I caught the growing bug

I want to make a diary of what I've been doing with my adventures in gardening.
As this year has gone by, it would be easy to forget how I started out. This blog and posts will have to backtrack over this past year, as I'm only starting in the last few days of August 2015

But for now, lets go back in time!

In 2013 I moved in with my boyfriend in Lerwick. We live in a small Hjaltland 1 person, 1 bedroom flat. TINY! We have a small garden, 4 x 3 meters or so. Better than nothing, I refer to it as my post stamp garden.
It looks south east out onto a very uninspiring view. Noisy from the north boat coming and going daily. Currently a new pier is being built nearby. A few times a day, the flat shakes as workers explode rocks a few hundred meters away to create it. In winter, the light barely reaches it, as the sun hardly rises above the surrounding houses to reach us. All year, the sun is extinguished by the hill to our west, cutting out all direct sunlight after 4pm.

All in all, its not all that inspiring.

In late 2014 in a bid to brighten it up, I bought a few plants to decorate the flat patch of grass. I had a total of 3 pots. 1 large pot with a small blackcurrant bush to grow into. 1 large ceramic teacup with chives and mint in it.  And one strawberry planter with 4 strawberry plants in it.
They all lived outside the backdoor and survived the blasting of wind over the long dark Shetland winter.

THEN. As if by magic, a switch seemed to flick on in my brain and I needed to grow more. LOTS more.
I'm not sure what triggered it exactly. I'd grown up with my mam and granny who were avid gardeners. When I was young, I was never really interested in growing things. I helped them sometimes, but it was boooring.

I think the trigger was the satisfaction at seeing my baby blackcurrant bush suddenly putting on lots of new growth in the spring and thinking "Hey, I did that. I made that plant happy enough so it could grow. That is so COOL. Hey, what else could I make grow." I was so proud of my little bush and from then, I was hooked.

The bug doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon!