More to Life than Bricks?
More of my beautiful bricks are flowering, while I'm busy laying rhododendrons in the vegetable garden? Aargh! Even my thoughts are back-to-front today. There must be more to gardening life than bricks. OK, so I have two brick projects to finish in the next five days. Hopefully after this weekend the B-word will no longer feature in every Moosey sentence.
Wednesday 17th October
Bricks are what I've been living, breathing, handling (and therefore talking about) for the last - how many weeks? While I catch my breath (before the first morning brick-cleaning session) I'd like to say hello to the lolly pink flowering cherry Kanzan in the Island Bed. This is a relatively new tree for me, still a juvenile, but the flowering time is just perfect for viewing from the house windows. And for any colour-doubters out there - lolly pink looks wonderful surrounded by beautiful green foliage and lawns. Ha!
Red and Yellow Tulips
Rescued Tulips
This weekend, after (if?) all my vegetable garden brick walls are organised I'll be planting out trays and trays of flowering annuals and rejigging the pots. If that's what one does with pots (it looks faintly rude, sorry about that). I do love the rescued tulips flowering in terracotta, though - they've been brilliant.
Four Hours Later...
In a defining moment of personal incompetency I seem to have buried my spirit level in the vegetable garden. In other words, it is horribly lost). So I've built the last straight brick edge, levelling the bricks by eye. Oh dear. A bit wobbly. Oh well.
An epiphany moment? Since I haven't exactly decided whether the back of the second raised vegetable bed will be straight or curved, guess what? I'm creating a curved wall for this growing season, but I'm not mortaring the bricks in position.
I've only had to shift one new rose, and a few little Lavenders will also need to move. Now I'm off to build the brick walls for the seaside vegetable garden. They are strictly straight. Bricks-R-Us, on the go, go, go... I'm not sure which to feel more sorry for - my head or my hands!
Brick Design for Vegetable Garden
Much Later, Next Day in Fact...
Phew. I located and dug up my spirit level, unfortunately too late for strictly horizontal action, and I've laid the last curved wall bricks (no mortar) in position. Son of Moosey's vegetable garden is also finished (well, enough to accept some compost and topsoil and for the planting to commence), and a separate potato patch has been dug. Son has made some kind observations about my concepts of 'level' and 'horizontal'. Hmm...
Creamy Yellow Rhododendron
Today I must have cleaned more than one hundred bricks, and my hands are sooooooooo sore! I finish this page as I started. There must be more to gardening life than bricks. There is! My many beautiful rhododendrons, for one. Now I long to be a normal pottering gardener again.
Even weeding seems appealing. I can't believe I said that!