Aching

I need to get into training for this big garden. Aching everywhere. But it’s that happy ache after a day of good weeding and planting.

This is the last shot of the day.  Broad beans planted out; shallots in the ground rather than in the potting shed.  All neat and tidy.

And Artur is thrilled at the vast expanses of neat and tidy soil to snooze on while I work.

He was in a following me about mood today, which I secretly love except he exasperates me by being needy.  He kept it up until I walked up to deliver flowers to Elodie and he thought that was an amble too far.  And then when we both went back to the potting shed he spotted his favourite stack of boxes and decided to snooze instead.

That gave me a chance to climb into my kneeler pads, grab my secateurs and heavy gloves and go and attack the brambles and nettles in the potager.

From a distance it looks gorgeous, but there are weeds galore in the edge of the bed.  It started out life as a strawberry bed, but it’s too challenging a space for crops.  Too dry, too prone to flooding in the middle (there’s a spring under the edge of barn above), and frankly, I prefer flowers here.

So I’ve left the verbena bonariensis plants to thrive and just hack back the rest of the unwanted intruders.  And in the lovely red pots (on loan from the Banks, lucky me) there are tulips, parsley and lilies.  Perfectly mole rat proof. For now.

I was thinking that now the verbena plants are cut back it’s the perfect height for our resident hare to pop over and have a feed.  But I can’t keep on worrying about unwanted intruders.

And I could tell it was a mild winter here in the mountains; the vebenas are all into growth already. No die back at all. So it’s going to be a serious forest of purple later in the year.

By mid afternoonch I was flagging. Aching legs from unexpected crouching over recalcitrant plants.  I positively waded through the planting of the broad beans.  But I’ll get into the swing of it soon. 

I have to think of it as training for the vineyard. My weekend monster job.

And the scary bit is I have to try and cut back all the brambles with no right hand gauntlet glove. I have rummaged and search and I just can’t find where I’ve put them.

I even went through the box of random gloves in the potting shed; a box where gloves go to die.  And yep, only left hand gauntlets.  I’m confused. I’m left handed, so there should be a glut of right handed ones.

Or maybe I weed with my right?  You can tell I’ve been out in the sun for too long today.  Time to go and soak my head.