It’s that time of year when gardeners know only too well just how delicious they are. As the sweltering sun drops toward the horizon, and the temperature becomes bearable for activities involving levels of exertion beyond those required for lying flopped out in a hammock, clouds of ravenous, biting insects appear, irresistibly drawn toward the ambrosial flow that pulsates beneath the skin of the hapless horticulturalist.
I, too, know what it is to have been bitten by a bug, although in this case, I refer to the Podcast Bug, and it has gone and got its proboscis well and truly under my skin.
Having thoroughly enjoyed everything about the process of putting together the Virgin Gardener Podcast with Laetitia Maklouf, it seemed there was nothing to stop me adding a soundtrack to this blog, and that’s the idea behind the Gardens, weeds & words podcast. It’s a space where I want to share with you the soundscape to my days spent outdoors – the leaf crunching, sod flopping, soil tickling, stem snipping activity, as well as those sounds that carry on with or without the gardener – the birds, the wind, the background roar of the A road, the passage of an aeroplane overhead. There may even be the odd distant banjo.
Of course there’ll be plenty of garden musings and chatter to go with this slow radio-style montage, and the idea behind the podcast – as with the blog – is to consider how we experience gardens, and just what it is that we get from sharing our space with plants. To this, I’ll aim include conversations with experienced and newbie gardeners alike, as well as creative folk who draw upon the natural world for inspiration, supplementing all of this with reviews and excerpts from my favourite gardening and wildlife writing.
The first episode should appear in your podcast app of choice early in the autumn but, until then, there’s a trailer which you can listen to right now. I do hope you’ll feel able to subscribe , and I would love to hear your thoughts on this new project, either here in the comments below, on twitter, or by email at gardensweedsandwords@gmail.com.
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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, writer, photographer, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking this image.