Gillian, my lady gardener, came yesterday to start the gardening season - a month earlier than previous years. She's been coming to me for a couple of hours once a week since 2005.I've always kept a gardening book so I knew what I'd bought, where and the cost, what had been sown or planted and all the other work I'd done in the garden.
However, getting older limits what you can do - It's so much trouble struggling to get up that it's not worth trying to kneel down these days, so my gardening is limited to strolling up and down the path with the book during the week making notes about what needs to be done. I can still prune, sweep the path, a short burst of anything that needs attention at ground level but I'm mostly a gofer and tea maker.
However, getting older limits what you can do - It's so much trouble struggling to get up that it's not worth trying to kneel down these days, so my gardening is limited to strolling up and down the path with the book during the week making notes about what needs to be done. I can still prune, sweep the path, a short burst of anything that needs attention at ground level but I'm mostly a gofer and tea maker. The picture above is the pink hellebore (at Gillian's feet) and a selfsown primrose among the bloomin' oak leaves. I have a couple more pink hellebores which flower later, including one which my daughter brought from Holland last year and which has a nice fat bud on it now. To Gillian's left are the common creamy hellebore although they do have different markings. They self seed like crazy!
This hedgehog holly produces flowers every year but they don't turn into berries.
Gillian cuts my little patches of grass which separate different areas of the garden, wheels the barrow away when it's full of weeds, prunings etc and brings back the pots of bulbs which have spent the winter behind the shed at the bottom-ish of the garden.
The honeysuckle which covers my trellis arch is sprouting. A couple of weeks ago I asked Stuart to come and oil the weathervane which had been stuck all winter and wondered why he was laughing when he returned. A honeysuckle had wound itself round the upright of the weathervane and, although cut, hadn't been dragged off! Mind you, the weathervane is tilted because the pigeons find it a comfortable perch, the space between the owl's wings just fits their undercarriages.
The tilt is exaggerated because of where I'm standing - and it's raining! 
2 comments:
I keep looking out at my garden and keep thinking "I must make a start". :(
Then it rains and I'm let off. :)
But it was neither wet nor cold last week so I had no excuse, and pruned my Walnut tree. :)
That's a very impressive weathervane. I've never seen on like that before.
Bernard, it was a Christmas present some years ago but I think it came from Wyevale...I bet you haven't been gardening this weekend, or today?
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