Johnny works with one hammer, one hammer, one hammer...

...Johnny works with one hammer then he has a chook house! Then I scratch around in the garden planting things here and there and pulling out the odd weed and several truck loads of couch grass. Golly gee, (and other far more offensive swear words) I hate couch grass. If anyone suggests it as an awesome lawn, they'd be right, but don't expect the stuff to respect boundaries, grrrr. Having spent quite a bit of time out amongst the shrubbery in the beautiful sunshine lately, I've been wondering about the wonders of natures wonderland. For some time I approached the garden in a backyard blitz fashion. That is, I'd muster up the enthusiasm after having read a nifty gardening book or immersed myself in some highly informative gardening show on the idiot box and head into the wilderness that is the backyard. Once kitted out in gardening gloves, boots, a hat and a decent basting of sunscreen I would embark on a transformation. Due to the vast eons that would elapse between my gardening encounters, a transformation is exactly what would be required. The garden beds would be little more than unmowed lawn and my precious plantings, mere crunchy, brown reminders of what once was.  After several hours working up a sweat I would turn to check my progress and find I'd cleared but one teeny corner and created cramped, crippled claws of my hands yanking out masses of couch grass. Miserably acknowledging that from every broken piece of couch left in the ground, two new runners would sprout. By the time the garden was ready for some plants I was so over it I'd wedge them in to the tortured earth, water them, then forget about them, having subconsciously repressed any memories of the gardening venture itself. 
It's never been any comfort to know my heritage boasts a long history of gardening enthusiasts. From the day it sold at auction and for the rest of his life, my Dad primped and preened a half acre block in to a magnificent patch of native, edible and specimen plant harmony. I grew up playing amongst it's lushness, revelling in his eagerness to keep it well watered by running barefoot beneath all kinds of sprinklers. Hooray for rain waves, soaker hoses on full and the ever loved flicker, flicker, flicker, ching variety. He inherited his passion from my green thumb Gran, his Mum. She lives on a smallish suburban block and within her tiny oasis she nutures two magnifecent magnolias, peony roses, camellias, azalias, all manner of fuschia and a very healthy and productive vegie patch. While I tentatively fuss over the things she sends to me in pots, she tells me how she got the handyman to "chop half of that thing down" or "take the top off that" with utter flippancy and brazen faith that they'll survive. And, of course, they always do. Which brings me to the third generation, her Mum, my Great Gran. She lived next door to me as a kid and created and maintained an enourmous block with magnificent garden in every corner bar the one with the house in it. It was the kind of garden they feature in magazines. The only thing that halted her gardening habit was trundling off to the old age home at the tender age of 103. So, do I have much to live up to? Not much!!??!
I am learning, though. I'm starting to get a growing sense that your Jamie Duries are not gardeners. They're interior designers with shiny books about backyard projects funded by people with bottomless money pits. Have a look at some of these better homes and gardens, backyard blitz-esque affairs. They're not REAL. These 'gardeners' swan in and remove any trace of nature. They scrape it off with large, ugly machines until they're left with a blank canvas onto which they impose lots of hard and straight surfaces. There's always lots of paving, decking and whacker packer-ing. Then they introduce an "organic" feel by putting a curved edge on the paving before bringing in some plants. Now, to keep it all cohesive, these folk love a yukka, or flax or some other angular, smooth and shiny leafed number. Are these plants not simply plastic plants masquerading as the real thing? These gardens are very popular and I find it a tad frightening that people feel more comfortable in an outdoor environment that is, more or less, just inside with sky views.
I'm coming to grips with the heart of what it means to have a garden. It's forever a work in progress. It evolves and grows with you. Ours has. We had little more than corrugated fences and a jonquil border when we moved in. Since then, it has seen the vegie garden move and expand. We've got quite a few fruit trees now. So many, I'm saying "orchard". There's the beloved chooks in their little house and since the arrival of kids it's becoming their world too. A swing, a slide, a sandpit and chalk drawings all over anything incapable of moving. It's pure happiness to sit out in our patch of green watching my kidlets get caked in filth. If the plughole's not blocked when they get out of the bath at the end of a day in the garden, either they're not having fun or you don't have a REAL garden. If it's the latter, then chances are it's probably the former, too.

As I write I'm sitting outside in the dark typing by screen glow, feeding myself to swarms of mozzies. This indicates how difficult it is for me to stay within the house walls when the weather is warm. However, I did commit a few hours today to some serious chopping and compiling for the double whammy market weekend coming up this Saturday and Sunday. I'm anxiously waiting on some paper and itching to get an enourmous pile of colouring books, paper dolls and finger puppets ready so I can get on to some gorgeous Christmassy touches for my stall. I want to do a few whimsical special edition cards and round up some twinkly lights because the Santa bandwagon has arrived and I'm on it. Yay for tinsel and Bing Crosby, I never tire of it! Wish me luck and I hope to see you in Daylesford on Saturday for the Makers Market and at St Patricks hall in Ballarat on Sunday.