Is it time?
Unknown Species Rose
I've had that dreadful thought again - is it time? Time to stop garden expansions and start properly maintaining that which I've got. A distinctly sobering and aging thought. Hey - I'm not that old! And nor is my garden. So I reckon the best thing is to work a little more, be smarter, lay more weed suppressing stuff (damp newspaper, rotting hay)... And I could get up earlier in the mornings...
Tuesday 8th December
My cats are behaving badly. Tiger is leaping across the piano room and in and out of the open doors (makes a change from her crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon routine, lurking underneath chairs). Little Minimus is recovering after a bit of a cat-fight-fright earlier. She's curled up in the heated pet-bed upstairs - nothing seems to be damaged except her confidence.
Kaya the Cat :- Kaya doesn't have a cat page yet - but I'm working on it.
Kaya the new cat is miaowing at another door. Fluff-Fluff is looking nonchalant - which is very dangerous, and means he is dreadfully 'on guard' - Kaya beware! All downstairs cats are bored. Actually, they're hungry, as my 'Shape Up For Life' campaign (for humans and felines in the Moosey house) enters its seventh week.
- 'A good cat owner doesn't deliberately supersize her cats.'
- -Moosey Words of Wisdom.
So if I want docile in-house harmony I need to overfeed them? A good cat owner doesn't deliberately supersize her cats. I've explained to Tiger (now trying to prize open the pantry door) the rules of cat proportion. They require the width of the whiskers to be the width of the body, and no smaller. Tiger is definitely slimmer from side to side, but her white belly now sags further towards the floor. Oh well.
Summer Blues
Today I'm continuing the great Shrubbery dig. So I'll get started. And maybe today my three huge new (old) ramblers will be assigned to trees. I love growing roses up trees - witness the yellow Banksia which sits gorgeously in the big plum tree. And (in summer) I love my Lavender shrubs - must remember this...
Late Afternoon...
Phew! I've finished the dig, and I've planted more roses - there's room for two more on the fence line, and one more Pittosporum needs digging out. Tonight I'm singing in a Christmas Carols concert, and I'm extremely dirty, with lots of sandy soil in my hair. It's almost time to go apres-gardening - I've been working really well for hours and hours. And I'm planting properly. Good for me.
View From the Shrubbery
Wednesday 9th December
I've been late putting up my journal pages these last days - and I've not been taking many photographs. My mind is full of my new roses, choosing the 'correct' positions, not planting them too closely together, fortifying the soil (some is almost pure sand) and so on. I still feel a bit overawed, which is silly really.
Daughter of Moosey :- That's Mugsy the cat in the thumbnail - she's old but still with us. This cat has more than nine lives.
I miss Daughter of Moosey (who has gone back to East Timor) - she would have been a great weeding (and digging) help.
So when I've not been 'rosing' the Shrubbery I've been drifting about thinking. What I should be doing is drifting about trimming lawn edges. And, whenever I concentrate on one garden area, the weeds in another sense I'm distracted and grow twice as big. And twice as quickly. Aargh! How do they know to do this?
Unknown Rose
What to Do First?
So today - what to do first? Website? Water the patio pots? Pick some roses? Trim all visible house lawn edges? Compile and mail out the Moosey newsletter for (eek!) last month? Write to my friends who must think me sooooooooo slack, though I honestly think about them lots and lots?
Telepathy would be such a useful skill for a busy gardener. And successful visualisation - seeing the new Agaves planted, then popping out to the orchard and finding it is indeed so...
Much Later...
I have been spectacularly sensible today. I've planted the last three Pittosporums (evicted from the Shrubbery) behind the pond, using lots of water, compost, and stomping. I found a huge tree against which to plant Seagull the rambler. I planted one more old fashioned rose. Then I trimmed the edges of the Septic Tank Garden.
After a rather delightful Christmas lunch date with my walking group I filled the back of my car with seven bags of smelly horse manure. I dumped it all onto the Shrubbery extension, and covered it up with grass clippings and soil (there was rather a blow-fly frenzy).
Rustic Bench with Roses
I finished the day in the water race clearing out rubbish which had jammed by the waterwheel. Some kind soul (hmm...) has been trimming pine trees upstream and letting the prunings float off his (or her) property. Guess what? They get jammed underneath downstream bridges (and waterwheels) in my garden...