Gardening

Welcome to Gardening, where the Domestic Daemon wages a seasonal battle against weeds, slugs, unpredictable weather and plants that stubbornly refuse to read their own care instructions.

Here you’ll find tales of ambitious planting schemes, spectacular successes, inexplicable failures and the occasional triumph over nature. There will be vegetables, flowers, herbs and a great deal of optimism, particularly in spring, when last year’s disasters have conveniently faded from memory.

I firmly believe that gardening is equal parts science, instinct and wishful thinking. A gardener must possess patience, determination and the ability to look at a patch of bare earth and see something magnificent, even when everyone else sees mud.

Of course, nature usually has plans of her own.

And if something grows where it wasn’t planted, I prefer to call it a happy accident rather than a weed.