Record every detail!
Important Garden Make-Over Accessory
Again I have too much to say, and so have defiantly started a new page. The sun is low in the sky, the garden is almost asleep - nothing much is really happening to write about. So do I take the hint? No! I am back from a routine session, and so I desperately wish to record every detail! Here goes...
Later on Sunday (26th June)...
The house patio gardens are almost organised! I've trimmed back the catmint and the blue perennial convolvulus, dug out two fountain grasses which were getting too large, trimmed the bronze fennel (oops - it will have seeded everywhere) and the Erigeron daisies (oops - semi-banned, not to be propagated etc.).
I have also swept the patio and cleared up my mess. The emerging spring bulbs will now be greeted by light - and air - and hopefully spring sunshine!
I've weeded around the castle, where the hostas have naturally gone dormant but the blue Corydalis foliage is showing. I love it when I do small scale things and actually take notice of plants - I feel more like a real, sensible gardener, and in my journal I am a responsible chronicler (instead of a raver and twitterer about nothing).
Cat and Dog Noses
Much Mulch...
The designer of my new rose avenue archways (hee hee) is my most favourite person - he is allowing me to use lots of broken bales of messy hay from the hay barn for mulch. This means I have a much shorter wheelbarrow trip. I am now off to collect some, and place it lovingly on the gardens over the water race. Then I am going to write out a second new climbing roses list. A couple of modern climbers are possibly allowed - as long as they are fragrant and don't need spraying. It's like the second ballot in an election! Hee hee! I might even put them in a spreadsheet!
Flax Trio
Tuesday 28th June
I have disgraced myself, too - I just couldn't resist - I have purchased the first climbing roses for the first of the thirteen rose arches. The inaugural pair are not dripping with ancient rose history at all. You've probably guessed - I bought them cheaply at the supermarket! Aargh! So I have two budget Uetersen roses (my last version of this richly coloured rose has never ever climbed). So they are justified. Plantswomen and rosarians will despair.
The Climbing Rose Uetersen
Blasted work! And work again today! I intend to zoom home to spend my lunch hours pottering in the rest of the house gardens.
Thursday 30th June
This is the first day this week I've been able to get garden-down-and-dirty. I've been spreading more horse-poos, newspaper and old lucerne hay mulch over the Stables extension garden. Some time soon I have to tackle the perennial grass-weed in here, too. I've mass planted my irises near the driveway, without first weeding the ground properly. Eek! My irises will probably be embraced and slowly strangled by nasty grass roots and yarrow runners.
Bags of Manure:- Free horse manure means lots of free weeds.
And, speaking of the bags of horse-poos (which I always pick up and load into my car boot, driving past the horse farm each day) - a mature friend needed to borrow my car this morning. It turned into quite an odiferous experience - the car heater was on full blast (she couldn't work out how to turn it off), and bags of fresh horse-poos (which are now safely on my garden) were in the car boot, temporarily forgotten. Hot, fragrant swirls of a very basic farmyard fragrance filled the car as she drove grimly around. Oops!
That winter sun up there is so feeble - but at least it's up there! There's blue sky and sunshine cloaking the Stables Garden seat - I'm off to sit and read and be jolly thankful that I don't live somewhere where there is no sun at all in winter. So there!
Later...
I am back from the supermarket - with loads of lovely cat food for Smoocher and a Sarah Bernhart peony rose! Ha! I will put it in the new rose garden behind the Willow tree. Now it's gone dark and cold, and I am burning the Wattle Woods path edging logs in the house log-burner - as one does, one week after the winter solstice!