Three-day weekends are so groovy...
Three-day weekends are so groovy when it's still only Saturday. And there's been more overnight rain, which the pre-summer garden (and gardener) loves and needs. Better nature's rain than my piddly little hoses, I say.
Cecile Brunner Roses
Saturday 12th November
I've already been swimming and done some Brahms piano practice. So gardening might be my next activity. However, it is damp and southerly-cold (nine degrees Celsius). So how damp and cold am I willing to get?
Pretty Pink Aquilegia
Clever Cats
My clever cats are the best temperature indicators, and they are all inside. Fluff-Fluff has jammed himself into his cane basket (which has a new woolly cat blanket).
Three Hours Later...
I've been doing really grunty gardening (I don't mean that the gardener has been grunting). The garden on one side of the pergola is now finished. I've dug out (and harvested) some rhubarb, and tried to remove Alkanet, Lamium, and a nasty grass. The Gerbe rose upon the fence is now free of other vegetation, and I've trimmed off its dead wood.
Again I must praise the concept of being 'listless'. This little clean-up would never have got on one of my verbose gardening lists of old. I suspect it's been at least five years since I did any clearing etc. in here. How silly!
Crepuscule Rose :- You can meet the thornless climber Crepuscule in my rose pages.
I've shifted the new Crepuscule rose away from the grass path (it hadn't really got any sort of root system going), replanted Penelope rose, and surrounded her with blue Salvias. Four wheel-barrowfuls of rubbish came out.
Sunday 13th November
Oops. Well, not in the long term, but I've committed to another mass dig-out of Agapanthus this coming week (costing me one dollar, can never resist a bargain). And several other things are happening.
Sweet Alice and Daisies
Recycled Rose Arches
Two recycled rose arches will be picked up on Tuesday, replacements for two failed flimsies. They will help out the pale rugosa behind the glass-house and Buff Beauty by the Island Bed.
Something Secret Arrives Tomorrow!
But more exciting is the arrival of something secret, shipped in a container from somewhere secret, which Non-Gardening Partner is picking up tomorrow after work. It's for me, and I've been trying to guess what it is, without success. NGP says I will be really excited by it, but I won't know what it is - intriguing!
Right. All these things are looking forward, so it's a warm energetic 'hello' to today. I may not know what I'm going to be doing, but I plan to enjoy myself! Love this Freedom Gardening, by the way.
Later...
I've popped inside to check on my bread and get some sunblock on the Moosey face. I've been digging in the vegetable garden, trying to clear out all (ha ha) the self-planted purple (Maori) potatoes. I asked myself one simple question. Do I eat these potatoes? A simple answer - no, I do not.
Vegetable and Pergola Garden
So it follows, as the night the day... I will use the space for tomatoes, lettuces, and beans. I have rather a surplus of seedlings, and can plant the beans today. The things I remember to do, without writing them on a list! Lists lull and dull the gardening mind, I reckon.
New Orange Iris
Funny Things, Irises...
Lots more of the big besrded irises are flowering now, including one of my first-timers, a soft orange. It's rather nice! Several clumps that I divided and replanted a couple of years ago still haven't got going properly. Funny things, irises. Ignore them for three or four years, then divide them and expect nothing for the next three or four. It seems a funny way to do buiness with a flower-loving gardener.
I've just had a 'timely' thought. For me there is nothing remotely exciting about the Julian calendar, the way it delineates time, and one of its dates, namely 11th of November, 2011, specifically mid-morning just after 11am. If an hour of digging unwanted spuds out of the vegetable garden could feel like ten minutes - now that would be fairly exciting!
Much later...
Right. Today I worked for over five hours. I've planted tomatoes in the vegetable garden, cleared a wee pathway to the kitchen's compost heap (much easier now for house visitors to find the spot), cleared more forget-me-nots, and planted the gold tomatoes in pots for the patio, which I've swept. More daisies and pelargoniums are now outside the glass-house to harden off. All these are little details, which would easily get lost on a list of things to do.
The Island Bed
Monday 14th November
Oh boy. I have eyes bigger than my stomach, in the gardening sense. Yes, I'd love to dig out ten clumps of Agapanthus (costing in total one dollar), bringing my own spade. I need mass Agapanthus to plant in a dry, difficult area underneath pine and gum trees. Hmm... Just one clump dug out today, which on its own filled the back of my car and took me two hours to remove. And yes, the spade has been great, but I also need an axe, a tough bendy shovel, and a bow saw. And nine burly man-friends with wood-choppers' muscles.
Westmoreland Rose
Hillside Agapanthus
These Agapanthus are up a gully in a hillside garden (it's a lovely garden, by the way) and dragging them down the forty-nine steps to the car is as exhausting as the dig. Anyway, I'm going back tomorrow, because I can do this, one day and one clump at a time.
Red-faced with exertion, I broke my healthy rule on the way home and bought a cold fizzy energy drink. And now I've gone apres-gardening, even washing my hair, and it's only two in the afternoon. Shameful!
A Bit Later...
No, I've re-energised myself. I've planted beans, more peas, lettuce and red-stemmed beet seedlings. I've got the hoses on, and I've watered the new tomoatoes in the vegetable garden.