Final December meme post, and some fannish links

[dolorosa_12]

Today's prompt from chestnut_pod brings this year's December talking meme to a close, and it's been a great run of questions. Many thanks to all of you who left a prompt! This final prompt is to talk about how I learnt to garden, plus any longstanding plant friends in my garden.


I don't really feel as if I properly learnt to garden — the short answer is a lot of trial and error, plus the knowledge that my vegetables at least seem to thrive in circumstances of benign neglect. I didn't make any formal, systematic effort to learn, but I've picked up a lot by osmosis from following gardening accounts on Instagram (focusing on those of people who live in similar climates): nettlesandpetals, poppy.okotcha, thefrenchiegardener, botanicaltales. From them I learnt a lot of basic stuff about no-dig gardening, sowing seeds, and the seasonal gardening cycles in the UK. I should try to find accounts that are even more local to me, since there are a lot of quirks to the soil and climate here.

Regarding plant friends in my own garden, I guess I could say the five main fruit trees (two cherries, one apple, and two pears) — they bring me a lot of joy, especially in spring — but to be honest, my favourite tree was this one in one of the parks in town, but it was cut down last year and I've not found another to hold the same spot in my heart. I miss seeing it every time I walk out to the pool, especially in winter, when it was always laden with bright red berries.


fandomtrees is due to open for reveals on 10 January, but it will only do so when every participant has a minimum of two gifts each. This post on the comm links to a spreadsheet of needy trees — there are still a substantial number of participants with only one gift, or with no gift at all. My own tree is here.

And the new year means that snowflake_challenge will be rolling around again. I'm always so happy to see the consequent burst of enthusiastic activity on Dreamwidth!