I was feeling so smug and proud of myself for getting ahead and sowing half-hardy annuals in the greenhouse in the autumn. A couple of weeks ago I cleaned the greenhouse glass and tidied and it was a picture of  organisation and productivity. I felt like one of those keen gardeners in the magazines who has everything organised and under-control . Go me- I am a serious gardener at last!

That was on the 17th February. Look, even salad greens to enjoy. I thought Spring was around the corner and I was ahead of the game.

So pride comes before a fall and if gardening teaches you one thing it is that we are not in control of nature- we are at it’s mercy. This was the situation yesterday…

The plants were hit by the freezing conditions. For days the temperature did not rise above freezing . My carefully tended plants suddenly looked very sad as they flopped and collapsed. The salad leaves were limp and looking far from appetising.

Hopefully today’s thaw will be soon enough to allow them to bounce back. I will also get onto some more sowing, although some of the seedlings that I raised in my propagator are looking very sick and etiolated and were probably sown too soon. I should have really waited a bit.

So this is the thing really, you never know whether ‘getting ahead’ is worth the effort or whether your efforts will bear fruit. Gardening is not the sort of linear, logical activity where cause and effect follow on neatly from one another. More effort doesn’t always lead to more outcome and less effort is not always less rewarded. So one has to enjoy the process otherwise there is much potential for frustration and disappointment, as in the Buddhist idea to ‘act wholeheartedly,  but let go of the outcome’, it’s a lesson in humility as well as creativity. I can have all sorts of big ideas about how I want the garden to be and some of those will come through and work out and some of them won’t but I can still enjoy the process and delight in what I have created and nurtured. A constant lesson in ‘letting go’.

Update

This morning all is fine- phew! No apparent losses and the plants are gradually picking up. I shall water them tomorrow before we go away and hopefully they will be back on course. The lesson in ‘letting go’ has been postponed.