Fresher and lighter...
Yes, yes, yes! Lots of weeding. Planting. Trimming mess - particularly the ferns. So many ferns! Burning. Photographing Camellia flowers. Sniffing at the air. It's fresher! Marvelling at the light. It's definitely lighter!
Tinsie Camellias
And best of all - lots of loving. Loving my garden again (not that I ever didn't, but I did ignore it earlier in winter). Everywhere I look I can see hope. I can also see places where new roses could grow (oops).
Pink Azalea
I can see the wisdom of not allowing the Phormiums to get too big. But they are so beautiful in winter, I forgive them (and myself, oops).
Pink Camellia
Details...
So what about some details? I've spent some serious August days in the garden being an August gardener. Dignified? Maybe not. The Allotment Garden is weeded, and I've replanted the cheerful yellow daylilies by the sunny edge. Have also divided up the Crambe cordifolia and replanted it in the sun. Have lightly trimmed the sprawling Crepuscule rose. Love this rose! Have pruned the Graham Thomases, and pulled lots of annual grass clumps out. I just throw them all over the fence from whence they come, hee hee.
A singing friend has given me Alstroemerias and lilies. They can all go in the Allotment Garden. Again, out in the open, so they'll be sunny.
Behind the glass-house I've cleared the garden and path. All the Wattle tree mess is gone - wood logs in discrete piles, messy branches lopped up and burnt on the bonfire. I'm seeing more space for roses - naughty! But surely some of the miniatures I've shifted out of the Hump Rose Garden could go here? I could top up the soil for them. I could promise to water and feed them. Not silly.
Memo to self - shift out some of the Toad lilies. They get rather lost and forgotten in front of the glass-house here, and there's space for them out in the Hump Garden. Another memo, not so appealing - clean up inside the glass-house. Aargh! But the huge coarse green Carexes (in their big plastic pots) have been trimmed and moved. They've gone over to the fence-line to block out the neighbour's mess (which, unlike my own mess, is oddly not acceptable).
Phormium and Rhododendron
Each day there are more shrubby flowers to enjoy. More birds squeaking in the trees, more noisy pukekos shrieking in the orchard. More roses to prune. It's a happy time.