Think like a dog...
Winnie the Dog
Applying dog mentality to my gardening : stop thinking, just get doing. Does it work? Woof! I certainly feel better at the end of the gardening day.
Success? Failure?
Dogs don't even notice their successes (or failures). They don't do analysis. At the end of their day, a full tummy and a warm bed are what matters. I can relate to those.
Just waiting for the temperature to increase (it's only three degrees Celsius, a bit nippy) before I start my work.
Veggie mix in trailer...
My veggie mix is sitting in the trailer, ready. I know what I'm doing there. I'm building a second garden for potatoes (have bought them, a red variety). I just need to find some random bricks to lay out an edge. That's easy. My garden has a couple of wood slab seats sitting on bricks. Soon they will be sitting on firewood logs.
Much later...
Oh joy! have been working hard to prepare the potato patch. Have dug out and transplanted Aquilegias, Bergenias, Foxgloves and Dahlias. Spent three hours on my hands and knees scraping and digging. Repetitive, but easy. Then continued for two more hours. Yet more scraping and digging, and the laying down of bricks. The weather? Gorgeous sunshine. The veggie garden is ready for action.
New Potato Patch
When large ornamental Miscanthus grasses (which needs to be trimmed) frighten me (and keep me awake with worry) in the middle of the night, do something about it, right? But I didn't. I couldn't trim them - there was too much wind for a bonfire.
Tuesday 16th September
Came home last night after my rehearsal with a car full of dug-out Hebes, as one does. Car smelt like a greenhouse - not unpleasant. Hello Speckles, how nice to see you waiting outside the cottage. I won't ask where you've been for the last three nights.
In the cool light of early morning, fortified with a hot cup of tea, the gardening brain is whirling around. Where to plant the Hebes? Where is it easy to dig planting holes? They are quite big.
Blossom and Rhododendron
It's a beautiful spring morning, and I only have three hours. The plan : change immediately into gardening clothes, stop writing, stop wandering outside to take yet more photographs of blossom. Stop thinking. Just get doing. Take yesterday's 'think like a dog' advice.
New Hebes
Three hours later...
So I thought like a dog for three hours and planted the new shrubs in the Allotment Garden. The ground was covered in annual grass weeds, which I reckon blow in from next door. But they were easy to remove, thanks to the layer of mulch.
Hebes, Corokias...
The Hebes (three, plus a Corokia which had been trimmed into a ball) are planted and watered. If they like it here, that's just great. If they pass on to the great bonfire in the sky, then so be it. It's worth a try. I could then buy some new ones from the nursery to fill in the planting holes.
Now am off to watch my smallish friends in a Circus show, followed by my lovely Chamber Music trio rehearsal. Yeay for variety in the day!