No place I would rather be...
The Moosey roses are in full flower, and they fill the garden with colour and perfume (naturally they also fill the pages of this journal). Cross fingers - there are few aphids. I love my early summer garden - there is no place I would rather be.
Sunday 21st November
Last night at dusk I zoomed around with the grey cats taking photographs of all the Moosey roses. Many of the newer bushes (like Geoff Hamilton by the plank) are blooming beautifully! There are roses everywhere - climbing through trees, pushing up in the mixed border, covering the woodshed, leaning over archways and flopping over the garden's edge. Buff Beauty is looking particularly bigger and more beautiful this summer. Yes - it has officially turned into summer!
Othello Rose
This morning as I write the morning sun is shining on the Mutabilis rose which towers over the huge bronze flax in the decking garden (I'm peeping out of the glass doors). Through every other window I see roses. Yippee for Mary Rose, Othello and Westerland.
New Roses...
My water race gardening and watering yesterday was most satisfactory - though the overnight irrigation will have helped my dribbly hose-moving. The newest garden over there (sentimentally named the Eggy Garden) has acquired six new roses, two new flaxes, and various daisies, Heuchera and flowering annuals. No doubt it will look 'new' for a few more weeks, until the annual growth kicks in. Annuals like pink Lavatera (and those self seeding blue geraniums) are so good for filling up emptiness.
What shall I do first today? Hmm...
Early Afternoon
It's too hot. First of all I will NOT comment on the cricket. Enough said. This morning I've been weeding along the water race (the water level was down). I have retired inside for the hottest part of the day to watch some of that which I will not comment on.
Blue Geranium
The roses are still amazing. Is it possible that there are too many? No way! The pink scrambler on the woodshed looks stunning. All the roses look stunning (and I haven't sprayed yet). What a wonderful wonderful plant to be able to grow. A huge thank you to the climate of Canterbury, New Zealand.
House Gardens
Monday 22nd November
Late yesterday afternoon the cricket became so embarrassing that I turned off my cricket radio and did the edges of the back house lawn in stony silence. Aargh! The shame!
All the house lawns are now freshly mown. The garden is alive with colour and greenery. Everything is beautiful (apart from the cricket). Some early summer-flowering perennials are out, too - like the Phlomis, several Salvias, and the lupins.
And go the peonies! The blood reds have ridiculously large flower-heads, and some deep pinks are breaking into bloom. And let's hear it for the irises! The house is full of irises in vases, and many of the gardens now have strong iris patches. When did I do that? - I mean, divide and replant them? I honestly can't remember.
Today I'm going to quietly potter around and enjoy the roses. I will be an unspectacular but steady, composed gardener. All memories of the cricket will be banned - as will the new cricket radio, which almost fell out of my pocket into the water race yesterday, just as Glenn McGrath scored his maiden test fifty. We just won't go there - it's too deeply embarrassing to begin to explain to the uninitiated. Oops - and the radio is actually borrowed from a semi-relative - perhaps I'd better put it back...
Perennial Lupins Flowering
Tuesday 23rd November
Today I will spend the whole day in the garden (that is until the threatened rain arrives). Yesterday was important - I've started watering the top of the Island Bed, and in the many dusty dry gaps I've planted annuals and daisies and a spiky yellow dahlia. I've also generously thrown in two large bags of potting mix (hmm... since I have rather a surplus, due to buying a trailer-load) to improve the soil. Actually I am going to use up more of my excess potting mix this way.
The circles of life in the garden - now I am carefully nipping spent flower-heads off many of the rhododendrons. It seems that only yesterday I was hounding them into flowering. It's as if they suddenly started up, like a giant garden fireworks show, fizz bang wow! - and now it's all over, far too soon! Ah well, I have my memories (and rather a lot of photographs, hee hee)...
Weigela Shrub
The Close-Up Button...
And speaking of photographs, my rose collection has never looked better (since I discovered the close-up button, that is). And finally I have captured Mugsy the Cat with her famous 'Zig-Zag' - not easy to explain, but you'll see it in her latest picture.
Things I noticed yesterday (aargh! such intricate gardening detail) - the big flowering cherries are very much 'spreadier' in the Pond Paddock - lots more mid-day shade to read my book underneath. The Weigela flowering at exactly the same time behind the rose pair pink Sparrieshoop and Constance Spry - what a beautiful backdrop. And rooster's crow has - well - dropped in pitch (I know these things, being a musician)...
Right. Enough twittering on. I am off and out to water pots, check the new stream, and rescue any new annuals scratched out of position by my chook-friends. I might even photograph a few more roses, hee hee...
Over Six Hours Later...
Be impressed! If everyday I worked as hard as I worked today - my garden would be in such good shape that I jolly well would invite in busloads of tourists - and they jolly well would be amazed. I have really kicked some gardening butt! In the morning I planted out. In the afternoon I did more edges and cleared out the forget-me-nots from the garden by the woodshed. Seems rather minimal for six hours work...
And still I'm taken by surprise by the beauty of the Moosey roses. I'd forgotten about the masses of flowers on the climbers like Cecile Brunner, the shining flouro-pinks of Mutabilis, the silly egg-yolk yellows of Graham Thomas and Golden Celebration, and the superb fragrance of the dark pink rugosa rose. I am surrounded by roses where-ever I decide to garden. They really make the garden come alive. I love my roses.