Recent Garden News
Head Gardener
The Recent Garden News page displays the fifteen most recent additions to Mooseys Country Garden. This should help visitors keep up with what's going on in my garden.
Gardens are always growing and changing - there's always something new to see. And, as I love writing about my garden almost as much as being in it, there'll always be some new Moosey ramblings to read, or new pictures to look at. Perhaps the garden activities of my summer will warm up a northern hemisphere gardener's winter days. I know how much I enjoy my mid-winter garden visits to summery places.
Two weeks can be a long time in the life of a garden. There's inevitably some repetition, so please be understanding if I'm saying the same things over and over again. I hope you'll enjoy seeing what I've been working on recently...
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The BIG DIG......
- It's the day of the big dig - where Non-Gardening Partner helps me remove unwanted shrubs and plants from my friend's garden. If I don't take them they'll be put in a skip and dumped - an awful fate. But do I need more plants? Best not answer that. It's a plant rescue!
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New plants......
- A friend has just moved, and her new property has five roses she doesn't want. I'm off around there to dig them up. I don't actually need any more roses, but hey! They need a new forever home, and just might be amazing and beautiful, like Mary rose (my namesake, hee hee). OH. MY. GOODNESS. I'm back. Did she say five roses?
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Shrub love......
- I love my late spring flowering shrubs. And I love the Wisteria - I have my tea/coffee breaks sitting on the patio underneath, and the perfume is just gorgeous. But how quickly time is scuttling by. Wasn't it just yesterday that the Daphne was the fragrance de jour?
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Where is my camera?...
- Taking photographs of the rhododendrons by Willow Bridge this morning. So beautiful! So I stayed there, to tidy the gardens. Now my camera is lost - hopefully not mulching under a pile of weeds. Oh camera! Would that you could whisper to me : 'Over here! Underneath the Iris confusa!'
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Wow!...
- Wow. I need time to catch up. With my garden. With my garden journal. And with November, which is starting to fill up with the first 'proper' roses. Don't mean to insult you, Canary Bird (my earliest, a species rose which flowers in October).
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Flaxmere...
- I have just visited Flaxmere, a large country garden in the South Island, New Zealand. The garden surrounds the homestead of a high country farm, with three hectares of paths, ponds, trees, shrubs, roses, ornamental grasses - everything under the sun! It's said say that Flaxmere is a garden with 'good bones'...
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Doing anything?...
- Women can do anything, but does this woman want to burn all the hedge trimmings before the ground gets too dry, sow new grass seed before the sun gets too hot? I reckon these should be Non-Gardening Partner's jobs. Why? Because they are man jobs. Ooops - not very PC.
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Purple Rhododendron - Bumble Bee?...
- I have a dark purple rhododendron growing in the middle of Middle Garden. The purple flowers are a lovely colour combination with the late-spring greens, especially on an overcast day.
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Clones......
- I have to be a gentle-hands nursery-woman one minute, then a bossy planter of plants the next, then an energetic spreader of mulch and horse manure. And before you can say 'Cleavers' (or Galium aparine) I have to twirl three times, clockwise, and turn into WWW : Wonder Weeding Woman. Aargh! I need clones!
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Dog manners?...
- This morning I felt sorry for my two collies Winnie and Pebbles - yesterday had been a boring, in-our-kennels day. So off we went in the rain for the longest walk. It was supposed to be peaceful, three friends together. There would be no barking, just good dog-manners...
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Weeding......
- Oh boy. What a day I'm having. I am weeding. Cue violins, fortissimo, and let me say that again. I AM WEEDING. In the Hump. Parachute weed seeds keep punching me in the nose, sticky Cleavers slips through my hands, grass clumps have been giving my shoulders a great workout.
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Spring Colours 2...
- Here are some more spring photographs from my garden for you to enjoy. Flowers, shrubs, and some beautiful leaves - every colour you'd want to see. There's such variety of style, too. Blousy multi-petalled bloomers and sweet little stars, Droopers and uprights, clusters and solitaires...
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Spring Colours 1...
- No lists of spring things that desperately need doing today, or should have been done yesterday. Forget all that! Just two pages of beautiful photographs, to celebrate the colours of spring.
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Lawns and Sheep......
- I love my lawns! Not that they are proper lawns - they're just mowed sheep paddocks, awfully weedy, and in some places smothered in blue annual forget-me-nots. I love them most of all in spring when they're very green and the weeds blend in, hee hee...
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Get the name right!...
- What's in a name? Everything and nothing? which name to use - the common name, or botanical Latin version? Best that the name is correct, whichever is used. Gardeners (like me) can so often get the name wrong, sometimes for all the right reasons.