It’s been one year to the day that From Seed To Bloom made its way into your hands, opening up its pages to the world. The process of pouring countless hours, days, months into words on a page is intense. I now have infinitely more respect for novelists, cookery book writers, writers who work to deadline than I ever did before having experienced some of the fervent wrangling of how those things are put together. And after all that- to have to let it all go, allowing those painstakingly woven words to no longer be yours alone- it’s all a bit nerve wracking to say the least. I’ve learnt a lot from the experience- on chipping away at a project, on working anywhere, anytime, and on relinquishing power and control.
The baby came just two weeks later, so the fear and trepidation of the book being released was some what mitigated by an intensity of another kind. In those sleepless nights (still sleepless now at almost a year old by the way), with tiny, quick and hot breaths on my neck, milk stained and depleted, the book and people’s response to it seemed impossibly far away. In the months since, I’ve taken moments here and there to read messages and emails from readers, and even dared to read a few (not all) reviews, and I’m glad, so glad that the book has found its way into plenty of the hands of those who these pages were intended.
I swore never again during and after, the writing of it having to be balanced with the day job was hard enough, and then throw a baby into the mix I wasn’t sure if it would be possible again. Now a little time has past and the lines of memory have begun to blur the reality of work-load, I’d like to get back to long-form writing. Mainly because I love how plants and gardens make the world feel like a more tolerable and beautiful place, it feels almost essential to uphold them and celebrate them in some special way, that, and I have an insatiable urge to memorialise the seasons and blooms here in the way of pictures and words.
So, I’m thinking - something very useful and something immensely beautiful. Something along the lines of how to make a garden. Answering in detail some of the questions I get asked regularly; how to plan and plant the borders, how to make a cutting garden that works through all the seasons, how to make those simple DIY fences, and gates- any other suggestions, please send them my way and I’ll get cracking.
