Blast the weather!

Blast the weather! And Happy Mothers' Day - that's officially for all New Zealand mothers, at least! Today was to be my big mulching day. That is, until the southerly - rain, cold - struck at first light this morning.

Sunday 14th May

Four seasons gardeners can expose themselves to a lot of weather extremes, but working happily in the typical pre-winter southerly storm (direct from the Antarctic ice-fields) is possibly out of the question. All I wanted to do was to organise some pea-straw mulch and spread it lovingly! I have two and a half days before my holiday. Scary!

 Growing by the Moosey glass-house.
Happy Mums Day - Chrysanthemuns

This is not how my Mothers' Day was supposed to start. Mind you, I'm thinking about the log burner, some good books, hot coffee and snacks, a new gardening magazine, a pen and some paper to draw the planting scheme for the second Moosey pond...

There would be warm, purring cat-company, and the dog staring intensely at my toast crusts... Bartok's complete string quartets playing (strictly for the intellectual gardening mind)...

 Winter seems to have arrived all of a sudden!
B-Puss Keeping Warm

Later...

Ha! I am a Mothers' Day legend. Just a little rain - what of it? I zoomed down to the nursery, stuffed four bales of pea-straw into the car (oops), returned and leapt into the house gardens, snugly clad in thermals. It suddenly made sense - to get the pea-straw on before the heavier rain, and to garden until I got absolutely too cold. Which I did!

Much Mulch!

And my goodness, there is a sense of motherly satisfaction putting such a loving blanket on the garden beds. I did try scooping up any obvious weeds, too, though many remain hidden underneath the mulch. I also wonder if the concepts of mulching and self-seeding are a little incompatible. We'll see - if there are no little Cerinthes and no Forget-me-not flowers this spring...

 Rain, rain, rain...
Cat Balcony in the Rain

Monday 15th May

All the Moosey cats are banished outside for unmentionable misdemeanours which occurred overnight in and near the pantry. I am sitting snug in the Moosey office and a trio of wet cats is balancing on the cat-balcony outside (a scary place to sit, looked at from human eyes), staring through the window. Ha! No way!

Snow!

Yesterday afternoon it snowed! Eek! Just lightly, little flurries of soft snow, gently covering my new mulch. So suddenly winter has struck. I have one and a half May days left in which to shiver, stare out of the window at the rain, and go for bracing weather-proof walks with the dog. Then my holiday! Aargh! Must write a serious list! Packing would be a good idea, too...

The next time I write up my gardening journal I will be nearly twelve thousand miles away from my home and animals. Eek! Farewell!