Big, beautiful...
Big Trees near the House
My garden looks beautiful. Things in the borders are getting bigger (Phormiums) and even bigger (trees). And when the space between them and me is a beautifully mown paddock-lawn, big is definitely beautiful.
I'm still enjoying my early morning and late afternoon summer gardening sessions, dragging self around the lawn edges elegantly on my bottom to trim and weed, chasing the shade.
Beautiful foliage, but...
Today I worked in the shade near the glass-house, dealing to variegated Elm tree suckers, dead Phormium leaves, and pushy ferns. I love the ferns - they have such beautiful foliage, but they've positioned themselves on the edge of the lawn. And guess what? If there's too much green foliage drooping over the lawn then it doesn't get mowed properly. And then my garden looks even messier than usual, and this can sow the seeds of a big sulk...
Big trees...
Wednesday 11th January
Oops. A very productive but basically a non-gardening day. But I have gone swimming with my friends, done some of my new three thousand (eek!) piece jigsaw, finished an choral arrangement ('A Long Walk' by Jill Scott) for my jazz choir, played Bach and Debussy on the piano (with Non-Gardening Partner on violin), and taken lots of garden photographs. So there.
Big White Buddleia Flowerhead
Thursday 12th January
Again we had rain overnight. We've had so much rain. Aha! This is one reason why things in my garden are looking so big and so many of the dahlias are flopping over.
RIP glass-house tomatoes
I am sorry to announce the permanent demise of the three grafted tomatoes in my glass-house. I thought I did everything right - water, nutritious pots (so to speak), tomato food, and so on.
But I see one tiddly green tomato, a few limp flowers, and lots of green straggly stems struggling to find the summer sun (of which there is none, thanks to the huge growth of the nearby deciduous trees).
So I learn. Tomatoes need plenty of sunshine. They do not need a completely summer-shaded glass-house which, obviously, the bees have been avoiding. I put on my sweetest voice and asked NGP if he thought the glass-house could be moved. He just laughed. OH well. It doesn't hurt to ask...
For the record I am wearing sky blue jeans and a pretty sky blue cotton shirt. Gardening clothing? I don't think so! But wait! It's raining again. So that's that. The sky blue clothing can stay.
Pretty Dahlias
But the three thousand piece jigsaw, like the tomatoes, is going. The pieces are too fuzzy. And it's actually too big. Unlike my garden, hee hee.