Rocks exposed and box update

I was just doing yet more filing and realized you never saw the thrilling end to the soil excavation on the barn garden rocks.

It’s done.

It’s dull. But I am a completist when it comes to this summer of soil work in the drought.

I shoved buckets and buckets of soil down the slope on the flatter part of the barn garden beds.

Denuded beds now that the santolinas have gone.

We did have house guests so I did a bit of a Potemkin and covered the area with spare gravel.

I’ll regret that.

Because come the autumn (well, later this month) I’ll have to pick it all off so I can rake it all flat(ish) mark out the areas that are bare, and then come up with a new design. Ready for replanting.

I wonder too if there will be any new growth on those santolinas. Curious.

But the gravel (and the artfully placed pots with willows) was wise as I didn’t think people needed to see even more of a bomb site (dead plants, piles of soil) as they swanned along the gravel path towards the pool.

 

The results are not quite what I was hoping. I had hoped for nice sloping granite rock, but instead I have jagged eroded pockets. And ant nests in the bases of the stone.

But all I need to do is walk away and leave things for a winter.  Who knows, we might even get winter rain which will wash the excess soil away. And then the moss can grow, the nice acceptable wildflowers establish. And we can all live happily ever after.

Don’t you love an optimist? I know the brambles will sneak back.

And of course while I spent so much time here I could see the glaring problem of the lavender along the bed.

It has to go.

And I need to move the three viburnum tinus plants down the slope.

Curse this hot summer of looking critically rather than getting my head down and not seeing the bigger picture.

The drought has seen off so many plants. And you could say the lavenders are harmless and surviving. But man they are wrong now that I have cleared the rocks to the right.

My To Do list has just run to three pages. Please don’t make me start a fourth.

Oh and box update. I’ve done my second spraying of the nematode control. I’ve watered rather lavishly (for the first time in years). And the box is growing back. Amazing.

Just in time for the next invasion.