our garden

This is our garden. It's our first attempt at growing a garden together, and at altitude. So we're not trying aiming for anything too complicated. We're growing potatoes, onions, raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb and soon there'll be lettuce, carrots and cabbages to plant out too.

Our garden is on an allotment just out of the village, bordered by workshops and a small torrent. All the gardens in the allotment are individual, with a different look on each. Right now, you could spot our patch a mile off, it's the only green one on the whole allotment, the only one teeming with growing things. Not because we're ahead of the other gardeners. But because all through the winter time, we've  been experimenting with a perma-culture approach. 

We're new to this hippy-dippy approach to gardening, so it's a great big adventurous learning curve. In the autumn, we tucked up our soil with a big old pile of leaves from the forest and saw dust from our wood pile and then let Mother Nature do the rest. Every one else in the allotment left their plots uncovered. As the last ground snows started melting, we've hardly been able to contain our excitement as the first signs of life have been pushing their way through the mulch: lovely little green shoots of clover and mustard to cover our patch over. Our neighbours probably think we're mad. Or that we don't know what we're doing. After all, why would anyone encourage weeds to grow in their veggie patch? 

But now it's our turn to think they are the mad ones. As we've been watching them in the past few weeks breaking their backs digging and rotavating the soil, pulling out all the weeds and turning over their earth ready to sow and plant. 

In many ways, our plot, just like my preference for long, billowing skirts, seem to be a metaphor to our approach to life: defiantly unconventional and slightly baba cool*. But it suits us just fine.

*baba cool = hippy, in French