Spring greens...
Good morning. The last days have been too-wet, drizzly days, so my birthday week gardening has been postponed. The dogs and I have been out walking, followed by the Fred cats, and I've been taking photographs. It's not been cold - just very drippy. And so many different greens to enjoy. Spring greens - yeay!
So what have I been doing? Hmm. Sorting all my music into folders (both physical and digital) and doing some Youtube trekking with my new man friend (don't worry - he doesn't know that a daft older lady-gardener is following him around the Himalayan trekking circuits).
Yellow Forsythia
Garden Club guest speaker!
And what should I have been doing? Aargh! Preparing my talk for the local Garden Club. I am September's guest speaker, and my topic is 'Things to Do in the Garden Each Month'. I do this on Monday, the day after my birthday.
Aargh! I feel like a gardening fraud. I don't live by the monthly rules regarding pruning, manuring, top-dressing with bulb food, and so on. Usually the months fly by, and I can't keep up. I lose days, even weeks! August, for example, is never long enough for me.
Not an expert...
Being a Garden Club guest speaker implies a certain level of 'expertness', which I am sooooooooo lacking in. There are so many gardening facts that I don't know, like which tomatoes should have their laterals pinched out. OK. OK. I know I could look them all up. But I still probably wouldn't behave!
I'll still tip log-burner ash around the wrong shrubs (think I once killed a rhododendron doing just this). I'll forget to apply that groovy winter oil spray. No wonder colonies of sucky things thrive and wreck my Viburnums. I'll still dig out and shift roses in mid-summer (oops). Have had some spectacular successes and some dreadful failures doing just this. Huge apologies to Fisherman's Friend (a David Austin who didn't make it).
The Dogs
No respect...
With no respect for gardening timetables, plus actually taking some delight in being naughty, the Garden Club will have little respect for me, I fear. Hmm... Time now for another wet walk with the dogs - we need to check on the ewes who are ready to lamb. Nervous times. Not happy with lambing.
Friday 6th September
Yeay! It's Barking (that is, 'Bach-ing' as in JS Bach) Friday, except this morning my flute friend and I played Telemann sonatas. What a tuneful chap he is - I really enjoy listening to his catchy melodies. Light and tasty, when compared to JS Bach's thick-as-molasses counterpoint. I've come home to drizzly, squally rain and it's a bit cold, and thankfully no new lambs. The dogs and I have checked three times. We love walking round - and round - and round the orchard. Even when it's wet.
Good news : there is a glimmer of hope for the rose Fisherman's Friend. On one of our dog-walks we came back to the house via Willow Bridge. And there in the garden I spied some little green shoots growing out of his dead-looking single stalk. Yeay! He survived his mid-summer shift. Well done that rose!
Fishermans Friend Rose