30 things - Buy a plum tree for my garden

In this post here I listed 30 things I wanted to do before I was 30. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't been keeping an eye on the list but when I looked over it the other day I found that i've been doing lots of things on there already. One of the things on the list was to buy a plum tree for my garden, it's something that i've always wanted but when I was with my partner our plans were for this house to be more of a stop gap while we got some money together, paid off our mortgage asap and moved on to our dream home, so a plum tree was going to have to wait until we moved.

Looking back now, I realise that we really put our lives on hold and were forever living for the future. Strangely enough, since our separation, my views have completely changed and while a mortgage free future would be amazing i've realised that you still have to live for the present moment because, as cliched as it sounds, you never know what the future is going to bring. The fear of losing the house when we separated jolted me into realising how it had become a home for me, not just a stop gap. Needless to say, the first thing I did when I found out that I was able to keep the house was order a plum tree and bizarrely enough it arrived on the day I finally completed on the house.

Planting it was backbreaking work. The soil around here is a heavy, clay type the forms a rock hard crust if there hasn't been enough rain. I hadn't thought ahead to clearing the area of weeds and brambles so that had to be done before I could even think about digging a hole large enough to accommodate it's roots.

I suppose really this year has been a bit of a learning curve for me, previously the garden was largely my partners domain and i'd do the odd spot of weeding and pick a few strawberries or tomatoes but that was it, but to dig out a load of brambles, prepare the soil and plant a tree - that was completely unheard of! Anyway, I was quite impressed with the results, even if the plum tree (aka Twiggy) did look a bit wonky, i've even started to consider myself a bit of a gardener!

The plum tree look much happier now, it's started to sprout some leaves and hasn't blown away yet in the strong gales we've been having so I think I must have done an okay job.

Have a great Sunday everyone!