November Week 1

My bath (outdoors variety) is full of stubby green flaxes, and I have six hebes and six roses in pots - all fresh and ready for a long country retirement in the Moosey Garden. Will the acquisition of these second-hand plants stop me spending hard-earned MONEY at the nursery? Wait and see...

Tuesday 2nd November

Yippee! A whole day in the late-spring garden, with no financial distractions... What shall I do first? I think I will make a short and concise list. Hopefully some of the items on it will help use up my embarrassingly large stockpile of potting mix. Here goes...

My First November List
1. Plan - that’s PLAN, not ’plant’ - where the new plants can go.
2. Water all seedlings and all new plants.
3. Do all edges before the lawns grow again.
4. If bored, start gently tying up old daffodil stalks.
5. Check peonies for bud-burst (exciting stuff!).
6. Burn rubbish pile (before fire ban starts).
7. Poultry Management Plan. Think! Plan! Act!
8. Start planting out hardened-off annuals.

Then there’s always weeding, checking rhododendron flowers, clearing paths, and photographing the new bright orange deciduous azalea. And dare I mention using up some potting mix?

Friday 5th November

I just don’t understand. This week’s gardening has suffered a slight set-back (I have been at work for the last two and a half days). But I don’t understand what has happened out there. In the last sixty hours I have been unable to give the garden my full undivided attention. So, just to remind me of the pecking (aargh! the poultry!) order, hundreds of new plants have sprung from the soil and burst into flower, and there are ROSES everywhere in bloom!

The yellow rugosa Agnes is absolutely covered in flowers - how can this possibly happen in two and a half days? What's going on? Am I missing something here - some absolute cosmic gardening truth? As soon as I take my eyes away for a minute a perennial geranium grows metre-long stalks and little blue flowers, and a thousand aquilegias not only break into full flower, but even have the nerve to drop some petals and flop over.

I have tried to be such a careful cataloguer of floral events. I've been waiting weeks for rose flowering to start. I really thought I was in control here, the official Moosey archivist, writer of a most detailed, descriptive daily gardening diary. And to make matters worse the whole garden seems to have turned blue, and the hostas are knee high! I blame the distraction of my potting mix mountain. Aargh! I’ve just had a terrible thought - the peonies in Middle Garden will have burst into flower. I’m off to catch up.

I’m back! I’ve just walked around the garden with a visiting friend, and in the process have found a tree peony in flower! Before I sound totally dizzy in the head, let me explain - I knew it was there. I moved it last autumn. But never before have I seen it flower (it’s brick red). The normal peonies are still covered with fat buds. I also saw so many weeds I felt ashamed. This diary is crammed full of weeding and weeds - I don’t understand how they can grow so much in a few days.

November Blooming Report - Week 1
1. Aquilegias
2. Clematis
3. Roses - Moonlight, Mutabilis, assorted rugosas, Banksia Lutea
4. Iris Japonica
5. Chatham Island Forget-me-nots
6. Still more new rhododendrons
7. Deciduous Azaleas (2 of them)
8. Red Weigela

And to add to the above, the first big coloured bearded irises are almost ready. Aargh! More colour! More flowers!