Summer in the garden...
I love summer in the garden - the bright flower colours, the beautiful shady trees, the pond and the water race. But I forget how hot and sticky it can be trying to actually do some gardening in mid-summer. Eek! Too hot!
Am having the silliest of gardening days. OK, so it's pretty hot, but there's intermittent cloud-cover. I go outside to do some weeding by the Herb Spiral. The cricket radio is perched on a brick, first day of the 2nd test match against Bangladesh.
Speckles the stray
Stop-Go gardening...
Then the clouds disappear, and after about thirty minutes I get too hot. I pick up the radio and come inside, get a drink, cool down. Then I get all keen again, and back outside I go. Etc. Etc. Four times so far today. I am getting somewhere, in a stuttering, stop-go sort of way. But hey! I'm having fun, and my new no-alcohol beer is going down a treat.
Later...
And there I went again! But I've finished clearing the path to the woodshed, and dragged out more messy pieces of dead rambling rose. Then I went over to the cottage and sat with Minimus the cottage cat to eat cherries. Speckles the stray arrived, so both cats had an early meal, and I took some photographs of my cat visitor. No chin tickles, though. Thank you, Minimus, for being so kind to him. No growling, not even a hiss. Darling Minimus!
Minimus on the Cottage Verandah
I'm glad I did a bit of work today. Too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry to go gardening? I need to tough it out, I reckon.
Spiky Pink Dahlias
A few hot days later...
Hmm... Maybe not. I've been busy hiding away from the sun. Yesterday went for a forest-bush day walk - had a wonderful time. The children played hide-and-seek in the Dracophyllums and swam in the Craigieburn river. We only met four other people, smiley mountain bikers enjoying being out on the trail. Life is good, in shorts and tramping boots, with lots of cool clear water. And lots of shade!
Came home to cook the evening meal - snuck out to dig some potatoes from my oh so weedy potato patch. Daughter managed to find me. Was soooo embarrassed. Started to bluster excuses. 'Sorry about the weeds, but... but... '. But what? My potato patch looked totally forlorn. And the weeds were happily setting seed - this is simply poor garden management. So today I'm off outside to pull them out.
Later...
All done. Haven't done the thistles properly - I've just pulled the stalks out, so the runners underneath will still be there. The whole of the Hump Garden (wherein lies my potato patch) is a bit overgrown. I blame myself for adding so much wonderful organic matter (horse manure, mulch, and so on) to the soil. Everything grows fat, wide, and tall, very quickly - including (obviously) the weeds.