The rocky road to the success I used to be

I have now moved in a different direction with this blog, and am investigating the ideas which I developed in my career in horticulture. I shall entitle it 'The rocky road to the success I used to be'.

However, whilst doing that, let us not forget that this started out as a way of retaining my sanity while housebound for three years following an accident. I wrote the hilarious and deeply poignant story of my redemption in daily instalments of about a thousand words, for a period of nearly eighteen months. The first 117 chapters are now available as a Kindle book, readable on your Kindle device, your PC, iPad or Smartphone with an app. Please follow the link below to sample and purchase:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nil---mouth-Cancel-Cakes-ebook/dp/B00A2UYE0U/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1352724569&sr=1-1

Also now published is Volume 2, 'A Long Three Months', comprising chapters 118-266.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Months-Cancel-Cakes-ebook/dp/B00CYNFTDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369413558&sr=1-1&keywords=A+long+three+months

And finally, Volume 3 is now available at the link below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drawing-Close-Cancel-Cup-Cakes-ebook/dp/B00GXFRLE4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1385545574&sr=1-1&keywords=Drawing+to+a+Close

I have now removed all the original posts to make space for the future.

Thank you for reading. Having an audience is marvellous for focussing the mind. I am also working on some drawing projects which will take me away from the keyboard for a while, and I write other stuff too, which you can find popping up occasionally on my website https://nicolsonbrooks.com/. And I have my own little garden to look after. Keep looking in, though, as I have no idea what will land on the page, where it might come from, or when. You have all been invaluable to what has been produced so far.




Saturday, 4 March 2017

Day 47 - Easy option and a ginger tom

The following year I started out with complete confidence in the Heliotrope scheme, and we continued with it. The whitefly hadn't been too much of a problem to begin with, and obviously weren't a deal-breaker in this second season. Nor were they for the next four years. Maybe I was just too lazy to change the quiz that asked what they smelled of. So for the next few years our hexagonal beds looked like this in the summer -




Not a bad effect. A quiet statement to pass through on the way to something else. We began to incorporate a centrepiece in the urn in the form of a large white Agapanthus which lent height to the whole ensemble.




The thing was, the combination was popular with both visitors and resident freeloaders, so who was I to argue?




The other bedding scheme was a different story, however. After suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous public opprobrium, I gave up for a while trying to be clever with colour schemes, and reverted to the dull repetition of history. And looking back on the photographs, I am depressed at how long I let this go on for. Of course there was a certain smug acceptance of this on the part of my colleagues who saw tradition as inviolable, and perhaps I was going for the quiet life. Doesn't sound like me, but it was a tough enough job at the best of times without winding up my colleagues. Which I already did by just being there sometimes. So, Dahlia 'Park Princess' it was. And I am disappointed to say that it looks like that lasted for nine years. Sometimes it looked plain dull -




While at other times, by good regular maintenance we managed to make it set off the surrounding borders -




We were even able to make the cursed plants look quite vibrant, but it was more work than they deserved, in my opinion -




Tomorrow - history lies in the past, which is where it should be sought. Let's look to the present. The present I will be showing you is now also the past. So many years gone by. If we want to see the actual present, 2006 onwards, we will have to appeal to the present team to send me some pics. Some hopes! But you never know. I'd love to see what's happening these days.

No comments:

Post a Comment