Slouching in the shrubbery

shade garden helperThe mighty beast; lurking in the shrubbery. Well, it’s only Artur in the shade garden, but we both have dreams.

We had a busy day today.  There was a lot of lap sitting and attention seeking behaviour. No mousing, but plenty of smooching.

He is back to his normal happy self.  Just six weeks ago he was scrawny and poorly and wan. I don’t know what he gets in his cat food, but I could do with a dose.

We had a late night. One of those stupendously long French dinners with four courses of too much food, hours of sitting on uncomfortable chairs, but great fun.

But I was sleep deprived when the alarm reminded me I was a farmer not a flaneur, but I just pushed on.  And hence I am yawning now and it’s only 7pm. winsome

A busy day. You can tell I’m sleepy, I’m getting repetitive. I had to run errands first thing. And empty the stables of wood.

But then it was into the garden. I have put greasebands around all the fruit trees to prevent grubs climbing up in winter.

And then it was into the bulb boxes and out with the trowell.

future lavender bankNo poncy bulb planters for me. The ground is so soft after the flood it was easy to just shove them into the soil.  I started with the narcissus Bridal Crown which happen to be the plumpest and gnarliest to plant.  And there were 200 of them.

But I was not to be deterred. I have planted them all through the shrubbery in the shade garden. And it was a perfect spot to spend the hot part of the day.

Yes, absurdly 24C (73F in old money) for mid October.  I was in t shirt and safely under a sunhat all day.

And just to stretch my back (which was aching from crouching) I decided to act on something I had talked over with Andrew earlier in the week.

I have marked out the area where I want to add more lavenders to balance out the bank of shrubs.  Were I less sleepy and more keen, I would have dug over that soil and removed the grass and even contemplated adding more soil from the strimmed area one terrace below.

But that would have called for very keen.

Instead I just plugged away at the bulbs. Muscaris in the barn garden and then part of the shade garden. And suddenly, oh look at the time, it’s beer o’clock. Down tools and down a cold beer.