Grateful
It's the day after the 'big rain', when just over 30mm (over 1 inch) fell gently, carefully, and very, very vertically. The garden is soooo grateful - I can sense this. Well, maybe I'm sensing the gratefulness of the gardener. She has been madly watering with her tiddly little hoses, pumping water from the irrigation pond twelve hours each day, soaking one area for three hours, then moving the hoses along, as well as filling buckets with water for the roses and little Maple trees. Yes, yes, we get the picture...
Crabapple by House
Today has been quite stormy, with small droppings of hail, more rain, and some rather fresh wind. So the dogs and I have gone for minimal walks. There has been no gardening. But that's OK.
Pond Cottage and Blossom
Lamb Report : all the lambs are happily bouncing around. Tough little things! Their mother ewes are thick with wool (shearing in two weeks), and not very weather wise. More rhododendrons are flowering now, plus the last of the flowering cherry trees (the wind didn't quite blow down all the fluffy fat blossom). And the dogwoods seem to be OK. I loooooove dogwoods!
Such interesting shaped flowers (bracts), and not too much bruising or battering. Eddie's White Wonder is the coolest lime green, Cherokee Sunset is old-rose pink. I can't identify the variety in the Island Bed - it's very beautifully variegated, with off-white bracts. And to think that I only bought Dogwoods because I liked dogs! Just as well they weren't called 'Goatwoods', hee hee.
Saturday 13th October
It's been a relaxing garden day, with no weather to speak of. I planted a newly donated yellow rose (named after Sir Donald Beavan), more wee Pittosporums, and more Agapanthus in the new Hump Garden. I finished laying logs along its lawn edge. Nothing like edges to make a garden (and its gardener) seem well-organised. I weeded the 'lawn' and filled in some scoopy bits. The plan is to sow the rest of my grass seed here.
The Hump Gardens
Then I took myself and my tools over to the water race and did small-scale weeding near the variegated Arundo. This plant puzzles me - the older stems get so scruffy, and I wonder if an ornamental gardener (like me) should chop them off. Not sure. Used my squirty weed spray on the dandelions. Chopped out quite a lot of self-sown Pittosporums, tidied dead leaves off the Astelias, then took photographs of the Dogwoods. Lovely trees.
Scabious
Sunday 14th October
Good morning, garden. You look refreshed after the rain. And nothing important (?) has been blown sideways. So what should I do first? The answer is obvious - put on my gardening clothes. The apres-gardening lounge-around look at 8:30 am is not appropriate. And my Ugg boots are definitely not allowed to be worn outside (oops - have already taken dogs and Buster the cat for a wee walk, during which I stepped delicately into garden to pull out some parachute weeds).
Later...
Parts of the driveway lawn are almost ready for new grass seed, and I've bought a trailer full of 'lawn construction mix', which I hope will be weed free. Alas, nothing from the landscapers usually is - topsoil I bought a few years ago was riddled with annual nettles and fat hen.
I spent the last couple of hours pricking out seedlings in the glass-house, where this spring's production seems to be going really well. I have lots of annual flowers - am looking forward to the Scabious, having never grown these before. Daughter gave me plants last spring, and they are still growing well in the patio garden. So I guess they are perennials? The zuchini have sprouted, as have three tiddley tomatoes - Chef's Choice Orange, according to the label. Use by date January 2016 - fooled them, hee hee!
Crabapple Ballerina
I've also planted pots of daffodils (whose flowering is over) into the new Hump garden around the big heart-shaped stump (so I remember where they are). This seems sensible. and they can die off gracefully here. Honestly, they shouldn't even notice their change of circumstances.