A dog's life...
I've just had a deep and meaningful discussion with Rusty the dog on life. We've been sitting underneath the Wisteria (flowering and fragrant), birds are squeaking and bees are buzzing, it's warm with cloud-cover... Two best friends - and the perfect gardening day.
My best Friend is a Dog
Wednesday 15th October
I've been explaining to my dog how I feel so lucky, and I say I'm lucky, but it's not really the right word - perhaps 'blessed' is better. I am blessed to be a gardener.
Patio Table in Spring
No bits of me are hurting or even aching. My head is crammed full of silly, energetic ideas. There is nowhere else I'd rather be. I'm completely happy with my dog-friend (at the moment the cats are hopelessly lazy about providing garden company). It would be grand to have other lovely members of my human-family sitting with me, but hey! My dog is a brilliant listener. And he understands a gardener's need to twitter on about nothing and everything. A plane whooshes high overhead, and I'm so glad I am not on it- my dog barks and chases it off the property. Phew! He listens and he keeps me safe!
The hoses are already on, I have loads of potting mix for my seeds, and my new gardening gloves are brilliant. I love my new Wilderness garden area. I love my rhododendrons, and I even love my tulips (though they are almost finished). I love the Crab-apple and the apple blossom.
The Berberis is flowering (oddly - it looks like someone has sprinkled custard powder all over it). The Angelica is whorling (hmm - that doesn't look like a verb). The first roses are blooming. I'm warm but not too warm, old but not too old, and I love being a spring gardener.
First Rose - Canary Bird
Hmm... Might be time to turn to the practical. I have watering, weeding, planting, clearing, pricking-out, raking, burning, manuring, sweeping, chopping, sawing, edge-trimming to do - and I need to find my sunglasses (lost by the blue garden seats) before the lawnmower does. Back not so soon...
Early Afternoon...
Just a quick break. A hot, noisy wind has puffed up from nowhere - luckily my burning heap (on which I've tipped four more barrowfuls of Wilderness mess) lies dormant. I've trimmed the edges of the Frisbee lawn. The quality control of the recent lawn mowing is sub-standard - must have a quiet yet encouraging word with NGP (Non Gardening Partner).
A Restful Spot
This afternoon I must do some or all of the following: shift the hoses, throw some water onto the Magnolia Stellata, prick out some more seeds, trim some more edges, weed a bit more, pot some geraniums, possibly zoom down to the nursery to buy some 'Green Goddesses' (well-behaved fat-leafed green Cordylines), and possibly buy some Photinias (for the Welcome Garden). Ha! A list in disguise.
I could also have a peep at the outdoor tables and benches advertised in a cheap catalogue. I want a 'dining suite' (with sun umbrella) for the decking at the corner of the pond. Right. Where's my coffee?
Much, Much Later, Hanging My Head in Shame...
Oops. OOPS. A giant oops. A gentle reminder to myself - never, ever trust an ash pile.
Emergency Fire Bucket
There I was, weeding the Frisbee Border in a delightful dream, ignoring the roaring and whooshing of the wind, when I smelt smoke. Oh dear. My ash heap had caught fire.
Yippee for the Bucket!
Yippee for my white 'emergency' bucket (hanging on the pergola), with which I scooped up water from the water race. I sloshed it onto my fire, which was flaming merrily, as fires do.
I am a very silly gardener, even if I burn right by the water and have a water bucket handy. Imagine the shame if I had to call the fire brigade... NGP is a rural fire-fighter... Seriously, this is a wake-up call - I could have so easily been out at the nursery. Oh dear...
No Spam is Good Spam?
Something funny has happened - nearly all my spam mail has stopped appearing. This is obviously a good thing, but spam can be a great indicator of what's going on in the world (especially for the unworldly). Lately I've been deleting lots of 'borrow for your debt' and 'get rich at the casino' mails. As soon as the world's financial markets stabilize things are bound to get chemical again...
Thursday 16th October
Hee hee. I've spent almost all day spring-cleaning. Definitely not the house and unfortunately not the real garden. I've been cleaning up the Moosey Website Garden Tour pages - shifting archive photographs around, taking up-to-date spring pictures for comparisons, and so on. The saddest thing? Just sometimes the early photographs look heaps better than the later ones.
The Stone Wall :- I love the new feature stone wall.
The Shrubbery, the stone wall, and courtyard have been plonked into the Island Bed section - just for now. This garden will soon have its own section - like a coming of age, in the garden identity sense - when all those budget shrubs I planted at Easter fill out a little.
OK. I know I plant things far too closely together, and my borders are over-stocked with foliage fillers. However, pining for my garden's lost youth is not constructive - better to chop things out and start again. I promise that tomorrow I'll do some real garden spring-cleaning.