Can a Gardener be a Nomad?

Perhaps there’s something of the nomad in most of us. It may be to do with that time, lost in the mists, when we humans walked – yes, we actually walked – away from our earliest homeland and into the unknown.

The time may be lost, but I truly believe it is not forgotten.

After a hard year in New Cairo, where ‘success’ and ‘failure’ have hung uneasily in the balance, I have taken off, retracing the steps southwards…

Far, far away I have discovered an unspoilt wilderness of breathtaking grandeur and beauty – where I feel strangely at ease. Why did we ever leave, I wonder.

Stumped

They’ve gone. The ficus trees planted as a hedge at the back of the kitchen garden have been cut down; only the stumps are left.

I sense not just the trees nearby, and the surviving plants in the raised beds, will now be able to breathe.  I can feel more air and more light in the whole of this section of the garden. It’s a weight lifted. Or maybe not….

The Crunch

I think we have reached the tipping-point. After a dismal year among the raised beds with poorer spinach and salad yields than previously, wretched tomatoes, inedible carrots and stunted beetroots – I could go on, but I will spare you the agony – something has to be done.

I guess that seen from above they look passable, netted against cats and larger insects (Ha! No chance!) and getting plentiful sun. But the surroundings indicate part of the problem – too many trees.