Gardening to me is fun, hard work, rewarding, mindful, trial and error and yes, sometimes it is just plainly frustrating.
For example, when I put in all those plants one of my allotment neighbours gifted me in Autumn, my plot looked pretty full and lush. But now, come March, most of that lushness has turned into bare muddiness. That workable crumbly soil of the potato bed has morphed into, well, not concrete exactly, but to something resembling waterlogged cement. And it has rained so much and so hard these past months that my young plants are up to their necks in mud, and some of them have been swamped altogether. And don't start me on that awful sequence of storms!
It has made me think hard about my paths. Will I use grassed ones ( as I had planned), or shall I change to bark? I have had bark paths in my old garden, and the advantage is water will quickly drain. The disadvantage is little critters will drag the bark down into the soil (enriching it, so that's good!), so bark will have to be bought and redone year after year. Grass is cheaper.
Still, it will not be necessary to get a mower, nor to mowe every week.
Decisions, decisions.
Still. The obelisks are up. And so are the 5 pallets. I've repurposed them to compostheap receptables. And that ugly upright heavy iron fence is now an ugly heavy iron fence lengthways, in between the flower borders and the intended veg area. I will mask it with grasses, I think. Right now it is just ugly.
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| Boys will be boys |
I've spoken to another neighbour about bringing my shed door to the front, he says it's easy ( yeah, to him), and I can put one of my waterbutts to the other side, easily. Hm, I'll concentrate on the garden first.
So, what else has not gone according to plan? Well, the hederas I had put around to camouflage my waterlily vessel (no way you can call that ugly black plastic vat a pond), look pretty sorry for themselves. Golly, I do hope they will start growing soon! And my circle of lavender look at me with a frown every time I walk past. What do you call this soil, woman? It does not resemble anything we like to grow in! After I have put my glut of Verbena bonariensis and Digitalis in, the mud will be a little more camouflaged. And I have started another round of seed sowing in the greenhouse. Jasper two plots along and I had a chinwag, like me he will put the emphasis on flowers rather than veg. Lovely, it's always nice to have a flower mate.
Remember I told you there was a huge patch of annual silverleaf anon, all stemming from just one plant but now trying to take over next door's cabbagepatch? I ripped it out, leaving 3 metres of bare soil underneath the apple trees (to sow my pollinators seeds in) and Leo kindly took it away and threw it on his bonfire. So. Water plants next, I think, to lure in those much wanted frogs and toads.
Carry on, determinedly forwards!
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