A gentle drenching

That will teach me to write out my To Do list the night before.  I woke up (annoyingly early – a family post 50 thing) and decided to get up just after 6am. And what was that noise outside and that strange light? Rain.

Goodness. I hadn’t planned for that. I was all set to water the blackcurrants and the transplanted shrubs, dig a potato trench and plant tubers, sort the automatic watering system; and pick asparagus.

Instead I will be forced (gasp) to clean my office, clean the fireplace, keep scanning pages from Gardener’s Illustrated magazine before I give them to Andrew. And maybe even bake a cake.

But don’t let me moan about rain. It’s just the timing that’s a bit of a surprise.  Is there a region on earth where it rains steadily and regularly three nights a week. And then stops at dawn?

***

Ta Dah. A fabulously neat office.  It took three hours.

The most fun was putting up the collage on the wall. It’s a work in progress but it is great to see so many old faces and friends (and myself age three).

But by lunchtime the sun came out and it was time to frolic. Well to dig.

We now have two rows of potatoes up on the top potager to the right of the asparagus bed.  Belle de Fontaney and Elodie.  It feels good to put that large space to use; last year I just sowed clover and gave it a good old rest.  Now that we might get some water up there with a repaired watering butt things could look promising.

I was admiring the barn garden as I stalked up to the far top potager – the rain has done it some good.  And the santolinas are lovely and fluffy right now.

Add to that the dotted heads of vibrant crimson from the allium purple sensation, the purple of the nepeta and lavender and blues of the irises and I’m quite pleased with the look.

And amazingly, there is no weeding to do here. The plants are crammed in tight and linked with lots and lots of stachys (lamb’s ears). I’ll need to thin some of that and move it to the new bank where I only have thyme and santolina.  Must add that to my list. Along with the purple sages which took well from cuttings in early spring.

And that was not the end of the day; we did the big job too. The fiftieth birthday present; my new automatic watering system for the main vegetable garden.

It’s a mass of hoses and complicated links at the moment. We need a warm day to get the hoses straight and softened.  And then I have to bury the lot under the gravel paths and have a play with the shapes.

Oh, and then turn the thing on. And plant things so the water doesn’t go to waste.

And thanks to Fenning and Gillie’s timer, I can programme for it to drip in the middle of the night and save me hours of watering.

I have to read the instruction booklet first.

What am I waiting for?