by Maria C Collins

Created on: February 20, 2009   Last Updated: November 26, 2009

My greatest fault has always been impatience. When I was a little girl my father gave my sister and I a small bed in the garden for us to try gardening. My sister grew a profusion of pretty flowers in her half of the bed. In my half, after many attempts, was a glorious crop of chives. Only because, if the seeds I planted did not show above the ground after a few days, I dug them up to see what was happening. As you can imagine the seeds did not like this treatment and refused to grow. Eventually seeing my disappointment, my Grandfather, a very accomplished and experienced gardener, bought me a packet of chive seeds to sow. They grew fast enough, even for me.

Years later when I moved into my first little house which had a pleasant small and rather bare garden, I decided that I would again try gardening. I was young and not very knowledgeable. I bought many seed packets. I read the instructions on the backs of the packets and did not understand most of them. The ones I did understand said to sow the seeds into seed trays and then prick them out and then put them out in the garden. I did not have any seed trays and could not be bothered with all that messing about. Therefore, I just sowed them straight into the ground and watered them.

My father came to visit me, I proudly showed him round the house, and garden and told him of my horticultural exploits. He said "oh dear! Nothing will come up. You don't sow seeds like that".

Every day I faithfully tended the seeds I had planted and watered them when the weather was dry. No weed was allowed to trespass long in those borders. One day, a few weeks after I had sown the seeds, I was delighted to see the first little green shoots. My father cautioned me against getting too excited because he said that the plants would never come to anything, as I had not done the right things when sowing them.

One beautiful summer's day I wandered out into the garden and saw such a sight. The three borders of the little garden were all ablaze with color. My Father was due to visit the next day. When he arrived, he went straight outside into the garden. He said "What a beautiful show of flowers! Although by what you did to those poor seeds nothing should have grown at all". I must have been very lucky for, as any gardener knows I broke every rule in the gardening book but then, perhaps just occasionally, rules are made to be broken.

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