The return to the Land of the Long White Cloud by the travelling Dees, Mrs Dee in particular, has lifted the spirits of all Homesteaders (and not just because of pre-travel promises). No longer are we in sole-charge, no longer are we the only “grown-ups”. We can only echo Mr Dobbin’s words … truly from the bottom of our hearts and with euphoric smiles on our faces.
With their return, we have suddenly recovered a very precious commodity, priceless but essential to the ethos of Union Homestead: time. This week saw the Homestead girls weeding, composting, reclaiming, and rediscovering the gardens – much to the menagerie’s delight. There’s nothing like a bucketful of nettles to get the chickens clucking and the duck’s quacking, or a couple of armfuls of fruit tree prunings to earn yourself a goatie cuddle.
It’s amazing how, under the weeds, all the plans we initiated back in February before everything was put on hold, were still there.
We may have lost our way for a while, but the garden has a long memory and we have rekindled our belief.
Union Homestead 
so glad the garden is restored to full health and vigour, you must all be delighted as must the livestock.
We are relieved more than anything. Sometimes it felt like the lifestyle we’d worked for had been compromised because of our lack of time. Our gardens restored our faith a little and told us firmly to stop being so melodramatic ☺
What a lovely quote about gardens! I tend to spend much of spring and the early part of summer, removing the weeds which joyfully spring up in autumn and winter. Like you, weeding tends to be a time of rediscovery of what is growing in the garden. I hope as I extend the area which is mulched, the weeds will be less prolific.
Weeds are so sneaky too; tiny one moment, towering over everything else the next. Hope the mulching works – we’ve had mixed results.
So healing to tend the garden! And pre-travel plans? Thta sounds exciting! Xo Johanna
Gardening, when it’s going how you want it to, is the best tonic 🙂
Wonderful news! Time! Life isn’t much fun when time is in short supply. So pleased your garden is looking good again and all ready for the growing season.
We’ve been getting very deep and meaningful about time. For the two of us that work on the Homestead, our time is valueless – it has no charge attached to it, yet without our time the whole Homestead limped rather than sprinted. Maybe we need to work out a charge out rate 🙂
What a good idea! 😀
Time is precious all right. And we don’t know how precious till we don’t have it. How comforting that the order and plan were still there. It gives me some hope with this place, which is suffering from the same shortage.
I’m sure it will be the same for you. You put the hours in over a long period of time.