A 'girlie' garden!

I love the light, fluffy look that distant parts of my garden have in late spring. The annual forget-me-nots in the lawns, the Choisya flowering, the Dogwoods and the later flowering cherries. It's the hundreds-and-thousands, icing sugar and marshmallows look. A 'girlie' garden!

But in the middle of the delicate, fairy-like pinks and whites a splash of real colour shouts out. Over here! Over here! A deep red rhododendron in the Dog-Path Garden, an apricot beauty in the Stumpy (AKA Willow Tree) Garden, a tall deep pink reaching for the blue skies in the Pond Paddock. All under-pinned by a layer of fresh green foliage... Wow! I'm so glad that I planted all this random fluffiness. I love my 'girlie' garden. Dogs - what do you think? Don't you think it's all so beautiful? Hmm. What do you mean, throw the ball?

 We are going to the pond.
Dogs in the Garden

And now I must try to be a proper girlie gardener again. A no-excuses, 'jolly well finish it and don't moan' gardener. This will be a bit of a challenge.

Sunday 30th October

Today I've been scraping weeds off the vegetable garden path, and so far have barrowed in three loads of path mulch. But there's so much more that needs to be done - not to mention actually planting up the veggie garden itself. This is what happens. Lots of self-sown flower seedlings are in the way. I love flowers, and cannot trash their seedlings. So the compulsive rescuer in me takes over, and I spent the next hour carefully scooping them up and replanting them. Thus the vegetables do no get planted. Nor is the path finished. But fifty plus Lychnis plants are oh so thankful, nestling safely in a nearby patch of dirt.

I am inside writing my journal to jolly myself along, and to fortify my resolve before today's final session. All this piddling around has to stop. Seedling sacrifices will have to be made. I'm going to try and finish the paths (at least) before I retire for the evening.

Later...

That phrase (imperial) - go the extra mile. And wheeling the barrow back and forth, I reckon I did that. And I decided that I would never, ever have made a good Antarctic woman-hauler. Because the closer I get to my 'South Pole', the greater the urge is to throw it all in, abandon all equipment, and refuse to go any further. Only another twenty minutes/miles/days to go! Yeay? Nay! I'd be likely to stop there and then.

 No visible weeds!
The Vegetable Garden is Planted

Aha! But this time I kept going, pushing through the dreaded Mental Barrier, and have accomplished the following :

  1. The path around the veggie garden has been scraped of weeds and mulched.
  2. A tiny row of coloured beet seedlings are planted.
  3. The path around the Herb Spiral is scraped and mulched.

No blisters, no sore back or shoulders, no older-lady falls, and a huge sense of pride. Small things compared to the sastrugi and crevasses which I would have to be overcome in polar travel (you might guess what my current reading material is, hee hee).

Next Day, Lunchtime...

Fortified with new hope and excess coffee (a mobile coffee caravan has turned up at the dog park) I have now planted the veggies - spuds, peas, and beans. There isn't room for anything else. Oops.

Banksia lutea :
A wonderful, thornless, climbing country rose.

And another rather more serious 'oops'. A huge branch in the yellow-fruiting plum tree - the one that 'hosts' the Banksia lutea climbing rose - has cracked open and is leaning over. Pity to disturb this rose's momentous once-only flowering flush, but alas - in a couple of weeks the chain-saw will have to do its worst. Otherwise everything will crash down on the woodshed in the middle of the night and I will get into enormous trouble. To cover my butt I have naturally reported the damage to Non-Gardening Partner.

 Not a monster montana variety.
Pergola Clematis

Now I am off to do some weeding. Yeay! Weeding! Spring weeding!

Two Hours Later...

I've been pulling out grass and assorted other seedling weeds along the boundary in the Welcome Garden. In the spirit of 'it's never my fault' I've decided that all the weeds originated next-door. So I've thrown them all back - Winnie the dog loves this game, doing giant twisting leaps to catch the blighters mid-air. I've also given next-door's grassy edge mess a trim. I don't want more of their seeds blowing over onto my garden. My goodness, one can be so righteous!

A nice refreshing cup of tea first, I think, then a shower and some speed-sewing of skirts for the Grand-Girlie. I buy op-shop ladies' skirts (already frilly, pretty material, and so on) and cut them down to size. Hey Presto!