Squiggles

I was sitting here trying to think what on earth I did today. Brain befuddled by the hours of housework and endless laundry and generally getting the guest house ready for The Season.

But I did do something fun and outdoors (if you don’t count draping the courtyard mulberry tree in duvets. Quite fetching.  I haven’t put up the clothes line yet.   It needs a clean and is soaking in a bucket.   That will teach me to be trendy and use a rope rather than a wire.   Where was I? Oh yes, I mowed.   And this caper of giving things a wonky curvy edge everywhere is taking off.

It is most apparent in the orchard where the long curves are most effective.   But I think I will roll it out (sorry) onto other parts of the garden as well.

I trudged up the track which has more verbascums seedlings than ever before, and did the piano lawn area as well.   And all the way, bagging up the lawn clippings to make a mulch in the top vegetable garden between the potato rows.

It was a day for suncream as I can’t fit my large sunhat over my ear protectors.   But I do think I caught a touch of sun.   But it wasn’t as severe as the thistle thicket that I found in the orchard.   How on earth did they get so big? These thistles (which you can’t see easily) were about four feet tall.   Almost getting to triffid proportions.

So off with their heads and then cut down to the base.   Not easy as the thistles are really, really sharp.   I am sporting bandaids on two fingers even thought I wore gloves. Nay, gauntlets.

But it is rather satisfying when you look back and survey the destruction.   If I get time (hah) I will add this part of the garden to my list of strimming one terrace a day.   I can’t see how I’m going to fulfil that pledge this afternoon.   Estelle arrives at 4 to help with spring cleaning.

Jean Daniel took the horses back to his property late last night so the lower terraces are bare.   But there is a waft of horse manure on the air when the wind blows from the south.   So instead of planting out the marigolds and the coriander which I had planned, I donned rubber gloves and took the wheelbarrow and buckets down to the offending pats.  

Pats? Cow pats? Horse pats? Who knows.   But they are now safely installed in the huge steaming pile way out of sight and smell behind the rabbit shed.

And that was it.   Not much of a day in the soil.  Â  But I did get to admire the euphorbia polychroma plants that survived the winter and are now blooming in the patch of garden underneath the mirabelle trees.   Shame I managed to make the potting shed wonky in the background.   Must be all those wiggles earlier in the day.