Wisteria envy

Wisteria. Lots of it. Just not ours.

Strange as it might seem from reading this blog, life does continue in between annual Live Below the Line challenges.

When we lived in London, we had a tiny back yard and were grateful for it, after years of living in flats with no outside space. 

Our garden in London. Even the estate agent found it hard to make it look big.

One of the major benefits of moving to the country last year was getting a much bigger garden. As one friend put it, we moved “from having no garden to three gardens”.

The only drawback is that my gardening knowledge is limited to admiring glances, being dragged round National Trust properties as a child and having a very enthusiastic gardener for a mother, even if she does live in a different country which is not entirely convenient for help with the odd spot of weeding.

However, I do have good intentions, and have discovered that I would definitely rather be pottering around pulling things up outside than doing housework inside. 

We have battled to remove enormous amounts of ivy and a tenacious vine, but that still leaves another vine, wisteria and assorted roses clambering up the house, into the gutters, under the tiles and making a concerted grab for the chimneys. 

I can only reach up a certain height to prune even on our ladder, with the strange effect of relative neatness below and explosive growth above, so we were forced to call in reinforcements. 

Andy the gardener fettled all the climbers in a couple of visits in March, but did mention that cutting back the wisteria so late in the year would mean it flowered later too. 

So now I get wisteria envy every time I walk down the street, because the wisteria over the road looks fantastically ebullient like this:

Amazing wisteria over the road…

whereas ours looks like this:

Hmmmm. Could try harder.

I’m sure I don’t need to worry though. 

Wisteria grows quite so enthusiastically that like cockroaches I reckon it would survive nuclear bombardment to sprout anew. 

I just have to remember last summer, when I could virtually see it growing before, behind, between, above and below the window in my work room. 

Evidence of wisteria taking over the world

Anyway do let me know if you might be remotely interested in progress in the garden, not solely budget recipes and rants about food poverty. Although I do have a fine recipe for cheesecake I was intending to write about too.