The blue shed and Connie’s chair – July 2012

Through this long winter what has kept me going has been this image.

Difficult, but inspiring, to imagine that this could be the same place that was in turn tundra, muddy flood plain and a snowy winter wonderland!

Attempting to dig the permafrost as the winter months continued their icy grip was not only disheartening; it was impossible.

So instead I pored over photographs of bountiful baskets of harvested flowers & produce, crimson flowering broad beans, jewelled raspberries, yellow and green courgettes (round and long and sometimes patty-shaped), blood red, pink striped & yellow beetroots, tiny wild strawberries invading neat rows of lettuces – speckled, red-edged, green and bronze – crazy squashes with their triffid tendrils, elegant asparagus fronds (tantalisingly forbidden to cut until established), friendly purple clumps of thyme and chive flowers, lush patches of parsley and coriander interspersed with jovial rows of carrots (hah! fooled you, Mr Carrot Fly) and purple spring onions and pastel coloured asters with frilly petals, ravishing radishes and oh-so-disappointing peas….