This year I managed 7 of the 20 open gardens! No actually I did one twice and of all the coincidences I met a lady who nearly bought our house 42 years ago? How unlikely is that? The vendor then changed their mind, and the sale fell through. But if she had bought it and stayed there then we would not have made our move five years ago… Witnesses to our conversation did say my chin did fall open in amazement, literally they could see how shocked I was that it was the same house.

Things happen for a reason they say and I had a lovely time doing three visits before work and three after my shift. I even visited the Letchworth bee keepers Apiary and bought some honey at the site I failed to locate on previous years. They actually have a number of sites with hives and always someone about to help with bees or swarms. I wish I’d known about that when a work visit to Hitchin last week found their Marshall protectively keeping a swarm under observation. But you only find out useful information after you’ve needed it, I find.

My gardens visited included several I’ve seen before, and a couple of new ones but even gardens I have seen before had new things to see. A garden doesn’t stay still, even if it has a fixed location. And conversations with random strangers about our gardening friends (birds and bees) and adversaries (bindweed and mares tail) I came home with some lovely herbs, cosmos and verbena to plant up as well as cakes, damson jam and honey! I like seeing how to combine my favourites with other things and chat to people to randomly make connections. So much to source, plan and plant!