Ouch...
Coffee Pot with Bee
Ouch! But you want to hear about the garden, right? Patches of clover weeds in the garden alongside the water race. Aargh! When did these weeds get so fat and healthy? That blasted trailer load of top-soil has a lot to answer for!
Thursday 13th April
I spied the clover on my early morning walk with the dogs. It had a profound (if delayed) effect on me when I got back from swimming - and coffee, and a cafe lunch, and Op Shopping, where I bought the grooviest asymmetrical platter decorated with blue triangular fish, an large cat ornament, and a collectable coffee pot with a bee on its lid... Stop right there. You want to hear about the garden, right?
Ouch - my hands are aching. There isn't much I can say about pulling out clover weeds. My hands get really sore. Some of the root systems are deep and strong.
I've dug out the patch of cream Bergenias by Middle Path, in preparation for the hedge trimmer (coming soon). There wouldn't have been enough room for the trimming machine. These are now planted near the big Honorine de Brabant rose (where lots of clover was). The word is 'was'.
Honorine de Brabant
I have grave doubts about some of Honorine's neighbours. Sir Benjamin Britten looks spindly and sick. He is supposed to 'add excitement to the garden with [his] striking, unusual colour'. Well he didn't do any of that this summer. Oops. Class Act is definitely not one, nor has it been for a while. What to do? Severely prune, and then let the roses recover (or not). There's no point holding on to sad, unhealthy shrubs.
Friday 14th April
Guess who didn't go to the big Easter nursery sale? Me. Guess why not? Just the usual - vet bills, a car that needed a new switch, too many cafe coffees, too many silly Op shop purchases (like my Ugg boots and yet another apres gardening shirt). How many apres gardening shirts does a gardener need? Depends on how many times a gardener goes apres-gardening, I guess.
Puddle!
And I have a garden which appears to be groaning at the seams - trees growing taller, shrubs fatter. So many plants from so many previous nursery sales, that's what!
Sharifa Asma Rose :- Sharifa Asma is the most fragrant of my David Austin roses.
It's been seriously raining again. Time to go for a swim and then sort through my photographs. Yesterday's autumn ones, versus late spring's rose ones (I am doing some web-gardening in the roses section). For example, Sharifa Asma is one of my most fragrant, prettiest pink roses. I need more photographs of this beauty.
Much Later...
Did I mention that my hands are sore? Well, now they're even 'sorer'. I've dealt to even more clover, patches of which I found luxuriating near Willow Bridge. I also cleared the large overhanging Gunnera leaves from the bridge, and made a start picking up all the yellow crab-apples from the paths. They are roly-poly large, and unsuspecting semi-old gardeners (me) can easily trip over them and roll an ankle.
Three Maples
I threw Winnie's ball maybe one hundred times. It got slimier and muddier, and became more and more difficult to find - Winnie (smart dog) always drops it in the garden right by me. At the end my hands were so sore that I'd taken off my gloves, and the mixture of dog slime and ball mud was quite soothing. Not necessarily marketable, though, as a remedy...
Ouch!
It's actually my thumbs and my pointy fingers, and the muscles around them which grasp and grab things that are the sorest. Glad to have cleared that up!