More spring weeding...

 She loves chasing the stick.
Pebbles and Her stick

Have been spring weeding, small scale, scrappy weeding - the kind of weeding that rubs the skin off my fingers and makes my hands ache. Being perverse, I don't wear gloves, so my fingernails are full of dirt and look dreadful. Humph.

The first area I dealt to was around the dog kennels. I scraped and dug and clawed out weeds - three barrow loads dumped on the bonfire. This included some pretty tenacious patches of creepy grass further down near the rose Dublin Bay.

Then I started to sort out the wee strip of garden along the water race. This was a lot more difficult, and unrewarding, so I switched to the perennials garden by the woodshed. Aargh! The worst weeding of the day - small thorny rose prunings (ouch) from the overhead rambler, annual weed darlings which had cleverly threaded themselves through the new growth of Phlox and Daylilies... Impossible to settle on how small to set my sights.

I got quite cross, and started thinking nasty chemical thoughts. I needed a fork for the dandelions, and I needed some sort of plan. And it needed to be mid-morning, so I'd have loads of mental energy. Aha! Saved! My friend arrived with my weekly horse manure order - fifteen bags, full of worms - and her new dog Tom raced around happily with my collies. Then - oops - Tom chased Red Fred the cat boisterously into the Leyland shelter hedge. Tom went home, and Fred immediately started crying - I could only just see him, on the very top of the six meter hedge.

 Playing around.
Fred in a Tree

I calmly called to him from the bottom of the tree trunk (but didn't dare look), and he came very slowly down. Phew! Naturally I had to carry him into the house (he loves being carried), feed and pat him. No more weeding for me, hee hee.

 In the Wattle Woods.
Pink Camellias

Aside : Fred got into big tree trouble as a kitten and had to be extension-ladder rescued from the top of a pine tree. Not something a loving cat-owner forgets...

Friday 30th August

Today I weeded for ages, in a much better mood, and with an improved attitude. And improved hand tools - I'd found my claw scraper, and my small, strong garden fork (both in the back seat of my car!) They helped enormously.

But I can't help thinking that my weeding technique is time-consuming, fussy, and inefficient. It's hands and knees, lunge and wobble, scoop and fling, try not to squash the Delphinium shoots, coax the long dandelion taproots slowly skywards with my fingers... Oh. That reminds me. Grubby fingernails!

Then I planted some pots of Lupins in the Glass-House Garden and raked up moss from the lawn. I picked some daffodils for my house and here I am - clean, warm, and happy with my day. A born-again weeder. Oh, by the way, I refuse to put any photographs of weeds on this page. Better to enjoy some of the spring flowers, yes?