sowing seeds of friendship…

A friend came to visit this morning.  Not for long, she just stopped off on her way into Paris, but she brought with her some cuttings from her garden for me to pop into my borders.

She has a beautiful garden an hour from me, and I am always pleased for the chance to see what is growing there.

After leaving me, she was heading into Paris for the night, so I couldn’t give her anything ‘perishable’ in return, ….. but I could give her some seeds.

Not all flowers will grow easily from seed, but some like nothing better than to be scattered randomly over a flower bed, given a quick soak of water and simply wished good luck.

So today, in a tiny corner of her car, my friend drove off to Paris with a couple of envelopes of seeds from here.  Nothing fancy, some still need to dry a little, but just slipped into envelopes with the name on the outside, and a very vague and approximate image to make things a little prettier.

And for someone like myself, who generally likes things to happen straight away, who will always opt for the quick and immediate result, this is the miraculous effect that gardening can have – where patience becomes second nature, and the idea of planting and not seeing the final effect for a season, a year or even a couple of years for more ambitious projects is totally acceptable.

How sad we can’t bottle that gardening spirit and spread a little more patience and long term planning in today’s fast-fix world.