My new October attitude...
Right. I have my new October attitude, my head is full of brilliant intentions, and I'm freshly inspired by my gardening book on Hidcote. But just because it's just a tiny bit damp outside I'm still lurking in my house... C'mon, Moosey - get yourself out there!
Orange Tulips
Sunday 5th October
Gardeners are never satisfied. Hot, cold, windy, calm, dry, wet - they moan, or in my case lurk inside drinking coffee and eating bread products. I'm not even at the piano paying my semi-arthritic but well-meaning homage to Schumann and Albeniz (the two favourites of the early October month).
In approximately ten minutes, come what may, I intend to start my gardening work. Attention to detail and a theme of succession, that's what my Hidcote book says. The Wilderness is where I'm bound. I'll be clearing, trimming, and raking, and all my rubbish can be carted to the burning heap. Perhaps I can even finish clearing this lovely area and start thinking about some shrub and tree planting. No paths allowed - a first for Moosey the 'pathaholic' gardener.
Pretty Pansies
There's so much changing in the garden - little things like pansies and big things like rhododendrons and irises are flowering. The first roses won't be long now - each day I'm checking the Banksia Lutea and Canary Bird. And hurray for my new tulips, actually doing really well, semi-surviving yesterday's windy gales.
- 'Eradicate all pernicious weeds.'
- -The Garden Sourcebook (Mitchell Beazley).
Also today I'm going to weed somewhere. My other scary gardening book puts it rather fiercely - 'Eradicate all pernicious weeds' is its directive to dithering gardeners with good intentions and random inclinations (like me). All remotely pernicious (what a brilliant word) weeds relaxing in my garden had better watch out!
Every day I plod past various garden borders to the Hen House, where I feed all the birds in the immediate sky-and-tree-world, as well as my chooks. Every day I see weeds, and stoop down to pull out a few. A good idea would be to beautify every garden edge along this route. I'll do it! I will not be back for quite some time...
The Back Lawn
Much, Much, Much, Much Later...
I've been working for five solid hours, mainly in the Wilderness. My clearing has almost reached the top of the rise, where the fence will stop me for now. I'm really surprised how easy it is to physically clear the ground - most of the mess can be easily pulled out by hand or rake, quickly whisked away, and burnt. Histeria my young tabby cat has been zooming up and down Wilderness trees while Rusty the floppy dog has been snoozing in the sun. He leaps into life whenever a plane or a pair of ducks flies overhead.
Monday 6th October
I am in exalted garden company. I've been breakfast-reading my library book on the garden at Hidcote, and it, too, has an area known as 'The Wilderness', where the only vista is the sky. Hee hee. I'm sure the Hidcote garden planners would be 'allowed' to expand their Wilderness just a little into the ram paddock.
Forget-Me-Nots
Today I am going to be good. In fact, I have a timetable of three-quarter-hour slots. The musical me has booked in from 8:45 to 9:30, and the cycling-with-the-dog me has the 12:30 to 1:15 slot. The rest is for different versions of the gardening me - the flower seed pricker-outer (?), the cosmetic weeder, the Wilderness raker, and so on. Inspired (in a humble sort of way) with my Hidcote book I am going to try and finish my Wilderness. For when I've totally cleared the ground, then I have some exciting choices to make. I can saw down many of the younger gums, and identify places for new shrubs and trees, all of which will need to have irrigation drippers for their first few years. Wow!
The Moosey Waterwheel :- The waterwheel worked really well for months - it would only occasionally get stuck, just needing a little push.
I've had a heart-to-heart with NGP regarding my non-rotating waterwheel. As an alternative measure, while it's being remodelled, he will try to source a special pump so my little brook can burble, as brooks are supposed to do. He could, of course, install an electric pump, but both of us feel that this would be cheating.
Right. It's 8:40, time to water The Bride (my wedding shrub) before practising Schumann's Grand Sonata in F# Minor, first movement. This will be a grand start to a grand day...
Much Later...
Brilliant! This three-quarter-of-an-hour timetable works so well. I even spent my very last time-slot weeding in the vegetable garden. I spent the morning doing my seeds (with Fluff-Fluff the passionate cat lolling all over my work bench). Rusty dog and I had lunch on the rustic garden benches, where we admired the red tulips (well, I did). Lots of Hidcote pictures have tulips, but the writer says (coyly) they are always 'replaced'. That probably means every year.
Red Tulips
Ideas I Could Borrow from Hidcote
After lunch I cleared and burnt rubbish from the Wilderness, thinking about Hidcote and what ideas I could borrow for my garden. Burying red cordylines in the borders pots and all? Maybe...
+5
The cycle ride was magical - it seemed to be slightly downhill with a tail wind, both there and back, and Rusty the dog was well behaved. Then I cleared even more Wilderness rubbish - old fallen pine branches, broom, gum bark, dry grass... It's a really lovely garden place, and I can look out over the ram paddock, past the red tulips in the stone-walled Shrubbery, and beyond to the pink rhododendrons in the Driveway Garden. A 'beaut view' - a sort of wiggly vista, if there is such a thing. And just think - I am enclosing the ram paddock, symbolically, in ornamental garden. Hee hee.
Right. Thanks to today for being so brilliant. Ambience, dog company, weather, Schumann - everything has been perfect. I am such a lucky gardener.