March mooching...
Pat Austin Rose
March has started without much evidence of the physical me - I've been floating around, detached from the garden. There I am, surrounded by so much beauty, and I start mooching and feeling rather half-hearted. This will not do! And I haven't even said hello to this new gardening month - how rude!
Monday 4th March
Good morning, March, and welcome to my world and my garden. Yesterday I dug out sulking roses from the gardens by the Stables and popped them into potting mix in pots. I thought about improvements to the general area. Perhaps it's just a basic design flaw - I recycle other peoples cast-offs, planting them with all sorts of pomp and ceremony, then gradually ignore them. I leave them to get on with their own lives, that sort of thing. If I spent proper money and bought good roses from reputable rose nurseries... And watered and fed them properly... And...
The Stables Garden :- THE photograph, back when this garden was looking its very best. See what you think.
And if I look too closely at older photographs - one year the Stables Garden was full of mature Toe Toes (Cordaterias), soft plumes reaching skywards, hugged by equally mature deep purple lavender shrubs. And it looked gorgeous! Oh dear. That was such a 'good look'. 'Wasn't it good (so good) - Wasn't it fine (so fine)', and all that...
Just quietly, so I don't feel totally hopeless, winter snow trashed the Cordaterias after three seasons and the Lavenders succumbed, too. Short-lived shrubs...
Beautiful Flowerheads
Best to live in the moment, I think! There are some lovely things flowering all around the garden at the moment, and less than one hundred dollars would buy me replacement Lavenders, if I really get too maudlin. And my beautiful Miscanthus and Calamagrostis grasses are better designed for wind and the odd snow storm. Ha!
I Miss Little Mac the Cat
My March gardening moods have definitely the result of my black and white cat Little Mac's mysterious disappearance. I'm still searching the undergrowth for her. I wander along a path and realise I haven't looked properly underneath the nearby shrubs and flaxes. So I lose my gardening momentum and start poking and peering into the greenery instead. OK, Little Mac the cat, all the beautiful things on this page are in your memory.
Single Pink Dahlia
Right. Enough. March signifies that things are getting towards the end of summer, and so I am off to do some concentrated pre-autumn gardening. The seasons they are a'changing...
Three Hours Later...
Oooo - that feels better! I've done some proper, focussed gardening, enlarging the little cottage garden. I've moved the miniature Agapanthus clumps to the new edge, and planted daisies in the gaps. It's a little achievement, but hey! It feels good.
Cherry Red Strawflowers
The two new David Austin red roses are about to bloom again, too, surrounded by tall cherry red strawflowers. Memo to self for next spring: sow lots more of these lovely annuals, and plant them much closer together in larger clumps. They are beautiful planted in amongst roses.
And how about minimising the March mooching, Moosey? Mmm...