September rain..
Hello, September rain - thanks for turning up. Please drop gently onto the blossom trees before you soak into the ground beneath. Be a life-giver, not a blossom-basher. All the things I was going to do today - even put my shorts on ready to go. Early afternoon the rain stopped, collected one barrow load of Hydrangea prunings before I had to go out. Better one than none.
Blossom and Rhododendron
And there's a complete fire ban until next Monday, so my bonfire isn't going to happen - I'd planned to start burning the orchard rose prunings tomorrow. Oh well. More time for weeding and mulching, right?
Wednesday 4th September
Yesterday was an interesting day. I had big 'collect and dump' plans - a barrow load of weeds, of prunings, of mulch, and so on. But something came up. Or rather something came down - the level of the water in the water race. Dropped everything, put on my knee-high gumboots, and spent the next two hours trimming, slicing, and generally tidying up the water race bank.
Water Race
Noisy ducks started arrived - pairs of roaming Mallards, splishing and sploshing, as they landed in the water. Ignored them, kept on working. Then noticed that the sound of trickling water was much louder. Oops. The race was fast filling up. Scooped up all my tools, got out just in time (came close to flooding my gumboots).
The dogs
Back in the house, getting ready to go out to my choir, went to pat my dogs - as one does. Lovely! Pebbles had coated her white mane in dark green slimy duck poo.
Thursday 5th September
The blossom is OK, and Pebbles is still green, though a little less so. Suspect the crochet rugs on the dog couches may have benefitted. When I get back from my ballet class I am going back to my barrowful of this, barrowful of that gardening routine. Let's see if I can make some visible progress (hope springs eternal).