Moosey Garden's Tenth Anniversary month...
The Moosey Garden Tenth Anniversary month continues with sunshine, more blossom, tulips flowering, and all other garden plants growing well. The extremely free-ranging rooster and hens have not yet pecked at anything important...
Pink Weeping Cherry Blossom
Friday 8th October
To think that the Moosey Garden is TEN YEARS OLD - or ten years young, in gardening terms. Some areas of the garden are unrecognisable, yet others haven't changed much at all - just a little fatter, a few more wrinkles, a bit more woody - sounds like the head gardener... So what shall I do first today? I need to find the rake. Did I ever mention that I'd finished clearing the pathways in the Hump? I lied! But this morning I will fix this - there's only a small section of path which needs the treatment. I promise to burn the evidence before the wind starts.
Forget-Me-Not
Flower Colour
Concerning flower colour, I have done a bit of pansy-cheating - a friend is bringing me three trays of pansy plants, ready to be planted in bare spots in the garden. Oh well - guess I should have started my Nursery Production last autumn. Next year I will be better organised... Mind you, the self-sown pansies in my garden are blooming merrily!
Right ... garden rakes don't have legs, so theoretically I am responsible for the current resting place of this most desirable garden implement. Where did I leave it?
Lunchtime...
Can't stop! I've helped with the sheep (they are being shorn this weekend), had a coffee and a sandwich, and am back off to the Hump. One more hour's weeding and raking (oops - I can't find the metal one, so am making do with the plastic leaf rake) and the Hump will be ready for a ceremonial walk-through. Of course the purple and white honesty is flowering well in here, but precious little else! My pansy trays have arrived - yippee! Where shall I plant them all?
Beautiful Blues
Later, Apres-Gardening...
Yes - the Hump is cleared, from the driveway lawn to the row of pine trees. I've collected a bucketful of pine cones, and wheeled out five barrowfuls of rubbish. I've decided not to plant any pansies today - the chooks have been following me around (scratching and clucking), and I don't trust them to leave the new plants alone. Yippee! It's the weekend.
Saturday 9th October
It's grey and drizzly. Today I don't feel like gardening outside and getting damp. Hopeless! I'm stalling, drinking yet another cup of coffee, pretending that I need to write up my diary. This is not good enough! I don't really have anything interesting to say - except that we have a visiting peacock (possibly). Stephen thinks he's seen and heard one in the Hump! I took the camera for a silent walk-through just before - I haven't yet seen it.
Hmm... Peacocks... Very elegant strutting on the lawn during an open-garden afternoon, but what actually do they do? And need? Do they roost high in gum trees? And I guess peacocks have owners who would desire their return - unlike visiting midnight-crowing roosters... Do roosters and hens get on with peacocks? And what about the dog?
Right. Slurp coffee. Locate Gumboots. One quick look for the peacock AND the missing garden rake. Then work, work, work! This morning's garden requirements are simplified in three (or four?) words - Burn Rubbish and Glass-House.
Rhododendron President Roosevelt
Two and a Half Hours Later...
Seven barrowfuls of rubbish burnt. Glass-house seedlings (growing very nicely) watered. Wattle Woods stream re-started. No peacocks sighted, or heard - what does a peacock sound like?
On-Going List of Must-Do Items
- 1. Pot up Pittosporum seedlings. Do this EVERY DAY!
- 2. Take cuttings of favourite perennials.
- 3. Fill soil gaps in the Rock Garden with small stones found elsewhere.
- 4. Relocate large stones found elsewhere to the Dog Kennel Garden edge.
Sunday 10th October
Firstly - I do not need to buy any David Austin Benjamin Britten roses. Secondly - there was a gentle shrieking noise coming from the Hump last night - possibly the peacock? Thirdly - I am about to prick out a thousand assorted seedlings in the glass-house. Back soon.
The House Lawn
Later...
I have run out of containers (I usually use cat-food pottles) in my glass-house. My seedlings are going well, though. All the lawns have been mown, and the sheep are back, shorn. They look so funny.