The blank canvas

Well here it is: the lovely blank canvas. My potager is weeded and ready to go.

All the quadrants have been hoed and tidied; and all four now have been trenches beneath the uprights in the middle.   And I even managed to save a lot of little mache salads that had survived the winter.   They are miracles – do plants have anti freeze in their leaves? The lettuce looks so delicate and fragile, and yet it has lived through a winter of minus 15C temperatures for at least two weeks.

It did mean the weeding of this last bit of the garden was more laborious than I had hoped. But there were coriander seedlings in here as well, so they had to be separated from the weeds and kept in place.

It was a beautifully sunny day, with little wind.   So even weeding on hands and knees was a pleasant activity.

I actually started the day by weeding all the trees in the orchard. I had stalked down there first thing looking for somewhere to lob all the wood ash we have accumulated.   I’m running out of trees.   So down to the eight in the orchard  I went.   But I had to weed around each tree first. Those pesky weeds have sprouted since I put a huge amount of mulch and manure around each plant before Christmas.

But as soon as that was done it was weed work on the next terrace up.

And for an encore, I’ve managed to do a spot more chipping.   The huge pile in the corner of the house is slowly diminishing.   Both sides of the calabert garden have now been smothered.   There were some agapanthus plants in there somewhere. But I can’t see them.   It’s going to be an anxious time wondering just what is left.   But at least it will be less weedy now that the mulch is down.

It’s Friday night, time to celebrate with the first beer of the week. And band aids for all my poor gnarled fingernails. I don’t have many of those left after this heroic effort in the among the weeds.