Monday morning music...
Pink Daisies
The silliest Monday morning music is playing on my serious radio station - two alternating styles, military martial orchestral and tinkling ballet piano. So this is supposed to start the busy gardening week off nicely - four goosesteps followed by a pirouette?
Monday 11th April
Hmm... Having just read my friend Jack's huge blog visions (which I'm sure will soon become even huger garden realities) I feel quite small, gardenwise. My dog would love a cycle ride, and it's a gorgeous sunny autumn day. I quite like feeling small, though. It's all part of a delightfully cluttered life's balance. If I could only play all of Albeniz's Jerez up to half-speed, getting half the double sharps and double flats right - that would make me feel super-enormously huge! Hmm - that puts some piano practice also on today's menu. Nice!
Facebook makes me giggle. I am now friends with two different cats called Henri. It's a long story. So far I have resisted the temptation to give the Moosey cats their own pages. OK, Fluff-Fluff, purring at my feet, I know you'd probably get lots of friends. Maybe you'd even have more than young Minimus. But it's time to go gardening.
Mirror in the Pines
Later, Lunchtime...
Some small successes for this comfortably small gardener - sixteen more bricks have been cleaned and laid, and I've worked out how to turn a gentle corner successfully. So my mathematics training has come in useful! More ground is cleared for the bricks, with spring bulbs planted nicely nearby - not all of them, but I'm working on it...
Pink Faced Gardener
My gardening day finished in the Hump, filling the trailer with rubbish. Oh boy. I saw the pinkest face every time I walked past that silly mirror hanging on the pine tree. And I haven't even begun to do any bonfire burning. That's tomorrow's job.
I notice now that the oak trees are turning red. This really is the ultimate gardening joy for me - to wander outside every day, no great expectations, and then to find something totally new to marvel at. Preferably something that isn't a weed, though it may be weedy (all lovers of self-seeding flowers will understand this).
Rescued Hybrid Tea Rose
Another example - I found lots of random compost underneath the Leyland shelter hedge, so have excitedly shovelled some around the roses by my new brick path. Yippee for John Clare, Golden Celebration and Sharifa Asma, a top trio of tall David Austin English beauties. If I was only allowed three roses in the garden, you three might well be my top choices. Enjoy your new organic blanket.
Autumn Trees and Shrubs
Tuesday 12th April
Another beautiful day in the life of an autumn country garden. And another day with a wheelbarrow circuit, which works thus: Clean a barrow load of bricks, wheel them to the new path, axe some bits off the tree stump, wheel them to the compost area underneath the hedge, get a load of compost, wheel that over to the new garden... And so it goes.
After several hours and a coffee break I turned my attentions to some serious garden maintenance - weed-spraying, along the water race bank. It's one of my gardening 'oopses', but I can't weed the sloping banks properly by hand because of erosion. And then my friend helped me dig out the bonfire ash, wheel it onto the autumn vegetable garden, and we both burned a trailer load of new rubbish in its place. It's rather nice having a built-in under-gardener...
Now the smoke has died down to a dribble - hopefully my vegetable garden isn't alight with smouldering embers. The afternoon is still and shining. Rusty the dog is snoozing in his armchair, and I'm in one of those tired, smiley apres-gardening moods, where the thoughts barely flow, and are only faintly analytical. I do however have a brick-laying library book which is handy for looking at different path patterns. I rather like the 'running and stack bond' (impressed?) but it's a tad wide.
- 'Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.'
- -Albert Camus.
Also from the library I have a recipe for leaf mould. I try every year, but what I don't do is dampen the leaves and put little holes in the bags. And a quote from Albert Camus to finish the day with. Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Awwwwwww - that's soooooooooo lovely!
Wednesday 13th April
Ha! It's a B-day. B is for Bricks (just a few left, will have to collect more this weekend), and for Bonfire (but I need to fill the trailer with rubbish from the Hump first), and for Bicycle (a ride around the country block with Rusty the dog). But earlier this morning it was A-day, A for autumn, as I sat up in bed in Pond Cottage with my early cup of tea. Each of the windows frames a deciduous tree, now is in full autumn colour. One is a Maple, the other a Birch. These make wonderful wake-up visions, with a few lazy leaves fluttering down to make the picture perfect.
Autumn Rugosa Rose Leaves
And now it needs to be A-day again - A for action. Right.
Much Later...
Another wonderful day, with sushi for lunch, and a huge trailer load of rubbish collected for tomorrow's bonfire. And lots of new Facebook friends have all been saying the loveliest things about my photographs of cats and garden colours. There are so many nice people in the world!