Granted, I've likely blogged from outside before as I do mostly tend to write posts on my phone whilst out and about or sitting in a packed train carriage or public area. I've yet to have my own area though that belongs to me.
For 3 years whilst I was at Uni and for 7 years whilst owning my first home - a flat - I didn't have a garden. Well technically in my flat I had a small 'communal garden' and for 2 of the 3 years we had a garden whilst at Uni. None of these were 'proper' gardens.
We moved into our house end of September last year. It was the first property myself and my fiance were going to own together and so far so good - well we've survived being in the house without killing eachother for now!This is the first house I've owned and the first property full stop my partner has owned.
One of the big things I always missed when living in a flat was the chance to go outside. I love my sun and you can normally find I'm in a better mood when the sun is shining and I'm feeling healthier with a glowing tan.
Now the rain has stopped today (well it was really hot yesterday and this is the UK!) it feel so nice to be able to come out into our own little private area and enjoy some fresh air. Where our patio area is - and where I'm sitting at our recently bought garden table and chairs set - feels really private and secluded as I'm almost hidden in a corner, behind a small extension area and next to a high fence. Just me and my thoughts.
In addition, we live in a small little crescent and there is hardly any noise when you sit out here, apart from birds tweeting and other people who live nearby.
Our garden is pretty small in all fairness, but to us it's a start and it's our garden, and realistically due to our different working hours and not having much time together as it is, how big a garden do we really need in all honesty?
This garden is small and compact, but most of it gets the sun and it suits us just fine.
But, I have a question for you - how do you decide what to do with your garden?
When we bought our house we soon realised - on viewings and once we'd moved in - that the former owners were very keen gardeners. Our garden was in immaculate condition when we moved in - shaped lawn, lots of bushes and plants, a cute little hanging bird table, a little shed, they left us their lawnmower and washing line. We were set up. Or so we thought.
The key word in the paragraph above is bushes! Yes there may have been lots of perfectly pruned and healthy bushes when we moved in, but fast forward to springtime and everything was kind of a bit overgrown. More of a problem than that, our garden is small and taking up two big chunky sides of it with bushes does not help that situation.
So recently we've decided to cut almost everything away and start again. Yes right now the garden looks bare and a bit of a mess, and it did take a lot of hard work (and many scratches, cuts, bruises and garden tools), but there is so much space to play with.
The problem now?
Well, we're stuck.
We need to decide what we really want it to look like and how it will work for us and we either don't agree with each other, or - in my case - can't even decide a consistent theme with ourselves.
For example, I love the idea of painting the fences a colour rather than creosote and painting the shed another colour - more pastel - to match the new colour fencing. I also like the idea of a small water feature (very small), but I don't want a load of hassle of water pumps, electricity etc so want to see if we could find a basic one. I one minute want thin flowerbeds to replace the wide ones we have now and put lots of colourful flowers in, but then I'd really love the sides paved - still thinner than they are now - and big pots on them instead. Already I've bought a small Buddha head statue for the garden as I've always wanted one.
See? A bit of a mixed bag of ideas here? You want to check out my Pinterest Garden folder to see just how bad!
My other half seems on board with most of my opinions, but his concern with paving and pots is we won't have much colour in the garden. And where I think we could pave one edge, but the other have turf right to the fence, he thinks it all has to match.
How can it be so complicated for such a small space of land?
When you add in we don't have tons of money to spend, we've not got lots of time to spend gardening (to do it up and in future to keep things alive!) and we're already into July next week, it's leaving me a bit doubtful we'll ever get it right this year before rain, storms and snow set back in!
We've also come to realise what a sign of ageing it also is to be so interested in our garden! To top it off, in order to get all tooled up with garden equipment, we used the Tesco Clubcard Double Up campaign and exchanged all our vouchers for items such as - gardening gloves, secateurs, rake, spade, fork, shears, loppers and more. We did also buy a small basic barbecue and some utensils for that, but we've not had a chance to actually have a BBQ yet!
I'd love to hear what other people out there have done with their gardens. Right now any help we can get we could do with.
I'll try to keep you posted on progress - if there is any! - and just keep my fingers crossed the previous owners never see this and hate us for ruining their beautiful blooming garden!
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