Six months ago I posted this entry, as I was made redundant from my old company. Well, it’s been a long half year, and I’ve spent a lot of time going up to the Summer House and spending time looking out at a snowy garden doing bugger-all except trawling the internet for jobs and sending off application after application.
However, yesterday I went for an interview and they called me in the afternoon to ask when I can start, so on Monday at 9AM I will start my new job! It’s perhaps not very sexy being an accounts receivable clerk in a public educational institution, but it’s the kind of job I am good at and can enjoy. (I enjoy things I’m good at, and nobody beats me when it comes to a nice spread sheet…)
It means, of course, that there will be less time to spend in the garden this spring than feared. (Because let’s face it, unemployment sucks, even if it’s good for the garden!) This, however, is just something to manage somehow. After all, the garden has always been intended as a weekend / holiday garden, so it must be able to look good – or at least decent – with only a couple of days’ attention every month. Even in spring.
Seedlings etc. will have to be grown in the apartment anyway, so the garden will not be completely neglected. And even though the Flâneur Husband pretended to be annoyed that there were seed trays in every window in the apartment last spring, he secretly admitted to me that he quite liked seeing the little plants grow – especially since they’d be adorning the garden in the summer. And when I get my dahlia tubers back from their winter holiday Chez Mum – it sounds so much ritzier than “in my Mum’s shed – I might also start them off in pots in the apartment so they can get a good start before I expose them to the slugs.
So even though it’s one day early I’ve changed the header from the winter image to the spring image, and I thought I’d end this entry with the un-cropped version.
Fantastic news, congratulations. What a positive way to start Spring. Celebrations all round!
It is indeed a good way to start spring! After all, a garden with a stressed-out, job-seeking, semi-depressed gardener is not as much fun as a slightly less well-kept garden with a happy gardener. (With a bit of cash to buy seeds and plants and perhaps even a new set of garden gloves…)
That’s brilliant news. 🙂 Congratulations! Oh I definitely think a new pair of gardening gloves is in order, as a ‘starting a new job’ present to yourself. 😉 Good to see signs of life in the garden. We’ve had a cold spell which has really held everything back here but today looks milder and sunny so I plan a day at the allotment.
Well, the pictures were – as an organic gardener would do – recycled… They are from spring 2011 and spring 2012. However, the snowdrops are getting there, and the aconites as well. The poor crocus seems to have gone AWOL after the first spring, but at least while it was here it was pretty!
And I definitely need a new pair of gardening gloves – as well as loads of seeds – when the first pay enters my account, but of course that’s a month away. (So perfect timing for sowing, I should think…) Up-front, though, I’m going to splurge on a new shirt or two, just so I feel I have something in my wardrobe that isn’t 2 years old and somewhat worn…
Great news and congratulations on your new job! The garden will be secondary for now but once you’re more settled in your new job you’ll find you’ll have more time to spend in the garden, perhaps more than the weekend days you can give it for now 🙂
Well, since the garden is by our holiday home 2 hours away from our apartment, I think it is likely that I shall no longer be able to get up here on week days. But… We’re having a balcony added to our city apartment this year, so once that’s in place I shall be able to grow quite a few things out there. Tomatoes, herbs, some climbing flowers to disguise the railing… City gardening! It will be very exciting… And perhaps some of the house plants might actually also be allowed to get out into the great outdoors of the balcony!
Congratulations! I hope this new chapter goes well for you. 🙂
I feel confident that any job is better than no job, and on top of that this is a job I am looking forward to. 🙂
So bring on Monday morning; I’m ready for it!
Oh good! Very exciting.
Congratulations on the job! Especially since it’s employment that you will enjoy! So important. All that time away from the garden will make every bloom even more precious to you. And I bet you will be amazed all you can do in your time off.
I won’t get to be in the garden so much, as it’s two hours away from the apartment and we have planned to re-do the apartment kitchen this spring, which will probably take up more than a few weekends… However, there will be made a bit of time for the garden now and then, and at least for the next two months it will mainly be a matter of growing seedlings in the apartment windows anyway.
But the garden was always meant as a hobby, not full-time employment, so it’s just a matter of finding the time every so often.
Congratulations, I am happy for you. Pride in a well prepared spreadsheet is good for the soul.
Indeed! Though perhaps not as pretty as a well-prepared flower bed, but you can’t have it all all the time… 🙂
(Mind you, a spread sheet is less likely to give you a sore back than digging out a new flower bed!)
Congrats and good luck with the new job…and I love the early spring blooms.
The pictures are recycled from last year and the year before, but the flowers are there in the garden. (It just seemed silly to take another picture of snowdrops and aconites.)
But the early spring flowers are great; they are perhaps not the showiest sort, but just the fact that they arrive before the snow has completely gone means they are cherished all the more.
I’m so pleased for you with the new job! Gardens are for fun, and you will still have that no matter how often you visit. I do like the sound of the new balcony and the city garden– I will watch for the photos as that progresses!
It’s looking like a great place to work so far, and the work is easy without being (too) boring. (Let’s face it; book-keeping and invoicing isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but i like it and I’m good at it.)
And I am really looking forward to our balcony. I can imagine a miniature vegetable garden outside our kitchen windows… Herbs, a few tomato plants, maybe some peas climbing the railings… And flowers! Maybe a clematis, or maybe a rambling rose that can “drip” over the railing in a picturesque manner? It will be fantastic, I’m sure, however we end up planting it up.
Soren, I’m a little late, but congratulations on the new job (even if it does interfere a bit with your gardening habit). I’ve got the spreadsheet gene, too. I have spreadsheets for just about everything (including the garden), and my department’s administrative assistant once accused me of “never meeting a problem I didn’t think could be solved with a spreadsheet.” (I had to plead guilty to that charge.)
Today I was handed a list of 10 accounts that need to be finalised for February by Tuesday with the comment “you seem a smart guy; I’m sure you’ll work it out your own way”. I was flattered, then panicked a little, then I got myself a coffee and actually worked out how to do it. That’s the best part about work; being faced with something I’ve never done before and just finding out how to do it. A bit like gardening, really, only with more larger numbers. To celebrate I bought myself 2 astilbe tubers and 3 eryngium planum tubers… (Without checking if they will be happy in my garden – it seems they probably won’t unless I do some serious soil ammendment with loads of sand.)