March Week 1

Aargh! It's March already and I'm still pottering away in my garden doing small items of general maintenance (and attacking my large flaxes). Early autumn is the perfect time for a major soil digging project - a second large pond would be nice!

Wednesday 2nd March

Well, maybe not quite that major - I have a horrible feeling that large ponds initially need ditch-diggers, bulldozers and tractors, large tip trucks, and cranes to lower the large artistic rocks into place. Pumps and pipes are then installed for the water supply - no wonder my second pond exists only in my gardening dreams!

However, I still have loads of energy for the removal of offending flaxes which have grown too big for their garden positions. My flax-butchering mania was encouraged by my lovely weekend garden visitor called 'Pumpkin' (who single-handedly gave me the confidence needed for demolition). Typically random, I reckon - I have been putting up with these large, unsuitable monster flaxes for years - deliberately not 'seeing' the problems their size has created, too timid to attack a New Zealand native iconic plant. Ha!

Flaxes Beware!

As soon as I have checked in with this journal (I've been missing in action - at work these last two days) I am off to chop and knife another flax out. If this is the only thing I do this week, at least I am being strong and decisive.

Gardeners have to be brutal and fearsome sometimes - ripping out and burning roses which are not healthy enough, drastically pruning big things, shifting things - if necessary in the middle of summer, if that is the only window of shifting opportunity. One of my most beautiful older roses was dug out on a hot Christmas Eve (in summer, of course!), then travelled for over an hour in a very hot car, then sat in a bucket of water for two days.

But back to the flaxes. I'm off outside. Just wait!

Later, with Two More Large Flaxes Cut Down...

Right - I'm back, inside, freshly showered, apres-gardening in white linen shirt, with a huge secateur-blister on my finger. Two more flaxes are down. Suddenly I can see the Cotinus and the striped Miscanthus grass behind the glass-house. And I've been good and cleaned up all the flax-leaf mess. I'm tired, though...

I wonder - March isn't really the start of Autumn, is it?

Thursday 3rd March

Today I thought I'd get the bow saw out and finish leveling the flax by the glass-house. I have photographs of the early days when this flax was a warm red colour, and small. Ah... such lovely, innocent memories... and I am awfully tempted to buy a new small red flax from the nursery as a replacement (some gardeners never learn). But first I have to go into work for two hours. This does not please me - my spiritual energy is being redirected into producing an amazing and entertaining Mathematical experience - a lesson on fractions and ratio. Humph. Back soon.

Three Hours Later...

Right. I'm back! Before I re-launch myself (so to speak) I would like to claim success - the flax by the glass house is now substantially demolished. It's a much better, balanced look for this interesting little garden. I've also cut back the apple tree (complete with nearly full-sized apples) to stop it crowding over the Miscanthus and the rose Complicata. I have also seriously pruned two Hebes. I reckon my garden will appreciate the new brutal me!

Now I need to plan some interesting major gardening activity for the rest of the afternoon. Or I could attack the biggest flax of all (the one at the corner of the JAM garden) - in fact it might be better to keep flax-focused. And talking about focused - now I have two hens (brown hen and henlet), both of whom have gone into hen-hibernation in the Olearia hedge (different places), both sitting on nests of nothing. I can't take much more of this random poultry behaviour - it seems such a total waste of hen-hours.

Gourmet Tea-Time...

I've been ripping into the largest flax, and as yet haven't got very far. Puppy has been 'helping' by racing along next to the wheelbarrow pulling delicately balanced flax leaves off. I have taken a photo for my memories - the flax has about one quarter of its tall stiff leaves left. This whole garden area (especially the squashed in roses - there's an Othello, and a Pilgrim) will breathe a sigh of relief. If I was really, really connected with my plants I would now weave the flax leaves into garden baskets... hmm...

Tomorrow I promise to finish this one task. Then I will have behaved for nearly a whole week, with no sidetracks! No longer a grasshopper gardener! My perseverance will have to be rewarded (a wee trip to the local garden nursery springs to mind). If I buy any replacement flaxes (I probably will!) they must be weepy, fountain-shaped ones.