Free-Spirited...
Pretty Gladiolus in Flower
These last few days the weather has been very free-spirited, with huge variations in temperatures. No wonder natural gardeners, who are deeply in harmony with the weather, are so random. Ha! We have the perfect excuse.
Hail, heat, cold...
One day the garden gets soaked with rain and hail. The spouting around the house overflows, the patios start to flood. Next day it's thirty degrees (Celsius) - a dry, lingering heat, with brilliant sunshine. Way too hot for me to garden happily. Then blow me down (?) if a southerly blows in, and the temperature drops in a couple of hours to single digits. Off with the cotton shirt and gardening shorts, on with the merino socks and warm woolly jersey.
Bed time is just as varied. One night it's just a sheet, unable to sleep properly, while Minimus the cat stays outside underneath the cottage. The next it's two down quilts, oh so cosy, with Minimus snuggled in between them. And the wool crochet blanket on stand-by, just in case.
I've tried my best, but getting hailed on while trying to clear the Hump Path was rather rude. Since then the only real gardening I've done is to clean up another Phormium. Aargh! There always seems to be another Phormium to clean up.
Singing (Bach and Mozart), getting music ready for my choir, and watching cricket on TV (I never usually watch the cricket on TV) have consumed my last few days. I'ver stayed indoors a lot. Oops. And today we are going swimming, then visiting family. But I will have time to get back to the garden. I really must!
Much later...
Oh yes. I sat down in the Hump Garden and weeded in the new garden area while Non-Gardening Partner tractored in bucketfuls of path mulch. I thought about how sensible it is to weed before weed flowers set seed. I think I was pulling out healthy clumps of the so-called Deadly Nightshade.
Path Mulch
Then I moved myself along to a proper path to get it ready for mulch. Had to widen it, and dug out a large patch of floppy (and oddly non-flowering) orange Crososmas - weeds in their own right, these! Will replant them further into the sun.
So what happened to the four seasons gardener?
I have asked this question before. From time to time she seems to disappear. If there's a good weather reason, then that's OK. But really - she jolly well can do better.