What sort of day is it?

 The cats are fascinated by bees.
Bee on a Geranium

What sort of day is it? A 'Busy as a Bee' day, where I bumble around doing lots of this and that? Maybe - but then I buzz off in a totally different direction to collect more stones. I am re-building a little stone retaining wall by the water, in the Dog-Path Garden.

And so, in the blink of a gardening eye, it turns into a stone wall building day. I love building stone walls. It is much more fun than weeding, or collecting rubbish for the bonfire, or pulling out Forget-Me-Nots. Building a wall is visually exciting, satisfying in its 'modularity', and mentally creative. Ask Winston Churchill!

For me it's all about choosing just the right shape, laying it just so, building the edge upwards at just the right angle, shovelling in just enough fill behind the wall, and so on. River stones are found naturally on my property. I enjoy the gathering, and the soft handling (the stones are smooth). And the look! Yeay!

 Euphorbias are so pretty at this time of the year.
One of My Stone Walls

Today has also been 'Trump Day'. Our media has been 'tabloiding' him for weeks now, and I'm very wary of buying into the hype. Still, Donald Trump seems to me to be a profoundly odd choice for President of the United States. Scare-mongers might use stronger adjectives, but I am not one of those. I don't look at my swathes of Agapanthus and mutter grim warnings as to how they'll take over and ruin the garden.

 She keeps peeping into the camera.
Silly Buster!

Thursday 10th November

Today (so far) has been a 'Start Pulling out the Forget-Me-Nots Day' - not a good day to wear woollen socks, which get covered in sticky biddi-bids. It's not a task that can be finished with a grand sweep through the garden, either. Because some of these pretty plants are more juvenile than others, and their little blue flowers are still forming.

Friday 11th November

I've been working hard - until the rain became too drippy. I've moved seedlings out of the glasshouse, potted up more lettuces, and planted pink Lavateras and blue Cornflowers in the patio garden. The idea is to try and fill any mid-border forget-me-not gaps with flowering annuals. Seems sensible.

Then a wee wander with the camera, followed by inquisitive Buster the black cat, who kept busting into the photographs. More and more roses are flowering, including the big rugosas (hello, Agnes). I haven't seen any aphids on the house roses as yet, but aargh! Dublin Bay, silly rose, has just a few speckles of rust on its leaves. This rose is a shocker for rust, and I do wonder why I put up with it. And rust never sleeps, and ever creeps! I need to sort out the fungus spray ASAP. Ingrid Bergmann is a much nicer red.

Right. I don't care if it's still raining - my little wall needs another stone row, and I need to dump more horse manure in its garden. Hopefully I've removed all the clover weeds and enough of the creeping Marjoram ground cover, so that the roses here (Benjamin Britten and Class Act) will show their thanks in the appropriate way. I also have a bag of daffodil bulbs which I could plant near the stone edge.

Three Hours Later...

I've removed three barrowfuls of Forget-Me-Nots and Alkanet (not the roots, oh no) from the Gardens around the Pond Paddock. I've also pulled up many sticky stems of the weed Cleavers, again leaving behind roots. Better this than let it spread and seed, I guess. I also did some weeding around the Deodar hedge near the road (the Deodars are only knee-high).

 Finished!
The New Stone Wall

And then I finished my stone wall. Yeay! It's been drizzling all the while, but I've enjoyed being busy.