Making groovy spring connections...
Creamy-White Camellia
I've started off September (my spring month) scrambling around the garden making groovy connections with spring things. I've said hello to the daffodils and smiled at every blossom tree. I've verbally encouraged the new Trilliums, and thanked all the red rhododendrons for being in flower nice and early.
Just now I heard myself shouting 'You're beautiful!' to an unsuspecting white flowering Camellia. Poor thing!
Saturday 1st September
As well as bellowing at my shrubs I've worked tirelessly in Middle Garden, being soooooooo good! All the little self-sown forget-me-nots and foxgloves in the path have been carefully transplanted into clearings in the garden. And I've made a rip-it-all-out decision - the creeping orange Libertia has gone, its best specimens crammed into an RIP pot.
Libertia :- Libertia is often used in trendy mass foliage plantings around new houses. The garden designers must know something I don't!
This plant is so annoying! It should be a brilliant foliage performer, but not in my garden, where it prefers to occupy at the rate of three spikes per square metre.
Or less, if I enrich the soil, when it pops up one spike here, one spike way over there... I need Libertia to make, unassisted, a brilliantly bold orange spiky mass planting. There! Decision justified.
Daffodils in the Stumpy Garden
Sunday 2nd September
+2The second morning of spring started at dawn, me sitting in bed with a cup of tea writing a very important gardening list - but aren't they all? Percy the ginger cat had woken me up leaping noisily through the cottage window and chirping in his 'I've caught a mouse and here it is' voice. Actually he hadn't, but a cottage sleeper understands instinctively this is not a good way to wake up.
Little Mac the Cat
What's On The List?
So what's on my precious list? Aha! Getting more woodchips, for one, and laying them on Middle Path, cleared and prepared just yesterday. I'm off to do just that.
Later...
Ha! I'm back inside for lunch. But, deftly choosing to be random taskwise, I've been weeding the vegetable garden, helped by Little Mac, who is still little, but calling her 'Mac the kitten' needs to stop (she's nine months old).
I've found some self-sown lettuce seedlings - more lettuces! Aargh! Too many! But they're bigger than the ones in the glasshouse, so I'm transplanting them into a pot for the patio. And the hoses are on, which is nice, so I can water some of my recently planted roses. And now - vroom! I'm off back outside.
Much Later...
I've done more weeding, this time over in the Stumpy (AKA Willow Tree) Garden, where the daffodils are going crazy. The rhododendrons in this garden are mid-season, so there are no flowers as yet. But the hostas are up, and the tree peony has fresh new shoots. The Willow stump is sitting there, treehouse-less. Now that was such a good idea of mine...
PInk Camellia Shrub
Eek! Just when I think I've finished my work, Non-Gardening Partner has leapt upon the lawn mower - I can hear him. Blast! This means I have to move things off the lawn, things like garden benches and concrete cricketers, for the sake of garden harmony. Blast! My legs and knees have slowed right down.
Red Trillium with Pine Pollen
But I love the lawns being freshly mown (first mow since winter) and of course I wouldn't dare moan - which rhymes with mown, hee hee. In fact, there is still more gardening in me today, though perhaps the weeding fingers could have a bit of a break.
Plants For Roast Dinners
I have some exciting news - my plantsman friend has given me a skunk cabbage plant (Lysichiton americanus, since he always labels his gifts properly). There'll be gardeners who yawn with boredom at this plant, but skunk cabbages are not common in New Zealand (and we don't have any skunks, either). My last one got run over by Non-Gardening Partner before it had a chance to leave its pot. Better luck this time!
This same friend gives me lots of his reject treasures - like variegated Azaleas, strange Echiums (wildpretii 'Tower of Jewels') and deep maroon red trilliums that he breeds himself. Beautiful! And I take him over hot roast dinners. It's a brilliant arrangement, and I hope my standard of cooking is equal to his plant-breeding.