I've run out of money...
Some people who trade plants online are oh so generous - like the trader who's given me loads and loads of Agapanthus, free for the digging. Others are ridiculously overpriced! I say this smugly because I have run out of money to bid on anything, even garden gnomes.
But this morning, before I launch myself into the garden, I've had a peep at the latest listings. A six metre high Cabbage tree, to be dug out and moved, costing the digger fifty dollars for the pleasure? Six metres is nearly as high as an Olympic diving tower. Cordylines have fat fleshy taproots, and if the digger doesn't get most of the root out - curtains!
Red Flax Green Pot
Meanwhile, someone else is trying to sell a tree stump for ten dollars, claiming it would 'make a nice lawn ornament'. And the usual collections of old plastic gardening pots are there for exorbitant prices. Ridiculous - why not just give them away, recycle, that sort of thing?
The Real Garden
Right - back to the real garden. It's a peaceful Monday morning with the dishwasher gurgling inside and the bellbirds singing outside. The Shrubbery looks gorgeous with shrub gaps filled with purple Honesty, and the big pond paddock blossom trees are still hanging on. Late Camellias are flowering, and many of my hosta clumps are up.
My plan today is to weed in the pond paddock while enjoying the blossom. I think I might redig the edge of the lower Wattle Woods border - it's a bit straight. Should I plant my new dug-up roses around the Pond Paddock? Parts of the garden borders which edge the paddock are so beautifully sunny - at this time of the day, anyway.
I'm taking my morning tea out to the new garden bench to contemplate all possibilities - and read my new Garden Design Encyclopaedia book, which has such beautiful, inspiring pictures that I may never garden in the real world again. Just kidding! Scary stuff later this afternoon - four garden gnomes come up for auction, and though I am dollarless I am bidding. If I win them, it will have been meant to be. Some retired older-lady gardeners have simply too much spare time on their hands (and, unhappily, not quite enough spare cash...)
Mid-Afternoon...
When in doubt, dig! I've half finished digging the new expanded curve of the Wattle Woods, and I've come inside to get out of the sun. Sun! Lovely spring sunshine that is too hot to dig in...
Garden Gnomes :- You can meet my five birthday garden gnomes - naturally I've written a wee story about them...
Hee hee. It's later, after the garden gnome auctions, and I got the gnome that I wanted. He's lying down reading a book, he's concrete, and is already painted up nicely (though he does have a yellow hat). Now I have to sidle up to Non-Gardening Partner and ask him nicely for eleven dollars... Oops...
Tuesday 13th October
Today will be a bit odd. I'm playing background piano music at an afternoon Garden Club event - it's an inside expo, with stalls showing how to keep bees, care for chooks, make a vegetable garden, and so on. I've made a rough list of happy, sunny songs - Blue Skies, I Can See Clearly Now, Here Comes the Sun... And this morning (soon) I go to pick up my new gnomes, plural. Oops - there are now two of them, and a huge thank you to Non-Gardening Partner's wallet for supporting my foolish gnome-acquiring mania.
My Newest Garden Gnome
Late yesterday I went to check my Hawaiian Coral peonies (Ha! I remembered to write down the name). They're the first to open. Immediately I saw my morning's work - weeding along the Birthday Rose Garden's grass path, well in time for Daughter of Moosey's November homecoming (she is now in Darwin). So I might as well get started.
Noisy Bellbirds
The bellbirds are being really noisy - I shut my eyes and I'm in the New Zealand bush and forest. What beautifully musical birds they are - this latest group have a diatonic signature song which includes the interval of a major ninth. Members of a family all have the same musical 'tag'.
The Ever Expanding Garden
Lunchtime...
I've nearly finished digging the new edge to the Wattle Woods and have planted two new roses and a cluster of iris pieces (they won't flower until neat year). I've also weeded two bucketfuls out of the Birthday Rose Garden. This spring it's full of lovely self-sown cornflowers, with other equally friendly weeds interspersed in between. Aargh!
I have my new gnomes. I'm going to take them to the Garden Club expo with a sign offering a good country retirement home for unwanted garden gnomes. And what about my reputation in the local community? Bah!
Later...
None of the local Garden Club ladies commented on my gnomes, or my huge notice offering a retirement home. Nobody even giggled. A visiting lady said 'Oh - arts and crafts. Did you make them?' and when I replied 'No - I rescued them' she wandered off. Oh well.
Wednesday 14th October
Drizzle shmizzle! I'm not going to be put off by a little light dampness. I want to finish what I started yesterday. No time for chatter. Hmm... Ten wet minutes later... Wet socks - aargh! Dripping fringe - aargh! Wet camera - a bit more serious. I'll wait a bit.
Spring Garden Panorama
Some great Moosey archive excitement while sheltering in the garage (noisy rain on the roof) - I 'found' a really old gardening notebook, which predates the website journals. Will it stand up to publishing? All it consists of is lists. Items were crossed out when done. And I was definitely in a flowery phase...
Shy Wet Pansies
Late Afternoon...
I'm back. I've been planting the new dug-up roses (by the water's edge in the Glass-House Garden), and the new irises and pots of Lupins and Stachys along the newly dug edge - I've finished digging it and it looks so much better.
That old Moosey notebook is a real puzzle. It was written in the year that I went on holiday to Norfolk and dragged Non-Gardening Partner around visiting gardens - possibly 1996? We went to the Old Vicarage in East Ruston, and Blooms of Bressingham, and Mannington Hall - they're the places I remember. I remember NGP getting really bored...