Bramble clearing
Please feast your eyes on my early bouquet of daffs. It is the last bit of colour you will see all post.
I was able to harvest them when I was taking a break from yanking bramble roots out of the rocks that far down the garden.
(Lawn mowing this huge space and dealing with those mole hills…. no longer my problem!)
The daffodils now flower in the part of land we gave back to our neighbour Jean Daniel. But luckily the horses don’t eat the flowers, so they are left to flower and bring a lot of cheer to my very early spring flower displays.
Here’s the overhead shot to remind you just how extensive this bank of ornamental grasses stretches in the area above the pool and ‘lawn’. Drone shots taken during a drought many years ago…
I must beg Gerard to come back later this year in May when it looks less parched.
As you might recall I have to cut back the entire back of eragrostis curvula grasses each spring. Or end of winter if I’m really on top of my To Do List.
And the lawn bank is easy in comparison to this pool part of the same steep terrace.
Fluffy.
With self seeded euphorbia x wulfennii throughout.
I’m thrilled the achillea Gold Plate plants are now over the difficult early years and can fight it out for space.
But once you are pleased with yourself for hacking back the grasses, mulched the area with the cut bits, and yanked out many of the unwanted euphorbias…I do keep some.
There is no getting away from the neglect at the far left end of this wall.
Dare I show you?
It’s a dog’s breakfast. Or on this farm, a sicked up rat.
What can we discern? Euphorbias, brambles, dead grasses.
And it so incredibly steep. So I started from the top and just dug out those damn brambles and shoved everything further down the slope until it hit the lawn.
Pausing every now and then to trudge to the house and attend to bramble lacerations and cart away armfuls of horrid growth.
It is so steep to work I had to start making little terraces out of logs and metal rebar rods just to stop the soil heading down the mountain.
And naturally in this mess, somewhere. I lost the fork.
Not the mighty Bulldog I hasten to reassure. but the handy little one that has sharp points.
Perfect for trying to grub out the bramble roots that have inserted themselves into every rock fissure.
That bare soil now that the weeding is done makes me anxious. Bare soil is soon colonised…
But I will mulch it with as much of the cut back eragrostis grass as I can. And plant up little grasses when they surge into growth next month. That should stabilise the top of the bank.
And be grateful there are other distractions at hand to avoid the eyesore.
And if you have struggled this far, you can see the origins of the whole bank which makes my paltry 2025 efforts just part of the almost 20 year picture.