Numbers on the brain

You can tell I’ve spent too much time on my own these past few days; I have numbers on the brain.

Tonight’s tally (apart from the 300 bulbs) is also 59 shrubs.

The shade garden is planted.

Well the mystery black upside down pots stand in for the plants that are yet to be collected from Andrew’s next Plantagenet order.  The iris, euphorbias, hellebores and hemerocallis.

But when I stand in the potting shed and gaze at the work I’m delighted.

I took this just after a most tremendous downpour that had me skidding into the potting shed mid planting of a cotinus up at the top hedge.

Artur was not impressed as I woke him up. He is nesting in the far corner of staging table on a pile of nets that ought to go under a chestnut tree for the nuts which are starting to drop; but those nets are going nowhere for now.  I’m not about to wrestle them away from a cranky cat.

I rattled on about the 59 shrubs I had just planted and received only a bored yawn in reply. And I didn’t even mention the three cotinus, four carpinus betulus(hornbeams) and one purple berried callicarpa that also were planted up today. I’m plumping out my hedge.

He did emerge after the storm when the sun came out to supervise my work but he’s useless in the garden.

He knocks over shrubs in their pots and never gives any advice on which direction the shrubs ought to face. (The secret is to plant them facing south.)

I even ventured into area below the shade garden that needs planting up and threw in some spare euporbias and lavenders. But it needs so much more work (and is peppered with brambles that playfully stick in ones knees when kneeling) that I backed out and sensibly went indoors to refuel on tea.