Today, after returning from church on what was a gloriously sunny day, I felt compelled to venture out into the garden. The feeling of getting out there was multifarious since a lot needs to get done and also, the joy of sunshine meant I wanted to be out there in it. I ate my lunch in the garden reading a book and then began in earnest. The joy of our 100foot garden is its beauty, privacy, feeling of seclusion and ever changing plant growth but it certainly is a demanding beast which I am afraid to say I have neglected in recent times, being away most of the holiday and pretty much having been out every weekend since.
You can never just go into the garden to complete a quick task- once there, a sense of obligation and a yearning to keep taming, keep pruning, keep weeding, just one foot more, just head over for that rose bush, takes over. I started by pruning back an irritating tree from my neighbour's- it has planted a small version in my garden too which is a bit too thick to completely demolish with my trusty secateurs. Doing this, I noticed that the brambles and ivy were taking over the fence so they had to be vanquished and the underside of the fern tree, which I had recently ruthlessly attacked, still held a lot of dead brown twiggage. Moving on, the mallow, which I had also pruned back, since it sprawls over onto the lawn in a most ungainly fashion due to lack of pruning for years or a warped branch, also needed a lot of brown foliage and a lot more pruning. As always, when tackling this large raised side-bed, I discovered a lot of nettles and bramble evil going on under the cover of more benign plants, so this involved climbing into the thick of it and trying to follow the labyrinthine trails of ivy, brambles etc to try and find the source.
Other unwieldly shrubs which had also escaped from the confines of the brick wall needed similarly to be usurped in their bids for supremacy and then trying to tackle a rather large leafy bush with an absolute myriad of dry twigs on its undercarriage. More bramble maze trails to conquer and cutting back roses galore. I do worry that I am damaging these shrubs since I don't know if I should be ruthlessly pruning them as I do. Have I cut them back too far?
Over to the arch, I discovered the overladen pear-tree had shed a load of pears yet they were still unripe and were being attacked by a particularly virulent rose-bush who I reduced along with some enthusiastic honeysuckle.
A brief stop to pick a trug full of pears which I left on the lawn to supplement later.
Yet more firm yanking up of a multitude of young brambles and ivy which seemed to have trailed all over the lawn, they put up a good fight, attacking me on all fronts. Bindweed had entwined a whole rosebush and fennel plant which I cut down.
Once this was abandoned after a excursion beneath a prickly bush to find more brambles, I could have left it there but instead, headed to my sadly abandoned vegetable bed from last Summer- overgrown in a dense layer of wispy weeds, brambles and still reclining leek seed heads.
In the meantime, I visited my neighbour to borrow her wheelie-bin as mine was crammed full of spiky foliage.
There was a brief interval when CBC returned from a 160Km cycle race to drink tea with him and to hang up another load of washing.
Yet more hacking back and I decided to do what I had first intended... to plant leek plants into trays and pots. I still have a hankering hope that we might somehow find a house before the leeks are ready so I don't want to leave them in the ground. I feel rather guilty since we discovered back in March that one of the leek heads all seemed to have germinated. We planted the 'head' in a pot and forgot about it. Fast forward to know and about 100 leek plants with tightly wound roots reside in the pot and desperately needed to be planted. I hadn't been able to do so until I'd bought some compost.
Another hour was spent planting about 40 leek plants into various trays and pots which involved evicting some very miffed weeds who had been enjoying their squatting status. I have high hopes for them. I hasten to add that there are still about 60 plants still waiting in the original put. I will have to try and clear the veg bed and plant them soon.
The two cumbersome wheelies had to be taken outside since thankfully it is BIN DAY tomorrow and I noticed that the deadly nightshade which has grown around the lamp-post outside our house has grown rampantly and was around knee height so that had to be cut back.
Back to the garden and the mess from potting the leeks had to be cleared up, hands washed and washing on various horses and rotary drier had to be collected and taken in. It was dark by this point. Inside, I shed my grimy garments and took off clothes from clothes horses so others could be hung and then into the shower.
I couldn't believe that I had been out in the garden for around 6hours. It really does become an addiction of 'just one more'. But it is an interminable task. As usual, my stomach and groin muscles are rather painful due to the amount of effort required to yank stubborn ivy and brambles and aching RSI wrists but such a satisfactory feeling to have spent the good of the day out there.
If you have made it to the end of that rather laboriously written account, very well done to you!
What's your approach to gardening?
xx