Hose me down and roll me in sawdust

The day is done. I am sitting clean and neat, fed and watered and if you ask me to get up off the sofa I suspect I will decline.

Why is bulb planting so painful? They are only little objects after all.

Three hundred of them. But still. I knew I needed an afternoon to get the allium purple sensations into the herb garden as the herb garden is a right bloody mess.

I have let things go.  Mainly because it was so well behaved and restrained in its prison of the wall of the bread oven behind and the steps down to the potager in front.

The euphorbias were the first thing I planted here and they are brilliant. But they self seed.

So as I stood facing this jungle I knew they were the first things that needed to go.  But to reach the plants, I had to remove the rampant lemon balm first.

And the annoying ornamental quince suckers. Gad I hate those. They are so tough and nasty to remove.  I cut down the main chaenomeles quince shrubs in the very first year, but have been ‘enjoying’ their suckers ever since.

I hate suckers. If it’s not the plum suckers everywhere else, it’s the chaenomeles here.

So there was swearing, and sweating as I hacked my way through to the back of the garden.  And there was the rose New Dawn that clothes the wall.  And clothed me.

I have hacked it back and tied it in and feel very pleased it now is doing what it ought to do. Climb.  They have no scent which is annoying but they are floriforous.

I have still the rest of the roses to do around the corner, but I wanted to get in the bulbs today, so I have put off weeding the very end of the herb bed.

I must go back to my original planting of the garden to work out why it is so bare now that I have pulled out the weeds.

(Pause). Okay, so I only had purple and green sage, salvia caradona, bulbs and originally artichokes. They didn’t survive the first freezing winter.  So it really is a sage garden.

The salvias have diminished over time. I would get more but I hate investing in plants which I can’t propagate easily.  But I suppose I could add more.

And it looks ghastly right now. I don’t want to cut back the sage until February so the woody stalks can protect the new growth. So it is definitely a case of thinking it will look worse until it looks better.

The top part of the area is given over to three rosemaries.  And they took a beating in the flood so I have to see if the large rosemary survives.

I cut back dead and dying bits whenever I have a pair of secateurs in my hands when I mooch down the steps.

So the bulbs. My mind is drifting. The only problem with allium purple sensations is they have ratty foliage.

So I planted the bulbs right at the base of the purple sage plants so hopefully the bases will be hidden.

In a month or so I’ll plant the tulips in the spaces in between.   And I need to think about mulching with gravel.  Just the thought of heaving buckets of gravel over this space makes my body cringe. I need a rest.

And a pat on the back; of the 1300 bulbs Andrew delivered on Thursday I have just 100 tulips and 70 paperwhite narcissus to go.  Yee hah.