Mulching

I can’t raise any poetic peon of praise about this job. It’s just mulching.

Reducing a huge mountain of sticks and branches to a pile of mulched wood. Perfect for covering up the bare soil of the new dry garden.

This took me all day.

I have been stockpiling the raw material for months. The pile growing ever larger down near the stables, where I keep my chipper.

And naturally I have been putting the job off for weeks. I suspect it’s something to do with the noise of the machine. Or perhaps it’s the stooping down to pick up endless sticks and feed them into the whirring blades.

Then collecting the mulch in bags and wheelbarrowing them up to the new dry garden.

Naturally before I could fling the thick stuff onto the bare soil I had to weed first. And do the last watering of the year.  That felt rather momentous. Putting the garden to bed if you like.

But only this particular garden. Everywhere else is still going lustily. Well, the dahlias are done. But the vegetable garden is still absurdly lush.

And haunted by the small cat who is whizz at finding the sun at all times of the day.  He would prefer to be in front of the fire of course.

This is his natural habitat. But the weather is still ridiculously sunny, so I shove him out when I surge forth as well.

By the end of the day (annoyingly early with the setting sun) I had done half of one bed. Well, at least it is the largest of the two sides of the garden. But I can see I will be making this dreadful noise and chipping endlessly for about a week to cover the whole area.

Unless I can hijack a mulch pile.

If I don’t post again, you will find me in the forest cutting thin chestnut branches and dragging endless piles of sticks to feed the maw of the machine.