Tra-la-la...
Oops. Tra-la-la. The Head Gardener has weaseled her way into a choir which is performing Bach's Mass in B minor quite soon. Gardening will have to be accompanied by some serious warbling - perhaps I have found the perfect gardening music?
Friday 12th January
Scary stuff, singing one hour of Bach and knowing what one is doing so one can actually look at the conductor!
The Moosey Rooster
Raucous Rooster
Today I woke early to heavy fog and the sounds of rooster shrieking - a low, constant pitch at first, then he transposed himself up a major third, then he went up even higher and completely lost his rhythm. Eek! Was something wrong? So I ran to the Hen House, nightie flapping, gumboots squelching - and a large raptor flew serenely away, as did about forty fat little grey sparrows. Rooster was the only bird up, and he was full of himself, standing on his blue feeder. Hmm...
The big bird would have been a native hawk. Delicate comment to self - these birds only eat road-kill, rodents, and rabbits, don't they? I am running a drop-in feeding station for the fringe elements of the local wildlife. Hmm...
I plan to have a good gardening afternoon - after I've gone swimming and picked up my Bach music. I'm going to continue in the Welcome Garden - yesterday afternoon I worked in there for two hours. Basically what I'm doing is this:
Newspaper Mulching
When I first planted the Welcome Garden I was impatient and newspaper-less. So I roughly weeded, planted my Hebes, little flaxes, Pittosporums, and just a few tough Viburnums, and laid heaps of rotting hay mulch around. The ground area is huge, and not one I plan to weed fussily. Now, as I get bags of newspaper, I fiddle around laying thick wodges underneath the mulch. By the time I get the complete garden surface organised the first pieces will probably have decomposed!
It's one of those garden tasks which has invisible rewards. My friends think I'm loopy. 'Do you still want old newspapers?' they ask politely, and get confused when I jump excitedly up and down, nodding.
Double Orange Daylily
Distressing Daylilies
Small comments on garden colours and daylilies - I'd like more, colour that is. And most of my species daylily patches, planted earlier in the garden's history, have spread out their green leaves but are very sparsely blooming, if at all. Maybe a new rule - hybrids only? There's no doubt that such daylilies are superior, magnificent in flower.
Saturday 13th January
Oh dear - what have I done? Yesterday my singing friend and I had our first personal practice in the Moosey office. There was much cackling as we kept falling over (vocally that is) in the wobbly bits. Rusty the dog, alarmed, would race in to lick us (aargh!) while Mugsy the cat, who is partially deaf, sat on my friend's lap the whole time, her ears flattened.
One Blue Seat is Painted
This is a gardening journal, but I need to warn readers that it might be full of Kyries, Glorias and Sanctuses over the next two weeks. Late yesterday I weeded like a madwoman for two hours, laying more newspaper. Then I shifted and started scraping all the Campion weeds out of the Willow Tree Garden , thus exposing some struggling little roses. And success! I could sing the whole of the first theme of the Kyrie from memory. I'm sure the roses enjoyed it.
Today the plan is to return to the Willow Tree garden - fair enough, since I abandoned my garden tools and wheelbarrow there. But I will also take the flat spade. And I will shift in the first of the new blue garden seats.
Willow Tree Garden
This garden must be better organised. My policy of self-seeding should not include the survival of the fittest - namely self-sown weeds. The blue pansies are ready for uprooting and turning into blue-pansy-mulch with the house scissors. Nice - I'm still doing the same nice things that I did years ago. The new blue chairs, which are quite decently one-coat blue, will eventually be situated in this area. Yippee!
A Serious Mass
Eek! Our Bach Mass is to be conducted by Sir David Willcox, from England. This sounds serious. 'Singer number 83, second alto, you are singing G sharp in bar 45 instead of G natural. Perhaps you should forget singing and stay in your garden...' Aargh! Sorry, Sir...
B-Puss Being Silly
Right! I am off outside to get muddy (another foggy morning) and garden until it starts raining. B-Puss and Fluff-Fluff can come with me - they both enjoy leaping over the water race. B-Puss gets really big air, and at the top of his parabola he does a funny squeeze up with his legs, going even higher for an instant. Two flying cats. Hmm...