The Moosey Gardening and Bricklaying Journal...
Red Tulips
The Moosey Gardening and Bricklaying Journal for October continues on its merry way. Today I'm doing circuit gardening. First I get a barrowful of bricks cleaned and ready for the vegetable garden's walls.
Then I wheel a barrowful of firewood logs to the heap, and dump a barrowful of weeds (caused, I'm sure, by the landscape supplier's compost).
And Then...
And then I repeat this process. Such is my gardening and bricking day.
Wednesday 3rd October
But I am being very good, also stopping to gaze and admire (the crab-apple blossom) and giggle (my silly red tulips are looking even sillier). And I'm taking photographs and giving thanks to my garden for all its lovely new growth. And I'm watering my newly planted roses.
I've also bought two more bags of mortar for my brick-laying. I've proudly told my friends I'm building brick walls, and each has offered the same expert advice: 'But of course you'll have to get the bricks level.' How silly do they think I am? Well, maybe I am a bit, but really...
New Bunting for the Cottage
On The Level...
You see, my vegetable garden is sited on a very small slope. I know this, because I've checked with my spirit level. And I'm levelling my bricks by eye, because they are imperfect. Some don't have proper right angles and some are thinner than others by the width of my little finger. The main walls are elliptical, anyway.
If I'm going to enjoy doing this labour of love, then my own random nature is allowed to be incorporated therein, hee hee. Level? What level?
New Bunting
I have new bunting for Pond Cottage, specially created by Daughter-In-Law, and it looks a treat! I just love it, and I've rolled my spangly fairy lights around and around. New bunting! Most exciting, and I love the red colours in the material, contrasting with the green paint of the cottage.
OK. I'm off to do more bricks. 'C'mon, Rusty' I've just said to my snoozing patio dog. 'We need to get back outside. We are busy people'. Well, one of us is a 'people'.
Snoozing Dog on the Patio
Thursday 4th October
It's been another huge hiking day, trying to climb to the top of Mount Oxford (1364 metres). My friend and I stopped above the bush line on a gorgeous little scrubby knob, had our lunch, and watched the clouds roll in all around us. It was scary-funny, a bit like being surrounded by hoards of slow-motion Harry Potter Dementors. Alas, our track on up the spur became more and more obscured, so we packed up and retreated, less than an hour from the summit. Boy was it cold up there! But we will return on a clear day, dear Mount Oxford, to stand gently on top of you. A summit with no view isn't really a summit, after all.
Tomorrow I will do bricks. I promise.
Friday 5th October
Good morning, tomorrow. I know, I know, I promised... Bricks. And so the Moosey Gardening and Bricklaying Journal grinds further through the first week of October...
Much Later...
I've cleaned and scrubbed more bricks and I've laid about twenty, this time in a fairly straight line down the side of the vegetable garden. Little Mac the cat helped - well, sort of. I'd put up a line of string to keep the wall straight, but she kept leaping on and off it. Ooh, this is fun! So I can blame her for any wobbly bits!
Cleaning Bricks in the Garden
Then I did a bit of weeding near the Canary Bird rose (first to flower, yippee!), but the big hot winds were blowing, and it felt rather dangerous to be underneath the big gum tree. Living on the edge in my very own garden... So I shifted the hose onto the Shrubbery's beautiful variegated Sycamore tree (Esk Sunset No 2, in leaf) and came inside to regroup. Which means eat and have a coffee and maybe play the piano.