Aargh!
Rescued Gnomes
My next winter task - tidy up the back of the Pond Garden. No problem! I'd shift the recycled roses, clear the path, and so on. Aha! Little did I know what I'd find there. I am soooooo ashamed of myself...
First things first...
But first things first. This garden has never been suitable for roses - there's no irrigation and not enough sun. But will it be more suitable in a week's time? For in a week, almost to the hour (tree men usually start working around 9am), the first batch of trees from the Hump will be coming down.
Down, down, down they will come. What will this mean? Obviously, much more sun - everywhere! It will be a test of my superpowers as a gardener, hee hee. It will also test my photographic imagination, to get decent 'before and after' pictures. And for the next weeks (months?) there can be lots of photos of the inbetween mess. I can do this? Well, of course I can point the camera, but can I stick to a long-running maintenance task, possibly the longest in the history of my garden? And just how boring and moany will this garden journal become? Best not to answer that...
Path behind the pond
OK, so a little light cleaning up behind the pond, then, with lots of thoughtful thinking. But just when one thinks one has everything under control - Kapow! Shazam! Bitten on the bottom! I cleared the path, and removed two barrowfuls of mess from the garden. I sighed at the sad neglected roses.
Gnome mess
Moving on to the edge of the pond, a terrible shock. I am soooooooo ashamed! Forget the roses - what about my sad, neglected garden gnomes? Aargh! Chaps! Are you alright in there?
Stuck in the Mud
So ashamed!
Many gnomes were completely smothered in ferns, and fishing would have been impossible - poor things! One of the originals, Rodney, was bogged down in mud with just his yellow hat showing. A trio of smaller chaps had some dreadful gnome disease, bodies and faces covered in holes. Others had face-planted in the dirt, one was still trying to play his accordion, half submerged in the pond water.
Laurie the reading gnome was OK - he's been reading a book called 'Lazy Days' for the last ten years. And I hate to say it, but the holey ones (and a few that are faceless) are going to the great gnomery in the sky (AKA the Rubbish Bin).
So there was I twittering on about roses while my gnomes were in desperate need. This is just not good anough. And something has happened to the pond Gunnera. It is not growing. Not sunny enough? Well, that will all change. Meanwhile the Carexes and Anemanlethe grasses have taken over. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Photographs...
Look, I did take some photographs, but I felt like a callous voyeur, taking pictures of gnomes in distress, then propping them up under a nearby tree, without as much as a face wipe. Hope nobody is offended.
Wednesday 30th May
Right! Remedial gnome action! As soon as it warms up (at the moment it's zero degrees Celsius) I'm off with a warm dishcloth to clean up the gnomes. Hang on in there, Rodney! And cull (oops) because tomorrow is rubbish collection day.
Poor Rodney Gnome!