Call this gardening?

This is more like archaeology. I have spent most of the day perched halfway up a steep slope scraping away rocks with tools that would not usually grace a gardener’s sack.

A wire brush and a scraping tool.

But it’s coming along nicely.  I’d much rather have the interesting rocks on view on this steep slope.  But first I have to find them. And that’s where the archaeology comes in.  I spot a rock sticking out of the weeds, remove them, and then start scraping away.

Buckets and buckets of soil have to be scooped up, and bags and bags of weeds carted to the compost bin. (The secondary compost bin mind you. I don’t fancy brambles and other such nasties in a slow to compost bin.)

All done while perched.  It was even too steep for Artur to get much purchase. Or maybe he just came to see me before going off for his mid morning snooze.

He is hiding under the very good thicket of eragrostis grasses just on the other side of the path.  Deep cover, deep shade and close enough to hear me talking to myself when I have to yank out recalcitrant bramble roots.

The trickiest bit was working out where to put the buckets and buckets of excavated soil.

I have decided to deposit them around all the grasses further along the pool garden bank.  This is the next big project.  I have already planted about thirty big eragrostis grasses in here.  But they are being strangled by annual grasses and yet more weeds.

So each grass had to be located and then weeded, and then I carefully poured a few buckets of the soil around each plant.

Marvellous fun. Well, it felt good to be doing some good.  But it was all a bit of a plod.

And worst of all, it’s devillishly tricky to photograph my work at the end of the first day.