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The Saturday Gardening Frenzy

 With the dry, warm and sunny weather conditions continuing, I was out at 8.30 this morning determined to build on yesterday’s progress and crack on with more gardening before Arctic and/or flood conditions return next week. Are Arctic and/or flood conditions due next week? Who knows? Weather does what it wants to do regardless of the often contrary predictions of the Met Office and BBC Weather. 

Anyway, what I did today includes: 

…weeding beneath the hornbeam hedge

There was a lot of rampant grass creeping upwards and it looked messy. I do not like mess, so I set about tidying up. Whilst this was occurring, His Lordship Malarkey mowed the lawn, so by the time we reached break time of tea/coffee/hot cross buns, the state of play was ‘tidier than before.’ 

I did a bit of pruning of the hawthorn hedge, mostly out of spite because it thwacked me in the face a couple of times whilst weeding the edges of the hornbeam, and hawthorn thorns are absolute bloody bastards. 

I then moved onto more gentle occupations, like sowing some more seeds: dahlia, lobelia, two sorts of marigolds, runner beans, French beans, beetroot, another tray of basil, some other flowers that I can’t remember because I am in the kitchen writing this and they are in the greenhouse at the other end of the garden and I can’t be arsed to go and look. The greenhouse is filling up nicely…

I potted on the tomatoes (cherry and salad), along with the chives and the first lot of basil. 

Then I put the sweet peas in pots in the courtyard, protected by wire from the Bantam Four until the sweet peas can fend for themselves…

And THEN, I took the vegetable peas to the new no dig bed and I planted them out, too! 

Andy had already installed a perimeter fence. I’m going to put net over the hoops of the peas because although the fence will stop the Bantam Four, it won’t stop the effing pigeons who will likely adore a tender pea shoot or two.


The hops are starting to do their twirly dance so I rigged up some tensioned twine for them to start climbing up. They are about ten inches tall at the moment and looking mighty fine! 

Also looking mighty fine are Edith and Sidney. Here they are, looking casual…
They are also looking a bit mucky, because they continue to excavate their tunnel which currently extends to just over 80 cms in length. I do not know where they are planning on going with this tunnel, but I do hope they remember to come back. 

The garden is looking very pretty today. Lots of flowers bursting out in the sunshine.



It’s been a lovely couple of days. Productive, relaxing, mindful and creative. To quote my favourite gardening saying - ‘Off into the garden I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.’ 

Comments

Anonymous said…
John Muir. Although he used forest instead of garden
KJ
16 April 2022 at 20:40
Denise said…
I’ve seen various versions of this, KJ, substituting the word ‘forest’ for other places like ocean, mountain, garden, river etc. Reflecting, I suppose, the differing spaces each of us choose to go to find our souls. Rather nice, I think.
17 April 2022 at 08:45
Anonymous said…
Agreed! I gave some serious greenhouse envy going on. Your greenhouse is just lovely. We have to redo our drip system today. We are arranging our garden a bit and need to make sure water is actually going where it is suppose to go and not wasted. The joy of living on in a land of little rain.
KJ
17 April 2022 at 14:21
Denise said…
KJ, lack of water is not generally a problem here. But we still have some water butts to save for dry times. I love our greenhouse. Of course, what I could do with is another one!
17 April 2022 at 16:47
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