by chance, I have gotten into work that I love. I love everything about it, being outdoors, meeting lots of new people, doing work that is appreciated, doing work that I am good at, doing work that does no harm, using my education (kind of), taking something simple to a higher level (at least I aspire to). I love the physical aspects of the job: the air, the smells, feeling strong… Everything was wet today, I was in the mud and the damp, the smell of the soil and the chrysanthemums, the cedars, were pungent and rich. I didn’t care that I was wet and muddy, it just heightened the experience of the day.

This week I worked on a few old favourites and on a new garden. I get to tend many styles of gardens. A mature Japanese inspired beauty, now reclaimed. A formal European with walls and a courtyard rose garden. Fancy expensive gardens with stone parterres or 5 of every expensive or showy plant you can name. A lakeside mansion that take the causal beach house garden to a whole other level. A storefront garden for an old family business, and all the shenanigans that go along with it. Gardeners gardens that once were, with collections, a little of this and a little of that, with lots of surprises, and mistakes, now they need reclamation and care. And now my new garden completes the set, the front is a truly natural garden, with birch trees, ferns, trilliums, lady’s slipper, all the things you would see on a walk in the woods, then it moves gently into a gardener’s garden, a pond here, a veggie patch there, some modern architectural plantings in the back sunny area. They are all my favourites, well I particularly love the first one and the last one.

My own garden is done, now I get to experiment and live in all these styles of gardens, watch the seasons change and have intimate love affairs with all of them.