What a week!
Happy New Year. What a week! Temperatures have been unusually high, too hot for sensible gardeners like me. Some plants have been suffering, too, their leaf edges badly burnt.
Orange Daylilies
Thursday 1st January
It's been the hottest of hot day here - about thirty two degrees, no wind, but so much heat that staying in the house became a sensible option. I did a bit of watering, and sat in the late afternoon shade enjoying the ambience. The bird noises are really amazing - just this even spread of background peeping and squawking and twittering, plus the occasional lazy one-note chime from a bellbird. Next door's pigeons provide the lower frequencies with their cooing sounds. But I didn't do any gardening at all. Oops.
Friday 2nd January
The extreme (for us) heat is forecast for the next two days. What a terrible way to start my gardening year! Writing in the diary about nothing - hey, I might start making up stuff! Again I must face the fact that I am NOT a four seasons gardener. I don't "do" snow, or thirty degree cloudless days.
Filipendula
Reasonably later...
I have tried to do a bit of hot weather gardening, spreading more mulch on the new end of the Willow Tree Garden. I've bucketed water onto the rhododendrons which are new here, pulled some weeds, and sloshed up and down the water race in the shade.
Abraham Darby Rose :- Abraham Darby is a beautiful pastel David Austin English rose.
My conclusion? It's far too hot to even be here with the water gurgling past (though lying in a hammock drinking cold light beer might work). So I, recently retired from the stresses of teaching, have temporarily retired from the stresses of heat-gardening. Even with my casual attitude towards shifting plants when it suits me I'm not quite prepared to uproot the roses (two Abraham Darbys) I want to move. Not yet - their short journey will keep.
Saturday 3rd January
The day I have been waiting for - the first One Day Cricket International between New Zealand and Pakistan. The weather forecast is for more hot stuff. Might be a pleasant day to watch a bit of TV... (for shame! this is supposed to be a gardening diary!)
Later...
It's just been too hot. I tried - honestly - I started weeding in the Stables Border in the shade, then I collected more mulch from the back paddock. Jerome followed me around, so I didn't have the excuse of loneliness. It was just far too hot again - another day with temperature just over thirty degrees.
Sunday 4th January
Last night I dead-headed roses in the gloom after sundown. Perhaps in these temperatures I could try night gardening under lights?
White Flower Carpet Rose
Today (9:30 am) it's quite warm, but apparently temperatures should only reach the mid twenties. This is more like it! In anticipation of a proper gardening day I have swept the patio. I will start by doing some more deadheading, and putting on the hoses. Perhaps as I work I can relive the winning moments in yesterday's cricket game, hee hee...
Right. I am inside for lunch. It's only twenty six degrees! I've spent a rather pleasant hour in the shade in the Pond Paddock, trimming and nipping and cutting and weeding. The flower carpet roses in here are brilliant, bravely flowering in the heat. I've taken some low lying limbs off the cherry trees and the Oak trees. Maybe if the neighbour brings his Chipper over I can persuade Stephen that it's not too hot to do some garden work. Hmm...
Monday 5th January
Right - enough procrastinating. Today is BRILLIANT - overcast, cool but pleasant, and there are edges to do and weeds to pull, hoses to shift and trees to trim, garden photos to take - all of which can be enjoyed in the windless ambience of the summer Moosey garden, on this beautiful January day, temperature in the low twenties... When I return to this diary I will have a huge list of achievements to write down. Back soon.
The Pond in Summer
Hopeless! I only lasted two hours. There is no list. My excuse is that the wind came up, and it got too noisy. Pathetic! However, I did clear the Pond Paddock gardens, managing four wheelbarrowfuls of stuff. And I took lots of photos, trying not to include the scruffy yellow patches of lawn. Our lawns don't have a good look this summer.
Yellow Dahlia :- The yellow dahlia needs to be planted somewhere more important. Oops.
The daylilies are out in full force - there are patches of orange everywhere. And a yellow spiked dahlia is flowering at the back of the glass-house and I have absolutely no memory of purchasing or being given it. Surely one remembers dahlias? Hmm...
Tuesday 6th January
Yippee! It's cooler. There has been a minimal amount of drizzle. There is no wind. This is turning into a weather diary. How boring - must be my British heritage coming out (hey - I was born in Bridgwater Somerset!) - anyway, today I have modest plans. The think-big mistakes of yesterday will not be repeated. I will be calm, my expectations firmly fixed in holiday mode. I will try and do two hour sessions.
Later...
It worked! I did two sessions weeding, dead-heading, and clipping edges over the water race. I moved a Yellow Wave flax from underneath the pergola to its new home near the Willow tree. I am again a gardening legend (apart from losing my new secateurs, oops).
Wednesday 7th January
I had the day off.