gardening

Best Day of the Week!

/ Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes / 1 Comment
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Image by Kerstin Riemer from Pixabay

 

The sun was shining one day last week, and an air of springtime was everywhere I looked, so I found myself wandering around the garden, ending up in my potting shed, checking how much potting compost I will need once I start the marathon repotting of my bonsai in the next few weeks.

It was good to be out of doors so I made the most of it, trying not to wince at the extent of the work that desperately needs doing.

Last year I wasn’t a very good gardener, as editing my WIP and getting it ready to launch took up every waking hour, and many jobs were neglected. This year I intend to be on top of things, well, as much as I am able anyway. There are some jobs that might defeat me, but time will tell.

Most of these jobs involve some serious pruning, as my garden resembles a jungle, something that doubtless will become worse once the growing season gets underway.

Cutting the soaking wet, overgrown and matted grass may well kill me once I get to it, but there is no one else. I really would like a low maintenance garden, but dreaming won’t get one, so must cope somehow.

I have also booked a ride to the garden centre to order the wooden slats to replace my bonsai display shelves. I am also determined to repaint the walls in my yard as they are worse than grubby. Everything grows like crazy around here, including the weeds and the mould!

Just being outside in the fresh air was wonderful, filling me up with so many good intentions and the joy of looking forward to doing something creative, and muddy…

 

©Jaye Marie 2020

 

AWOL in the garden…

/ Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes / 3 Comments

 

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The grass in my garden seems to get longer every time I look at it and really needs cutting. It hasn’t exactly been gardening weather lately and I have been tied up trying to be a creative bunny. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The truth sounds so horrible, I refuse to believe it, but I might just be getting too old!

So, I tell myself, and others, that I have to wait for the grass to dry and they seem to believe me. It does sound feasible. But the guilt was starting to get to me, along with the knowledge that if I left it much longer, (see what I did there?) it would be so hard to cut.

Fed up with all the excuses, I grasped the nettle and got the mower out. The grass was soaking wet, something I didn’t understand as it hadn’t rained for days. It has been a bit misty though, so that might have something to do with it.

Every few feet, I have to turn the mower over to remove the wads of wet grass that are jamming up the works. Much later, when I had assaulted the entire lawn, there were these piles of sodden grass at strategic places all over the place!

 

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I feel reasonably proud of my achievements despite all the aches and pains, and several years younger, although this might have been wishful thinking. In my new role as a sprightly gardener…I decided to plant my new apple tree. This is a very special tree, with two different kinds of apples on it. I had the thought to have my own apple tree a few weeks ago, something I have never wanted before, and when I saw a picture of this one, I knew it had my name on it.

Although at just four feet high, I might have to wait a while to see any!

 

 

The Perils of Gardening!

/ Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes / 14 Comments

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I always thought gardening was supposed to be a therapeutic occupation, soothing and good for the soul, that sort of thing and in the past, I have enjoyed the process.

Until I moved to Hampshire that is, everything grows wild down here and fast!

I have written about our herculean efforts to trim the mammoth hedge that runs down the length of our garden before and what happened yesterday was yet another battle. After another of our mad, frenzied bursts of ‘we will tame you and bring you into line’ sessions, we had chopped and trimmed everything that even hinted at being unruly, until we had a mountain of garden waste.

It was a good job done. Hedges and undergrowth were now of manageable proportions and looking less like an army of giant triffids was hell bent on reaching our back door.

But what on earth were we supposed to do with such a huge mountain? We had a garden waste collection bag, but what we could stuff in there wouldn’t diminish the huge pile in the middle of the lawn in a month of Sundays.

Then we remembered what we had to do last time. (yes, we had been here before, and swore never to let it get out of control again!)

We had piled as much as we could onto an old bed sheet and rammed it into the back of the car, once the seats had been lowered and this had worked really well.

This time, it took four trips to our local waste depot, but at least we got rid of it all. That was when we stopped for a cuppa and I surveyed the damage. There were three of us that day, but I was the only one bleeding. Most of the pruning chopping involved a thorn bush along with the proverbial brambles thrown in for good measure, and they hate me! They had fought back bravely, and my arm was a bloody mess, having suffered the brunt of the attack. I always wear strong gardening gloves, but maybe I should get some that reach my elbows!

Sometimes I wonder why we should be trying to reclaim what we consider to be ours. That maybe we don’t have the right, the garden is nature’s domain after all.

I usually love the wildness of Nature, just not in my own backyard, but I am weakening. I am getting too old to battle the brambles so I might have to settle for a wilderness I can look at through the window!