Spring Daffodil Festival...
I can't believe that it's September already! And suddenly, overnight it seems, the Great Moosey Spring Daffodil Festival is in full bloom. Everywhere I look there are pinks, lemons, oranges and lemons...
Friday 2nd September
My gardening September hasn't really started yet. Today puppy and I did a huge wander, collecting new daffodils for the house and checking out spring plant growth. There is a lot more green - the summer flowering daylilies are putting on green weight, and the roses are sprouting fresh new leaves. The lovely big flowering cherry tree by the driveway is blooming, as is the red rhododendron in the Wattle Woods. Suddenly there is colour, lightness and new life everywhere. Blues are appearing - the first pale blue forget-me-nots, the little mid-blue Brunnera flowers, and one lone brave blue hyacinth. Where are its friends? Oops - sliced by my over-vigorous hand digger!
Variegated Mallow Leaves
Tomorrow I am back in garden action - though there is much in the spring garden to sit quietly and simply enjoy. The daffodil patches lift my spirits, as do the beautiful pink Camellias. Blimey! This is gushing prose, hardly original in its sentiments, but I'm not sure how better to describe these spring feelings.
Enough! Welcome to spring! And since gardeners are never satisfied, I could do with some serious overnight rain - enough to wet the garden without causing any daffodil droop.
Saturday 3rd September - Very Early Morning
Amazing - it did rain, gently, all night. Perfect! I need to take a host of golden photographs, as soon as it's light - I am up rather early, due to two cats fighting under the bed over a dead rat. Jerome the Grey won, while poor little Tiger Puss went into hiding, alternately giving out low rumbling growls (go, Tiger Puss!) and loud purring. Odd. There is a rude phrase which describes Jerome - not unlike 'fat cow' - and I have thrown her outside, with the rat for company.
White Crocuses in the Rain
My animals are small-minded - late yesterday Rusty the puppy followed a sadly slow bumble bee around the garden for nearly an hour. Tiger spent the same amount of time acrobatically chasing a moth around the kitchen. And someone (Stumpy the cat?) caused a small skink (a little brown lizard) to hide in one of my walking shoes. Interesting when, to divert puppy from his one-track-bumble-bee mind, I put the shoes on to take him for a dusk walk down the road...
Concerning the Cat Called Lucky
Very early in the life of Moosey we looked after a cat called Lucky Puss, who was sadly misnamed. Her lack of luck continues - I have now 'lost' her ceremonial rose (The Prince, a David Austin red) which I rudely dug out of the driveway garden in a fit of practical, proper rose positioning. Now, in a more reflective cats-and-roses mood, I can't find where I've replanted it. Eek! And Lucky is coming absolute last in the current Most Valuable Pet Competition - I have been desperately voting every day for Slow Puss, thinking I was supporting the underdog, or undercat in this case.
Flowering Rhododendrons:- More spring news - the rhododendron President Roosevelt is packed with fat buds, and just a few have opened into beautiful cherry red flowers.
It is now light, so I am off to get puppy from his kennel and take my Images of a September Spring Morning Photography Series - part one. My webmaster has been slightly critical that the only web-thing I do is write journal pages. I'll show him - there will be liberal sprinklings of spring things all over the site. Spring stories will - hmm - spring up everywhere! Spring pages will - hmm - blossom... I will write epics, complemented by time lapse photography, on a day in the life of a daffodil. Or a tulip. Back soon.
Ha! I am very much back! And, since it's drizzling, I have decided to spend a little more time writing. I didn't realise President Roosevelt flowered so early. Well, well, well! I certainly will in future years, thanks to my new policy of recording absolutely everything, and writing screeds in this journal...
Sunday 4th September
Great news - Stephen is just back from his Canada holiday. I have driven him home from the airport, and showed him the pond (the intake pipe is blocked). Home after travelling for 24 plus hours, and he is immediately marching around in gumboots holding a very large wrench, with puppy at his heels. What a good man! There may even be some welding of rose arches, later in the day - the head-gardener's expectations aren't too high, are they?
The Lone Rose Arch
Right. I am off outside to do some good garden work. It's like being warmly enclosed in a safe little cocoon of beauty here. The early rhododendrons are flowering. The blossom is beautiful. The animals are happy. I am not sick, and not too achy (hello, old knees). The weather is so calm and moderate (feel wretched for the southern USA - how can this scale of devastation come from one of nature's weather systems?). I don't understand the big outside world at all.
Monday 5th September
Puppy and/or I have done the following so far today - walked down the road, weeded the Dogpath garden, pulled out the old woody Euphorbias by Middle Bridge, watched a bit of tennis on TV, chased a couple of passing aeroplanes, had sushi and meaty bites for lunch and wandered around the Hazelnut orchard chasing plover birds and pruning Hazelnut trees. It's easy to spot who did what...
Daffodils:- Lovely daffodils - they come in such a beautiful range of yellow, cream, and apricot colours.
What a magic day! I gave the new garden bench a thorough test - taking out a tray complete with teapot and milk jug, plus my scary mountaineering book and snacks for puppy. The water burbled past, and I leant back on the tree trunk - completely enclosed by the yellows of the flowering daffodils. Nice spot (though a bit wobbly) for spring! I've also given the variegated iris patches in the Dogpath garden a heavy grooming session - combing them by hand to remove the dry, dead leaves, and pulling and poking at the grass weeds in between. So easy to do - so why don't I do it more often? Or I could employ a garden groomer...
More Rose Arch News - Archway Number Two is Finished!
Archway number one is installed, and archway number two did get completed yesterday, and is now lying in the grass by Rusty's dog-motel. Unfortunately the rose arch constructor has gone shy on me and will not allow any welding photographs. Anyway, I plan to officially launch the rose avenue (which means planting the first pair of roses) on my birthday, which is (ahem - global hint!) in THREE DAYS time!
Pink Pegs on the Washing Line
Tuesday 6th September
Yesterday was the first gardening day for a while that I've sploshed sun-block on my face and hands. Yippee! Summer can't be far off! Actually there's a whole series of seasonal symbols - the lightness in the mornings, the washing line in use again - surrounded by sweet smelling Daphne, who wouldn't want to linger under the pegs? The Banksia Lutea rose (which has cleverly trained itself over one third of the washing line) is in bud. Yippee! There will be roses soon!
Today - right - calm down. What to do first? Walk the puppy? Strangely there's a (definitely unseasonal) total fire ban, but I could do some more high-speed weeding. Rake the paths? Or maybe do some glass-house work? I could sow some seeds, or clone some more Stachys and Heuchera plants - my two most favourite edgers...
Much Later...
I finished the weeding in the Dogpath Garden by the water race - replanting some clumps of iris confusa, trimming more low branches off the Pittosporums and digging out grassy messes from the water's edge. There is definitely a total fire ban, so I just dumped all my pieces of tree on the burning pile. Maybe we can borrow the neighbour's shredder! It has just been delightful in the garden all month - the blossom trees are so beautiful, and luckily no fierce wind to blow the flowers off.