Love, love, love...
I love winter-gardening. I am tough, a fully hardy perennial. I've got good, garden-rough clothes, woolly warm socks, and good garden boots. And a warm house, with the log-burner going, and my Ugg boots into which to retreat if necessary. I love my Ugg boots. And anyway, it's not all that cold...
Saturday 27th May
Ha! I've done two drizzle sessions. First I weeded the Herb Spiral, which didn't take long, measured against the lifetime of my garden (a rather deep comparison). Then, after a hot coffee, I raked and bagged up all the Prunus leaves on the Driveway Lawn. I only filled five bags, and it puzzles me why this activity took so long (an hour an a half). I wasn't dawdling, or day-dreaming, honestly.
Winnie in my Winter Garden
I love my Herb Spiral. In winter the Rosemary in the very top bay is flowering, and the herbs (mainly thyme, oreganum and marjoram) in the bays below have been trimmed back. Some chives have seeded in the path - oops - as well as quite a dew deeply entrenched dandelions, which might need a squirt of something horrible. And there's creepy grass in the surrounding garden, which is chock-full of self-seeded Lychnis and Aquilegia. I love these flowery plants. The grass has to come out somehow.
Weeping Maiden Camellia
Love...
I love the wee splashes of colour (not many, now) throughout the garden : a late colouring Maple, some Nerines flowering, red rose hips, the yellow 'Paris daisies' in the driveway. And blow me down if the Weeping Maiden isn't blooming. She's an extremely early Camellia - difficult to get good photographs because her petals inevitably spoil in the cold rains and morning frosts. Silly girlie!
And I love my cats and my dog. Winnie, is missing Rusty. She's never been an 'only dog' until now, and for a whole year was the junior in a three piece dog pack (with Rusty and brown Escher). There have been a few discussions about possibly getting another dog - maybe a puppy, maybe a rescue dog...
The Rewards de Jour...
And now for the Rewards de Jour. A shower and clean, dry apres-gardening clothes (I have a new groovy knitted green stripy shawl to wear), my Ugg boots, a glass of merlot, and a bag full of new library books to sift through. At the library yesterday (after taking Winnie for a walk in the forest) I found an old friend furtively browsing the large print shelves, exactly what I've started doing. We agreed that large print books are brilliant. It doesn't mean that we are old ladies, merely that we don't have to find our lost reading glasses.
Monday 29th May
Hmm... Winnie and I have been for another forest walk - I'm trying to be nicer to her. I've had one dour gardening session so far, resulting in the muddiest of knees. With my ladies' garden fork I've been removing perennials (Aquilegias, autumn Asters, Lychnis) from the wee garden near the Pergola, then carefully pulling out all the creepy grass. I've haven't done this for some years, and always that blasted grass leaves some wee roots behind. Of course it is the grass's fault...
Muddy Knees!
This is the sort of border maintenance that a proper gardener would do automatically, without moaning. So I've come inside briefly to have a cup of tea, and I'll say no more. But do I try and remove all the invasive Lamium as well? Couldn't I just reclassify it as a robust ground cover? Hee hee...
Dandelions :- But they have such pretty yellow flowers!
Here's the plan for the rest of the day. My ladies' garden fork (with expert operator, me) has very successfully removed the dandelions on the path by the Olearia hedge. First thing I do on returning to the garden is to barrow in some loads of path mulch to re-cover the path surface. I have two and a half hours of daylight left. Jolly good show.
Later, dusk...
One forgets how early the daylight fades, this close to mid-winter. Suddenly it was extremely gloomy, and I'd hardly done that much - three barrow loads of mulch, maybe thirty more dandelions, and some speed weeding en route to my mulch mountain. Oh, and a selfie taken by the Herb Spiral to show how cheerful I always am while doing winter garden maintenance, hee hee.
Nerines Flowering Now
Have I mentioned how much I love my Ugg boots? Probably. Well, I love my retro knitted green stripy shawl, too. I think I look quite stylish. Should ask Non-Gardening Partner for his opinion when he comes home from work, I guess. Not sure that engineers understand the concept of apres-gardening style, however.