Skip to main content

Weeds, weeds, rabbits and weeds


It's that time of year when a time-poor gardener wishes that the plants would grow at least half as fast as the grass and the weeds. And Bertie Baggins wonders what a bucket is doing in a wheel-barrow ... two reasons - one is to avoid dangling chains of poo strung together with indigestible lengths of weed that perplex a pup who can't quite reach to tug them out and the other is that the weeder handle has been chewed enough times already.




Four-legged-friend meanwhile decides to be helpful and starts pulling out the daffodil leaves ... which isn't actually helpful because they had been left to go brown because we want the daffodils to flower again next year. But Four-legged-friend is not aware of the need for photosynthesis and putting strength back into the bulb and it's a good game and he's only copying what I'm doing. Nobody told him that daffodils aren't weeds. Or that what he is pulling at is a daffodil. Or what a weed is.




While Four-legged-friend attempts his version of garden destruction, I reflect that all the gardeners I know have complained about the weather this winter-past and the devastation it has wreaked on their gardens. The frosts were a step too far for the hedge that once enclosed an end of the vegetable patch and has been suffering from rosemary bush die-back - tomorrow it will have to go ... whether 'tomorrow' is tomorrow or another day's tomorrow depends on how the Geography GCSE revision goes - exam on Tuesday, daughter needing help. Tomorrow.




Sadly there is more death and decay and general demonstration of my brand of garden-after-all-the-other-jobs-have-been-done gardening -

deceased honeysuckle RIP (Replace It Pronto ... but probably not very 'pronto') 




we've-been-sitting-here-all-week tomatoes and geraniums and might die of thirst soon





just-how-big-do-you-want-me-to-grow-before-you-notice-and-chop-me-down rhubarb flowers





the strawberry patch that once upon a time was a strawberry patch before the rabbits found it and decided that strawberry plants are good for breakfast




and the return of my these scaly little critters on the grape-vine ... which are apparently a sign of neglect - oops!




'Tomorrow' could be busy!

After an exhausting day of lying in the sun - guarding the wheel barrow and watching me achieving much less than I had planned in the garden while constructing a to-do list in my head that is so long that things will be forgotten ... which will have the advantage of making the list more manageable, but will then be remembered and have to be done at a later tomorrow -




Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins curled up together - in the big crate; the only crate that still has a bit of carpet ...





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Walking, wondering and not walking at all

We all walk. I walk every day. I also lie. I don't walk every day, as in I don't take the dogs for a walk every day. Poor boys, in this season of tax returns and desperate seeking of extra work and working to pay the tax bill, they are the losers. Four-legged-friend was looking distinctly skinny in his hind legs, when I brushed his coat while he wolfed down his supper this evening (he tries to eat the brush if I take it near him at any other time, so meal times have become grooming times). Oddly, I lose out on the walking too, but this fails to have the same effect on my 'skinniness'... Anyway, we all walk. We walked on Christmas day - Littlest and I walked at the weekend - Slowly. Time to appreciate the trees. Time to encourage the smelly boys into the freezing water. Time for the sun to go down. Time to walk very, very slowly - Littlest's finger phone was engaged throughout in deep discussion with the zoo warden - da...