Busy drizzle

I owe days of news, but thought it best to just launch in and try and catch up.   It’s mild and drizzling but I am not to be deterred.   Being without a camera I shall have to paint word pictures instead. Not as good as a gleaming bucket of 50 lily bulbs, but here I go.

The lilies were part of my lovely haul from Andrew’s yesterday. I drove down for the day and had a fantastic busman’s holiday mooching about someone else’s garden.   And Andrew’s is one you can’t help but admire. Progress, new walls, changes and endless lovely plants.

I came back with the 50 lily bulbs, two bags of floragard potting mix; echinops plants and seedlings, salvia plants, lucifer crocosmia bulbs, ten small pots of white thyme, a teasle (or is it teasel? must look up), a euphorbia martinii (the lovely red), a virginia creeper cutting for the potting shed’s west wall.   And something else which escapes me.   Oh yes, buckets of yellow sand.   He has a builder’s yard worth of it in his driveway, and Manu warned me that we would need some to finish the final bit of wall in the gite where the new window went in.  Â  All lovely treats.

It was too late when I returned last night to plant, but I did make use of the returned library vidoes to watch Enigma and keep on painting the office and starting on the kitchen.   Perfect indoor activities.   Spring cleaning has begun.

The lilies have found a new home (I can’t wait ten days for them) in the planter near the front door, in the far end of the wildflower garden near the pool, in among the soft fruit bushes and under the plum trees, and down in the edge of the new calabert bed at the top of the steps leading down to the pool.   So fun to dig holes for such big fat healthy bulbs. It’s definitely one of my favourite activities in this huge garden.

I have put the teasel in the end of the pool garden among the stipas and transplanted euphorbias. It might be too moist for the seedling, but then it might thrive as well.   The euphorbia was calling out for a  more stately place on its own rather than in a thicket of wulfenii’s, so I have put it in the shade garden near the emerging tulip bulbs.

The virginia creeper might just make the garish wooden side of the shed facing Jean Daniel’s less bare.   It should romp away and hopefully be contained by my judicious care over the next few years.

The rain started to come down a bit more persistently while I was putting in the salvias in the first bank of the terraces above the potting shed, so I have come in for a large bucket of tea, another coat of paint to the vile cupboard under the sink.   And then I shall surge out and plant the thyme in the gaps of the newly found steps up through the calabert garden.

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I didn’t manage the thyme.   But I did take a big bag of grass seeds up to the very top of the garden edge – the source – and scattered seeds on the bare earth. I then had an inspiration (and a long slog back to the house) to sow the wildflowers there as well.   I had a mix lurking in the now frightfully clean office so up they went and onto the bare earth.   This rain is perfect for germination. Long slow steady rain that doesn’t run off into torrents.

I have added more grass seeds to bald bits on the walnut path and generally flung it about.

Lastly, with a fussy Artur entertaining me with his antics, he couldn’t settle down and kept insisting on stalking out into the drizzle, I cleaned my potting shed and had a mighty potting on session.   This is the hard bit: can seedlings last ten days in their original pots? I have taken a gamble and pricked them out into individual trays. And just hope they wont perish.   One can never get a ten day forecast, but the weather doesn’t look to be baking in the next week or so.   The temperatures may stay in the low teens, so I have to hope they won’t get too dry.

I have put out all the other potted on seedlings outside to the north side of the shed.   Shade and a bit of protection is my hope.   Jean Daniel sweetly offered to help water things while I’m away.   But I’m hesitant. He did rather shamefully admit that he managed to kill the last pot of narcissus bulbs I gave him. They didn’t flower as he didn’t think to water the pot.

So in all gardening ventures, I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.