Prevarications

Putting off housework.   So how did I fritter away a few hours first thing this morning? I watered the vegetable garden.   And then for some strange reason I went right off list and sorted out the compost bins.

This black plastic bin was broken when a row of tiles landed a direct hit. And I had been meaning to sort it out for ages. But it didn’t even merit a mention on my huge full page list of June tasks.

But I did. With compost fork (all sharp prongs and seriously long handle) and then spade. I removed all the old compost from the bin, transferred it to the current ones (full) and replaced it with a temporary plastic one I had hidden under the potting shed.

So that was a busy half hour’s avoidance. And I tiring one. I would have thought the best sort of prevarication should have been of the gentler variety.

Next up was to some how tame the jostaberry bushes.   They have put on so much growth this year.   And as they don’t like being pruned, I had to find a way of stopping them flop all over the grass path to the lawn.

I had a few bamboo canes left over from the central wigwams, so I made a sort of poor man’s hurdle.

It ought to do the trick. And it will make picking the berries a bit easier.   They look almost ready but my experience of jostaberries is you always have to wait another week more than you want to eat them.   Eating them unripe is a decidedly sour experience.

I could have used my brand new staking irons. I only made them today. But I needed them for all the echinops growing in the corner of the potager.

Are they supposed to be five feet tall?  And gave me these cuttings and they were well tamed babies in his garden.   But here they must have that combination of lots of rain, rich soil and a bit of space to roam.

The metal came from the builder’s suppliers. And it was a trick that Monty Don showed on Gardener’s World about four years ago. And I have been meaning to try it ever since.

Take a metal rod (in my case 6mm) bend it in half. Find a plank of wood, place it over wire and pull up the two ends. Just so. Instant and very cheap flower stakes. They cost all of 50 cents each.

The only catch is you buy it in four metre long lengths and you have to get them cut to size.

Dario has a whizz huge cutter which he keeps in his van, so I made sure to lop them to the right length when he was finishing up the roof work.   I have some short lengths to fix the weed proof fabric I want to place in the steep bank of the calabert steps.

But that’s another day.

And I really couldn’t put off indoor work much longer. There is always three cubic metres of gravel to move. But that would have been taking things too far.