Summer landscaping on a slope

I can finally say I love my new laptop. I only need to hover nearby to wake it up from sleep with my Apple Watch firmly affixed.

This is a boon as I have discovered that using toys such as Touch ID to turn on computers and perform telephone banking is no fun if your digits are covered in sticking plasters.

Welcome to gardening where you Work With Brambles.

Which is akin to working with wild animals. But more satisfying once the wounds heal.

I’m actually sporting a very cut lip from the former wild animal that is the cat who objected to her morning eye drop ministrations by lashing out with sharp claws. But we made up later. She is currently guarding the garden room from all marauders on a soft throne.

Not so the barn garden bank where I yanked them all out and am currently enjoying the prospect of future compost material.

Here’s the thing. Gardening on a slope is challenging at the beginning. Because it’s a mess. Here is my before shot of the bramble covered slope.

So too during the planting up and watering stage.

And then once it has established you are so thrilled by how it looks one tends to let garden maintenance drift. And it’s a pain to climb up and attack.

And then you end up with a jungle because you have neglected to cut back hard. The shrubs have a spat and the viburnum wins and the cistus dies.

Messily. Not a pretty sight. I did ‘quite’ like the cistus, but not enough to miss it as it lost the battle. Its flowering season is so absurdly short.

And you get the fun of having to cut out the dead branches and not fall off your very precarious steep perch.

But it beats looking at an eyesore each and every time you need to go to the potting shed.

It took a day.

And now I have a lovely bald patch on my slope of virburnum and rosemary.

There are lavenders and iris and perovskia and all sorts of goodies in here. But you would hardly notice.

So I cede defeat.

Rosemary it is.

I have some gorgeous Rosemary Sappho which took well from cuttings are are growing plump and vibrant in the potting shed.

Come cooler weather (hah!) and a threat of rain (hah!) I shall plant them out.

Why, it will be just like old times.

Bless.