The huge poppies lining our front path have in a few cases grown taller than me! Apparently, were we to be assiduous gardeners, we should be culling rather a few of these rampant plants, but on the whole I love a wild and woolly approach.

Okay, I may have to tackle that over-growing Mahonia plant, carefully, with gauntlet gloves and my new light-weight clippers. Those prickly leaves are worse than holly! It’s crowding out the other plants in the border now, especially a beautifully proportioned Japanese maple. And my beloved says that I must mow down all the autumn dandelions or hawkbits, but I so enjoy their yellow spots in what’s left of the small section of grass.

So we weave our way through the over-hanging poppy plants, trying not to mess with the big fried-egg blooms, until we get out the gate and can look back and think. For the first year, we don’t want to do too much, but rather just experience how the place works, how it’s been lived in to date, and think about how we might live in it better.

So there’s a certain amount of joy in simply sitting back and letting the plants all do their thing. We have made a salient observation about the populations of garden plants, however, based on our forays to Threave House and Gardens. We suspect that the previous occupants, who lived here for the past thirty-four years, took advantage of the plants on offer at Threave, local to us just beside Castle Douglas, and invested them into their own borders. So many of the specimens here are cousins of those at the big Scottish National Trust property.

We may not ever experience such a grand lifestyle, but in our humble abode we can find joy in the plants that thrive.