Good morning...
Good afternoon to my January garden, to my new camera (so groovy), to my dogs (a bit bored), and to Non-Gardening Partner (avoiding me). Would he like to do some New Year's chainsawing? 'Not terribly, no.' Very polite, don't you think?
My cricketers
And good afternoon to the New Zealand cricketers, battling away in Sydney. Ooops. Not very convincingly. A bit like my gardening today. I've been clearing mess up here there and everywhere - cleavers, alkanet, aquilegias, dead cordyline leaves. Roses have been dead-headed, edges trimmed... So consequently I feel a bit all-over-the-place.
Tiger :- Tiger the tortoiseshell left us in August last year..
But some nice news - pulling out Campion from the Hump Garden I finally uncovered Tiger the cat's grave, with the metal pukeko standing guard on top of her. Nearby dahlias are just huge now, and her companion roses (Sally Holmes and Just Joey) are blooming magnificently - wonder why? Dear Tiger. I do miss you. But thank you for composting my flower garden so well. Beautiful roses, beautiful memories.
Roses Over Tiger
Look, it's very tricky making this sort of gardening day sound at all interesting. So what have I been thinking about? Nothing of substance. Just pondering about my choir arrangements, wondering whether the latest piece should be transposed up a tone (my sopranos get a bit titchy if they can't soar up towards high G). And thinking about my summer holiday reading - British detective stories, nothing profound in them. And worrying about the Australian bush fires, which makes for pretty grim thinking.
And listening to the cricket which has been pretty dire. We are not doing very well. We are quite hopeless. Aargh!
Pebbles on Willlow Bridge
Monday 6th January
I've had another fairly subdued gardening day listening to the cricket, in which New Zealand has been awful. I've cleaned more of the Dog-Path Garden - gathering up lots of dead cordline leaves (blown down by the wind), and trimming the lupins and astelias. The path from the lawn to the water race is once more passable, should I ever want to pass over it - which it occurs to me I only do when I'm weeding it. Seems a bit unnecessary?
Doing things by ones...
I've also collected one barrow load gum tree bark from the house lawn, scooped up and spread one barrowload of mulch, and cleared one barrow load of weeds from another wee garden area. One of each - as I said, fairly subdued. But happy, I promise you (except I'm not happy about the cricket).