A gravel garden, again

Wine, whisky, painkillers, wheat bag. Feet up on sofa, electric blanket already on. You can tell I’ve had a big day.

But it was all in a good cause. I have a gravel garden again.

You can’t do all that weeding and hope it stays clear and neat forever. In fact here, you can count on unwanted plants poking through days after you’ve cleared.

So out came the buckets and off I went on a gravel hauling expedition.

It took hours.

But the system works. I do have to carry enormous amounts of gravel, but I do it half a bucket at a time.

I had written out my to do list the night before and almost had to change my plans as we woke up to drizzle and sometimes showers of rain. Rats.  It was forecast for tomorrow, not today.

But luckily it was never heavy rain and I managed to churn through my tasks.

First up was a stick collecting visit to the lower terraces to build up my stocks for tomorrow’s potager structure building.  I hope I have enough; I need very straight chestnut poles that aren’t too thick for the nails to penetrate.  Too thick and the heavy nails split the wood.

I resorted to the car to bring them up as it was heavy work and I was puffing and suffering from an excess of fleeces and woolly hat.  Silly me; it was mild as can be and humid to boot.

So off with numerous layers and up to the potting shed to do a spot of sorting.

You could tell I was putting off hauling gravel. And no sooner had I greeted Artur (in his box by 8am and didn’t leave all day) and done some potting on, I heard the familiar sound of yet another France Telecom truck trundling up the drive.

Our poor neighbour still has no internet connection, so this was team three (or was it four?) this week. And I still don’t think it is fixed. But I did a sneaky thing; I begged them to come by our house and put their huge cherry picker to use.

We cut off the wisteria this winter that has taken root in our walls and roof.  But lots of the dead long branches remained embedded in the pointing.  And as the plant life is about twenty five feet up in the air, I can’t reach them.

So the long suffering driver agreed to approach our house and pull off the offending dead branches. I was delighted. Even though he missed a bit.  But I couldn’t push my luck, he was already doing me a big favour.

And once that traffic jam was over (they didn’t stay more than half an hour) I headed to the gravel pile and started shovelling.  No friendly and helpful neighbours this time, but it was fiddly work.  I had to mulch around lots of small plants in the barn garden.

It’s on a steepish slope, so it’s a bit tricky getting the gravel to stick.  I did manage to decapitate one iris flower (a week off blooming) which made me cross as  stepped back to admire my work.  But that was the only casulty.

So there you have it.  Naturally I haven’t quite finished. I have a few hours tomorrow or Sunday to finish off the path and do the little bit of garden to the left of this bed.  But it feels great already.