I'm hopeful...
I have hopeful feelings that spring is nearly here. Our lambs are due, and finally there are tiny bursts of daffodil yellow. Things in the garden just feel different. And I've spied the first blossom. Yippee!
Friday 25th August
So far we have one lamb - the first to be born. The ewes are snug in the front paddock, and I'll peep at them from the fence-line shelter later this morning. I worry about the sheep lambing - and we only have six merino ewes in lamb. Imagine if we were real farmers with hundreds! I've learnt to stay out of it (unless something very obvious is wrong). Sheep are so silly! I do have some lamb-suits, just in case the weather turns nasty.
Rusty Drinking from the Bath
Yesterday I finished my new path through the front of the Wattle Woods. It's nice, looks good, walks well, and hopefully is enough removed from the big clump of Miscanthus Zebrinus not to get blocked. Famous last words! I've shifted and replanted the aquilegias all together, ripped out a dreadful nameless rose, and made space for two small rhododendrons called Graham. They are cute, compact, and blush pink - like the perfect bloke? Hmm... The path line is edged with a trio of rich green Hebes which I will be able to keep clipped. Nice.
Beautiful Samoa :- There were some beautiful tropical gardens in Samoa.
Today starts with compulsory socialisation. I'm going swimming, alas not with the fishies in the sea - in the pool, where I will probably sink! Then, according to the forecast, the day temperature should climb to a balmy seventeen degrees (Celsius). Not the tropical garden air I'm used to - oh, those beautiful Samoan gardens! - but warm enough to start painting my fence!
Later...
My terracotta coloured back fence looks great! I also have one slightly terracotta coloured fluffy cat. It's the perfect compromise colour - not too drab and subtle, warm enough, light enough. That's all I did today.
One of my Best Camellias
Saturday 26th August
Things are on the spring move. More Camellias (those at the top of the Wattle Woods) are flowering, and patches of daffodils (like my miniature trumpets, photographed at this same time every year) are showing their cheery yellow sunshine faces. Today I have prepared a pre-spring list (wishful thinking? No way - September 1st is the official start date, not too far away). These things should get done before the end of the - ahem - last winter month. How many days in August?
Pre-Spring List
- The Fence
- Terracotta paint is in! Scrape wood, cover excessive rose growth with old sheets, be careful not to squash emerging spring bulbs with feet, and swish that paint brush! Do not paint the cats.
- The Dog-Path Garden Iris confusa
- Rip up, pull out, slice, and destroy. But save pretty new pieces for potting up later, in spirit of spring - new beginnings.
- The New Trees
- Collect, organise planting holes and stakes, plant.
- The Chooks
- Aargh! Organise chook netting fence. Quickly! The chooks (black hens and a friendly striped rooster) are due any day now...
- The Roses
- I think they should all be pruned by the end of the weekend. Don't you?
Seems like a goodly list.
I am definitely going to get some Codiaeum plants (crotons) for the house, in memory of the gardens of Savai'i, Samoa. My friend in the ladies choir also saw such hedges while on holiday in Fiji, and has written a poem to celebrate their tropical beauty. A dedication to the fabulous photographs on the website www.croton-mania.com might be in order here!
There was a young maid from Sylvania
Afflicted with bad croton-mania
She found to her cost
That they died in the frost
So she shifted to Mesopotamia (wherever that is!)
My Neat and Tidy Vegetable Garden
Lunchtime, Rather Damp...
Drizzle has fully dampened my hair and gardening shirt, but not yet my gardening spirits! I am a fairly frustrated fence painter, though! Anyway, I've taken advantage of the drizzle (humph) to scrape the rest of the fences, remove one last flax (an oversized Bronze Phormium Tenax), and prune Graham Thomas and his rosy friends on the house fence-line. After lunch the Iris confusa - I really will! Self-indulgent thought - if I promise not to write any more, will it stop raining?
B-Puss the Kitten :- B-Puss is fast becoming my favourite cat - he's so eccentric and random!
Earlier this morning Beige-Puss caught his first rabbit - I found him playing with it underneath the bed. Aargh! There was the quietest of screams (me), then an urgent call for Rusty the dog (he is permanently on Rabbit Disposal Duty) to take it outside. Darling B-Puss has spend the whole morning searching, searching...
Nighttime, Rather Grumpy...
I worked hard all afternoon in a damp-weather sulk. I tidied underneath the Big Gum in the house lawn, and then moved to the Dog-Path Garden. Several unsatisfying hours later much of the Iris confusa is removed. The garden edge further along is a mess, and I am very cross. When did this garden get so weedy and neglected? And when did the gorse seedlings grow so big they need a shovel to dig them out? My hands are sore, I've lost my bright orange loppers, and I am not happy. All I wanted to do was to paint my fence! Humph. The All Blacks had jolly well win the rugby test in South Africa later tonight.
+5
Sunday 27th August
Right. There is to be no more grumping. The All Blacks did win. And B-Puss is still roaming under the bed looking for the rabbit. Didn't I say that 'White cats can't hunt'? B puss - you deserve some extra points in the MVP pets competition...
Things I Will Do Today, Not Grumping
First I will paint (the temperature is supposed to be eleven degrees, just warm enough - and it's only a fence). Then I will deal to the messy parts of the Dog-Path garden. If I have a real problem there I will fill it with Hebes. I suspect that it needs a low maintenance planting plan. I will hunt around for my lost loppers, and finish pruning the roses. I will get my new trees from the nursery, and delegate their planting. Then I will feel much better - having done all those things which I should have done yesterday, that sort of thing...