Of Trees and Dreams (by sarah)
This is the first crop of apples from Mary's apple tree we have in a pot in the garden, I been producing alot from the garden this year but it is frustrating as it is all pots and grow bags and we are still waiting for an allotment, which also means I can't make the garden nice either at the moment but that will all come in time.
I am however really missing my fruit trees that me and Dad planted at The Bakery - two apples (which technically belong to Cranham Scout Group), a golden plum and a cherry. The apples were producing from the first year and they were large sweet watery green things - normally only one or two per tree a year, the plum had only started producing a few here and there when we left. If they are still there then they will now be starting to crop properly. However they were not in the best place for water and I wonder if anyone has watered them.
There is however a community orchard opening up near us so I am hoping to be able to get onto that - but it is being restricted to the houses around the space which we just miss being - so we will see.
The final death nail has gone into the coffin of the dream we had - I was still thinking we could save up and buy it all back and then be in control and do good things like the balcony and conservatory and the orchard proper etc... 6 yrs of wasted effort, time and money (the rent (which we wanted to be a mortgage) - we paid and did alot of structural repairs and things and tried to buy chunks of it at various points, paid for and did a hell of a lot of gardening) - but it was not to be. However it is also a relief - we didn't have the sort of money that was needed to sort the place out - mainly because we were there and Alaric did not take work deals that would have taken him out of the UK to live - I know he feels incredibly frustrated over this. But now we have the practical house and not the dream house and we can achieve everything but the goats and hydro-electricity (for which some of the infrastructure is already in place down there thanks to Al and the work men after the flood), and it just won't look as pretty.
There are no ifs and buts now, as we are too far down the line there are only happends - but I do wonder how things would have been different if we had stayed in Essex - I would have had a science career, I think, which would have slowly mutated to a communication role so in some ways - I think it has just been a different path to the same thing.
Maybe one day we will have our tumble down farm to do up with various out buildings to turn into workshops and art studios - though we are pretty happy here. In my opinion we moved here to Gloucestershire, too young whilst we were still formulating careers and so money was up and down and I was ill etc...
Dumped in the same situation now I would do things very differently indeed.