Sorting strawberries

If it’s Monday it has to be strawberry day. The bed was sorely in need of a good sorting. Even though all the bed was laid to weedproof fabric and mulched with good sized river stones – well you get the hint. Weeds had crept up between the gaps and were competing with the fruit. From a distance it doesn’t look that bad. And at the far right end of the bed the fruit is decidedly lush and promising. Just look at all that fruit. It will probably ripen and go over by the time we get back in a fortnight, but hey, that’s gardening.

Cynical, moi? Must be the poisons of the stinging nettles surging through my system and addling my brain.   Weeding this strawberry bed meant getting up close and personal to a whole crop of stinging nettles that were growing out of the rock walls. They were downright low down and nasty. And I might as well have rolled all around the thicket of it for all the good the cautious plucking and picking did. Both my wrists and forearms were liberally spiked with nettle stings by the time I had finished.

It was definitely a two tea cup problem. But now the bed is clear I can step back and admire and try not to scratch and yelp.

And it did mean that I could spend a good bit of time close to this lovely clematis that is finally deciding to grow up and out and do what clematis are supposed to do. Can’t wait to see it thrive over the next few years.

For the rest of the day I steered well clear of anything that could sting or bite. I planted grasses on the bank that abuts (is that the word I’m looking for?) the shade garden. Miscanthus sinensis Gracillimus as the top feature grass, and just the standard miscanthus sinensis in the second row.

And I don’t think you can see it in this picture but there will be a hedge of calamagrostis Karl Foerster along the bottom next to the path. They are sterile plants, upright and well behaved. So as soon as I get about a dozen more the effect will be stunning. Well in my mind’s eye at least.