Ready for Christmas?

Getting the garden ready for Christmas. SO many things to do. And the carol singing season (clean fingernails, hair brushed, no vegetation or spiders therein) in full choral glory. One cannot immerse self in horse manure (AKA Eau de Jardin) minutes before donning black dress and red scarf, and zooming off into town to serenade people. Perhaps a sign of getting - ahem - older? Tarting up for public consumption takes a bit longer...

 I have swept the patio...
The Patio Table

Saturday 23rd December

It does take me ages to load, barrow, and spread a bag of horse manure anyway. If the destination is anywhere near the pond we have to throw a few dog sticks. But first we have to find a branch and break it up. This is THE most exciting thing for dogs. The finding (ooo goodie) and then the stick snapping noise. YEAH!

Would it work if I wrote out a list? Probably not. Lists at Christmas time tend to be ignored.

Later...

I sang my lunchtime carols, clean fingernails and all. Then I put on the hoses and collected a barrowful of rose dead-heads, etc. from the Allotment Garden. I chopped off the huge Crambe corfigolia stalks. The leaves smell like cabbages. This showy spring perennial is a favourite of mine, as is Atriplex - Red Orach. Hugs to the friend and gardener who gave me my first six puny seedlings. Loooooove it!

Sunday 24th December

This morning I have a two hour window before zooming off to sing in the city, on the tram. The plan is to finish clearing the garden area by the washing line. I've already sawn down some smallish Pittosporums, and I need to spread horse manure on the cleared soil. Also - if this works - the annual cornflowers and echiums that I've pulled out can be cut up for self-seeding mulch.

 Musical roses.
Rhapsody in Blue Roses

And just maybe - maybe (maybe, but I so often get this wrong) - this could be a suitable location for roses. A huge plum tree came down last autumn, and so there is much more space and light. Naturally one immediately thinks of roses, hee hee...

Later...

I am back in black, so to speak, ready for the last big Carols Sing-Out. Merry Christmas to my garden, which is definitely not ready for anything. So what's on the menu for Christmas day? Lots of Christmas weeding, trimming edges, supervising the lawn mower, spreading horse manure, maybe even digging the fence posts in and creating the dog fence extension. Oh, and throwing frisbees and sticks for the dogs, making them think they are doing something magical every time we trundle across the property with the wheelbarrow. Life is better lived as an illusion, anyway!

 Sorry about Tiger being upside down!
Me and the Cats and the Dogs

Merry Christmas to all my friends and their dogs, cats, gardens...