The Start...

They always say to start at the beginning, which is where im going to try and start this blog. The beginning: What is this and why am I doing it? 

Here I will be writing about the evolution of my garden from the overgrown 'interesting' garden that was inherited with this house to what I hope will be a good looking, well maintained (I can only wish) garden to match the property and the people in the house. Which will be not too much work to maintain, but enough to keep me out of trouble.

Here I will also relay stories about the people that inhabit the garden and some tales from the kitchen since I feel that a good cook should also be in touch with the garden as this is where most of the food stuff comes from. That and I love cooking with herbs.

The back story: 

Having moved to Southampton in '06 and lived in halls I then moved into a lovely terraced house, with out much of a garden to speak of at all. But I did not spend much of this year in the house as I was given an offer to go to the Caribbean on a Tall Ship which I took up so had the year off uni. On returning to the UK to continue my studies I moved into a friends house at short notice, this house was a typical student house with mildew/mould on the walls and the most over grown garden you could ever hope to come across. One year in this house was more than enough and with my sister starting at Southampton the next September the hunt started for a decent house that the two of us could enjoy for a number of years to come, being big sailors Soton is a good place to come to indulge this habit, so it was likely that we would not be leaving too quickly after graduation. 

The house was found and moved into a week or so before freshers week which gave a week to sort the house before my house mate moved in (including painting the rooms etc). In the first year, between finishing the bits in the house that had escaped first time round or only come to light after living in the house, a full timetable at uni and being ill, the garden has had to take a back seat. 

This summer we have decided that the garden needs looking at, and having cut back the hedges and generally given a hard cut back to most of the plants that were present before we are getting an idea of what there is to play with and getting stuck into making it better :D

*Pops the cork on the virtual champagne* - A toast to the start of a new blog and hopefully a new garden too...