots of such failings in my kitty but I keep trying.

The flower bulbs on the other hand sprouted well and we successfully transplanted them in the front porch of our farmhouse. I ordered Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), Lupin Pixie Dwarf, Alyssum, Larkspur imperial, Zinnia, Poppy Carnation Zephyranthes lily (rain lily) and Glorius gladiolus.

As per the last update, they have all survived the lashing rains. Fingers and toes crossed to help them survive the rest of the rains this year.

The time we get to spend on the farm is very limited and every minute goes into tending the vegetables and fruits crops but my heart yearned for a huge flowering patch and I am nurturing that dream tenderly. We will have to wait to see the outcome of it. Everything happens at the right time, you can’t rush it baby.
Until then I am reminding myself, that it isn’t meant to be perfect, it’s meant to be good.