Footprints in the sowed

Early this morning I crept up to the potager so as not to wake Jane and Gerry in the guest house. One can crunch rather noisily across the gravel in our courtyard if you don’t step carefully. Last full day of gardening, so I planted out the Nepeta and lupins and rudbeckias. Then did a spot of propagation on the extra six hills giant. Watered the grasses growing flush against the shed. They didn’t get that lovely dose of water from the storm yesterday.

The dwarf French beans I sowed last week are up and already romping away so I planted them out under the sweet peas in the beautifully bare earth area of the vegetable bed.

Want to get on with the noisy tasks – chipping, strimming and lawn mowing. But will hold off till the guest house wakes up.

Coming down to inspect / marvel at my weeding jobs, I was amused but cross to find that our resident deer has left a pefect set of footprints on the perfectly raked soil under the fruit bushes and newly sowed lawn. Grr. And just to taunt me I had a bad dream that she found the flowers growng up around my potting shed and would reduce them to stumps one hungry night. So just to be sure, I netted all the flowers with left over pea netting. And don’t they look wonderfully trussed? I am Daisy proof now.

Afternoon tasks: strimmed, mowed, chipped and watered. Lawn mowing is definitely the reward after the tedious strimming work. Then while having tea with our neighbour Danielle, we all noticed the state of the dessert grapes in the arbour. As a consequence I cleared a sack of sick leaves off the vines. The entire area may be infected with some mighty disease; but then again it may just be normal life in the landscape of this grape arbour. So I should just stop fussing and get on with it.

To finish let me show you the nascent artichoke crop. Lovely.