Issues with spring weeding...
New Driveway Rhododendron
Aargh! An exclamation that covers two things - a whole day of tedious, nit-picky weeding in my weedy spring garden, and then - oh so nearly leaving my camera outside for the evening. Phew! Miraculously I've never yet done that...
Thursday 23rd August
Weeding. Hmm... There is no easy way. And I start off full of optimism, determined to function on the smallest scale known to gardening woman with gently failing eye-sight. By the end of the session I am scooping up the largest offenders with my trowel, ignoring the silly little weeds growing up in the summer phlox shoots, and so on. And I'm getting crosser and crosser with this garden housework.
After a mental shake-up I go back to carefully easing out the tiny dandelions, so they won't grow into bigger ones with longer taproots by next year. Oh, by now I'm blaming the mulch, the compost, the birds - anything that comes to mind and doesn't implicate the gardener. And my fingers are so sore, and my knees are cold and muddy, and...
My Newest Gnome
No Puff!
I think we get the picture. Oh dear. That's a rather dour story up there. Nobody wants to read this sort of thing. But there's more! My puffy bottles won't puff. This means I can't water my seedlings (more are showing through the mix) gently and properly. My nasty chemical weed-spray bottle has also lost its puff. Just quietly, I did some wobbly pouring on a few monster dandelions - and then felt guilty. But I remembered my camera, sitting on the park bench by the glasshouse. Yippee! Phew! My day is saved.
Friday 24th August
Now, with respect to this weeding issue. Today is brilliantly sunny, after an almost-frost. And what I reckon is this: that if I garden all day, just weeding, moving gracefully from place to place, counting the barrowfuls to give a sense of achievement - then there will definitely be less weeds in my garden by dusk. Ha! Rocket science!
Much Later...
I've had a good weeding day. The small border around the Frisbee Lawn is weeded on both sides. I've also trimmed dead canes out of a large rose, and shifted five barrowfuls of firewood from the Hen House Gardens over to next winter's wood pile. I've planted the last two recycled roses in the house patio garden.
Throughout this beautiful day I have remained positive and cheerful, have spoken in kindly tones to my dog, and provided musical treats via the gardening Ipod for my bellbirds (mainly Bartok's string quartets, which seem to wind the birds up into a whistling, chiming frenzy).
Pond Cottage in Early Spring
I finished my day sitting on the verandah of Pond Cottage drying my hair in the late afternoon sun - such a natural, timeless thing to do. Reflections of my garden gnomes shone and sparkled on the water. There are too many of them to fit in a photograph - I must film them on my video camera, when I find the memory stick. Oops.
+5 
+5At one stage Tiger the cat plodded over to me, then rolled languidly in the grass to sun her ample tummy. Histeria then joined in, but she's a speedy wriggler - Tiger always does things slowly. There's something very giggly about watching cats showing their tummies, especially when it seems to be a showing-off contest. Oh, by the way, Tiger wins. She has much more tummy to show to the sun...