Cars, Knees - and Garden Visitors!
This is the new, improved, non-sulking version of me. The one that sets realistic goal and enjoys working hard to achieve them. The genuine gardening version, that doesn't moan about their aching knee, or panic when garden visitors are arriving in less than a week's time.
Wednesday 14th October
Visitors! Eek! But surely by then all the paths will be raked, and all the lawns mowed, and a lot of cosmetic weeding along the edges of the borders will be done? Happily, even neatly, without fuss. Eek!
The View from My Cottage
I made a great start yesterday. After taking the dogs to the dog park, I pulled a few weeds, tipped a few buckets of water on the rhododendrons in the driveway, and helped transport the sheep down the road to the shearing yards. Today has been shearing day, and I've come home smelling of a sheep, with the lanolin-soft hands of a woman half my age.
Oddly Tiring...
All I do in the shearing shed is sweep, keep the shearing board clear of stuff, and help taking the skirtings off the fleeces. It requires an alert brain, not much else. Four hours of this is oddly tiring.
Ewes Waiting for Shearing
Without stopping I leapt into the garden and cleared the tiniest of paths. Simultaneously big Escher decided to visit next-door's paddock, jumping a fence with barbed wire on the top. So I have marched him crossly back into the house, and I've decided to have a cup of tea and a wee rest.
Pond Paddock Cherry Blossom
Blossom Alert!
Blossom alert! Welcome to the deeper pinks of the Crab-Apples, and the lolly pinks of the Kansan Flowering Cherries. Hello to the dogwoods (this is technically a 'bract alert'). And more rhododendrons. So untimely since the garden is fast drying out. Their flowers don't cope so well in the late spring heat, Moderation, please, Sir or Madam Sun.
Friday 16th October
Oops. So yesterday was THE perfect day for spring gardening, but I had to write music charts for a pianist and a bass player. So that was that. Grr... But today I am out and about, already titivating the edges.
I'm cheating with the dandelions - I sprayed them a week ago, but I can't have their raucous yellow flowers here there and everywhere, so I'm pulling whatever I can get hold of out. Such details would embarrass me - even more than the general chaos will anyway, when my visitors come.
Trying to burrow into a visitor's mind is interesting. What will delight them? What will they notice the most? Garden features like my wriggling stream for example, need to be fully functional, and I haven't completed the waterside plantings. Naughty! I guess my biggest question is the silliest - will they see all the weeds, and will this spoil their garden experience?
Maigold Rose
Much Later...
Oh boy. I've been scratching round in a mood, watering areas of desperately dry garden, pulling out obvious patches of sticky willy, clearing paths, pruning dead wood out of huge roses, carting pots around... And there are so many little details that I'm going to leave out. But this is more a humph and a shrug of the shoulders than a panic.
Eek!
So my visitors are coming this Monday. Eek! The lawns! There are bugs on the new rose growth. Forget-me-nots are wilting with the lack of rain. But the pink and white spring flowering shrubs are just beautiful. The Phormiums planted along the water race shine in the sun. Late spring is an unsettled time, weather-wise, so each day feels different to the next. And the big whooshy irrigation is going to run later tonight. All will be well.