The best things come to those who wait

I have a theory that the longer you wait for something, the sweeter it is when you get it.  In our modern consumerist society, we don't wait as long as we might for most things, and I am particularly guilty of frittering away money on instant gratification in the form of seeds, plants, pots etc.

However, one thing you can't buy easily in London is space, and we have waited a long time to have a garden with a patch of sunny space for a greenhouse.  When you add this time to the time we lived in flats with no private garden, we have waited fifteen years for that patch of space.

Fifteen years of indoor plants crammed into corners.  Fifteen years of Jamie running out into the garden late at night to put straw and bubble wrap on tender plants in the first frosts.  Fifteen years of seedlings covering every windowsill and of citrus plants dying of too little light in the heat or too much water in the cold.

But after all that time, wow, what a beauty.  It was well worth the wait.  I can hardly contain my excitement.

After waiting fifteen years, we decided to make it worthwhile, and while others may drive nice cars or take foreign holidays, our extravagances have usually gone into plants and the garden.  So we invested our life savings in a gorgeous red cedar greenhouse.  We are very, very lucky people.

It was ready for plants in mid December, and is now home to some prize new plants that wouldn't have thrived even through the mild 90s winters.  Exhibit A:  A new peach tree whose blossom is spectacular at this time of year.

There are also a multitude of seedlings, which are healthier than anything we have seen on the windowsill over the years.  They just do so well in there.  Some of them have started to be planted out.  Coriander and Lemon coriander:

Globe artichokes:

Finally the peas that were put in a month ago are ready to go it alone outside:

It's amazing how life can change so much in a year.