Sunshine and clouds

Well it’s not often I write two posts in one day; but I couldn’t resist these pictures. The weather was so strange today – all sunshine and then inky black winnie the pooh clouds. But no rain. I do wonder if it has rained at all since the floods. It’s certainly dry about the place.

And I don’t dare do a mighty water of the garden until I can get help lifting the lid on the tank. It is heavy and made of concrete and perfect for jamming fingers in when you lever it up or down. It may be very low and we may need to switch over to town water. But until I can peer into its inky depths I will not know.

Spent the afternoon doing what may be the last orchard and lawn mow of the year. It is October after all. Surely that lawn wont keep on going.

Hopefully when next I photograph this terrace it will be when we plant our orchard trees. I noticed too that the dreaded round up is doing its job.

If you peer closely you can see the spots where I zapped the verbascums in the lawn. And the track up to the pool is looking rather autumnal with its dying bits of weedy vegetation. Will it be able to be seeded soon? Or do we just neglect and mow it. Keeping the height of the weeds down does seem to encourage the grasses to come through. I wonder.

And here may be the last picture of the abundant mulberry tree. With Gillie and Fenning and most particularly his forestry skills arriving on Saturday it will be chainsaw time and clearing of the fallen bits. It is such a feature of the terrace in front of the house, any changes will feel strange.

Trudging up with the contents of the grass catcher was slighty tedious (I am dressed for autumn and it keeps getting sunny and warm) but at least I had the perfect place for the grass. It has gone on as another mulch level on the vegetable bed.

And as I was doing gentle laps with the green machine, Nicolas was doing the worst of the jobs. The bits I missed. He has tidied the first terrace and made a good assault on all those brambles that I didn’t dare get too close to the lower walls.

I grabbed a handful of figs and walked down to admire his handiwork at six. I do love how he doesn’t strim the hellibores.

I haven’t the heart to tell him that hellibores don’t rate highly on my ‘ah, pretty’ list. Possibly because we have such prehistoric looking varieties. All gloomy dark green and black. He has another day or so down at the lowest terraces. And may have time to start on bits up at the top. I will do some too. But he is so quick and much more fearless when it comes to thwacking his machine so close to the rocks and fencing.