Digging and planting
Lime Green Hellebore
Digging and planting : I have three bags of blue irises to plant in the Allotment Garden, pots of cool green hellebores to plant in the Driveway Garden, an apricot recycled rose to dig out and replant. And Non-Gardening Partner has a Weeping Silver Pear tree to shift. Aha! This all sounds like real gardening...
Saturday 19th July
My latest tactic is somewhat sneaky. I've announced that the weeping Silver Pear tree (which is by the raspberry patch) will be really, really, really difficult to dig out. I'm worried as to how difficult it will be. It may even need an axe. This has immediately appealed to NGP's manly side, and he disagrees. The tree is quite small, it shouldn't take HIM long at all with a sharp shovel. Hee hee...
Meanwhile, an exciting present for my garden : another trailer-load of compost. Much of this lot is destined to be splashed around the hostas and rhododendrons in the Jelly Bean Border. There's a nice gap here in which I must plant the large potted red Maple. This is my walk-past garden when I go over to Pond Cottage, so I can cluck and check its progress.
Aeonium in Pot
Not So Much Later...
Aargh! Much of the above has been put on hold, due to rain. I worked outside until the water started dripping down off my fringe. I was doing some routine work trimming a sprawling Erica and pruning some of the roses above it. By the time I was ready to start digging, planting, and shovelling compost it was just too wet.
Pot Thoughts...
But I've had some really important thoughts (when aren't they?). Pot care has been added to this week's general garden maintenance list of tasks. Several pots have to go up a size - those housing the variegated Cordylines and the red-black Aeonium. Other plants (mainly Coprosmas) are to be released into the wild. And all my succulents on their little bookshelf patio are to be reorganised and repotted. Done - well, already visualised as done.
Sunday 20th July
Right. After a long birthday lunch-brunch it's high time to do some digging. Get muddy. Plant some plants. Feel proud. Tick some boxes. Cross some items off my uber-list of things to do. Then relax in a hot bath full of NGP's special birthday lavender milk soak. Woo hoo! That sort of thing. Back soon, but hopefully not too soon.
Repotted Phormium
Much Later...
Oh me of little faith. In the time it took me to change into my gardening clothes and find the shovel I met NGP with the dug-out weeping Silver pear tree on the wheelbarrow. So I planted it carefully in the Glass-House Garden. Here's where I got side-tracked, but nicely so.
First of all, the Penstemons : a good time to divide them and replant the pieces in little pots of potting mix. Pink summer phloxes : the perfect time to dig it all up and replant into pots ready for the perennials garden in the spring. The leggy blue Echeverias in a pot in the glass-house - there was potting mix handy, so this was THE time to break off their stalks and repot them.
Blast! I did none of my digging, none of my repotting, and very little of my planting. Tomorrow I will organise myself properly.
Monday 21st July
I've woken up in a fierce mood. When I get home from swimming - look out, pots! I've decided that absolutely every plant-in-a-pot scattered around my garden is getting a health check. It has three choices :
- To be repotted in new mix, pot upsized if appropriate.
- To be repotted in new mix in a plastic pot, awaiting garden release.
- To be removed and replanted in garden immediately.
Pretty fierce, eh?
Tulips in Pots :- Last spring I bought lots of new tulip bulbs and put them in pots. I wonder if they'll bloom as well this spring?
The only exemptions apply to pots of spring bulbs for this soon-to-be-coming spring. All the old potting mix gets collected in the spare wheelbarrow and dumped in the garden somewhere. This is designed to be a completely clean sweep of all my straggling, ailing potted shrubs. There is to be NO LAZINESS! Ooh, I can't wait. Cross fingers that the southerly storm forecast isn't as fierce as I am.
Much Later...
The wind has been biting cold, but the silly sun has kept on shining, interspersed by dark roly-poly clouds scudding across the sky from the south. That southerly storm is slow in arriving! I've worked hard on my pots, rescuing several patio succulents suffering in the winter temperatures outdoors. I've replanted my old tin bathtub with Beschorneria yuccoides (from my plantsman friend, hence I know the proper name).
Beschorneria yuccoides
Yippee! It really feels like it's close to snowing, but I don't have to drive out anywhere tonight. My house is warm, I'm clean, and I've got loads of TV Couch-Cycling to do. Not that I want any snow, not even the fluttery stuff that won't settle.