WHICH ASPECT OF GARDENING DO YOU FIND MOST REWARDING?

Pretty much the same here. I don't have seasonable plants but certain plants do bloom at certain times and others whenever they feel like it.

 

Personally I could happily do without winter.
It would help with the fuel bills.

But seriously it's just a dirty, dark, wet time of year.
I don't really want it hot all year but a shorter winter with no frost would be nice.

 

That is more or less true here.

 

I agree with that, especially no frost ... or snow ... but I enjoy rain. It's the long dark nights I don't like, and that long drag up to Christmas

I wouldn't want to be without winter altogether though, it's a time to rest and unwind, like the night. We need rest. I think constant summer would wear me out.
Also if we didn't have winter we'd miss out on seeing the Snowdrops and Crocuses and all the other winter flowering plants. And that's another reason for planning ahead, you don't have to dislike the season you're in but you have to plan for the next one. I enjoy planting bulbs
Some of my many succulents flower in winter and they take on bright colours, some of them.
I try to find something positive in all the seasons.

 

My favourite time of the year is late spring into early summer, once the chances of frost are over, although it's a busy time of the year in the garden it's a time of anticipation and energy and hopefulness for the summer to come.
I find it busy in some ways but relaxing regarding my mental state ,if that makes sense.

 

I don't like it too hot or too cold.

I don't have much energy now but I get a sense of satisfaction when I look back at the days work in the garden, be it only small sometimes.

Then there are the expectations of a bumper crop of lovely Tomatoes and my disappointment this season picking only two

 

If I may re-type this:

a shorter winter with no frost would be Nice ... it will explain precisely why in the old days the English gentry would go there and while away a good four months of the year and make their presence felt by the coastline to such an extent that the French renamed the strip La Promenade des Anglais.

 

Have they renamed it La Promenade des Russes now?

 

You take aim at a legitimate target there, inasmuch as CFS types of events have as much to do with ego as with horticulture; so often, as with sports, the competitive aspect raises its ugly head and the I have a medal and am therefore superior to you is always a risk.

Undoubtedly, there is at Chelsea an element of the over-recherché, the poodle effect or, worse, the cruel distortions imposed on dogs who can no longer breathe and whose breeders fall flat on their faces with too much protest.

There is, however, be it at Chelsea or at Wimbledon, a place where the pursuit of excellence produces results as close to perfection as human endeavours can aspire to; sadly — you may deplore it, but — competition seems to be the preferred way society has devised to achieve those aims. You will have noticed that in the media today, EVERYTHING has to be a competition, from forming relationships to painting landscapes, from baking cakes to escaping from the jungle, and all of it fueled by the big corporations intent on tightening their grip evermore over individual freedom.

And are our gardens not a wonderful haven to retreat from such influences? Perhaps shiney (who had the good fortune to “meet with Carl Jung”) can relay the great man’s thoughts, both on the influence of ego on gardening, as well as whether that activity, intent on taming shrewd nature, has anything to do with a futile attempt to regain the symbolic loss of Eden.

 

I was not aware; is the Promenade now full of oligarchs?

 

Indeed, as was Wagner who evokes the Ash Tree as an eternal source of wisdom in The Ring to which Jung refers throughout his writings.