It aint pretty

Aesthetics are such tricky things.   I can gaze down at the now entirely covered soft fruit orchard and be pleased.

I spent the morning mulching the mulberry sticks and vines. Fresh sticks mean green mulch.

So the colour variants on this ground are glaring and, dare I say it, unsightly.

But I see a future weed free zone. So it ain’t pretty, but it works.   But I will monitor it and see if the colour fades to a more acceptable brown beige over the season.   And if in doubt, I can add more old stick mulch.

I have come inside for lunch to defrost and dry my leather gloves. It’s cold out there, which is normal for winter. But it’s damp. Snow is threatening and there is a lot of humidity in the air.

And hence on my hands. We had rain in the night (well, snow) and the soil and grasses are wonderfully damp.

A fact which might think I was bright enough to choose a job that didn’t involve getting my hands in the soil. Hah! Never underestimate the power of The List.

I had only done three quarters of the mass of grass cutting back job yesterday. So went at the steep bank above the pool with a certain gusto. (Which is a product I wish I could add to the soles of my boots to stop the slide down hill when inattentively pruning.)

Still it’s done. And voila another area of the garden that doesn’t look pretty.   Three ugly pictures in one post.   That’s January for you.

I have a lot of eragrostis grasses in these little terrace beds in the bank above the potting shed.   And they don’t do much. So I’ve cut them back and marked them for moving. (And given the beds a good weed as I went.)

Spring is going to see a lot more grasses being transplanted down onto the huge pool banks.

I was actually delighted to see a lot of small self sown eragrostis in among the monster plants here on the bank.   But these things take so much time in a hot climate.

So I’m going to strip every other area of the garden bare of this useful ornamental grass and put it to work.

Here’s a pretty distraction. Well, a brief one. Artur perched on my lap for a grand total of six minutes today.   Then took to a box to snooze. It’s that kind of weather.

And he’s all fluffed up as it’s frankly freezing in my potting shed.

I lingered long enough to pot on three photinia plants and a ligurstrum and then high tailed out of there.

I know where he really wants to be; that’s sitting on my lap indoors in front of the fire.   But that’s not going to happen. It’s not on The List.