The spring surge

Arrrggghhh. It’s all happening too fast.  I’m cutting back grasses and I swear I can hear them growing as I work.

I can usually count on early March as a time when dormancy is the word.

Not this year. Mild winter. Mild spring. Sunburn as I work.

So instead of neat and tidy little mounds of grass. I offer you fluffy.

At least you have the distraction of those cypresses to give a bit of vertical..

And in previous years I would have left a tidier space between the grasses.  But with so much new growth appearing (well, let’s call them weeds) I have had to trample as much desiccated grass as I can on the ground as I go.

And of course I have been slowed by that undergrowth.

See those bright green spikes poking up between the beige and pale?  Hilarious adventures lie underneath.

I started just getting annoyed by the unwanted grass. Couch grass.  So I pulled one as I was rushing past. And pulled. And pulled. And pulled.

Marvellous!

Hilarious. And utterly addictive. The chance to pull out over a foot of weedy root in one easy go is the gardener’s sad equivalent of a great afternoon’s fun.

Almost as fun as yanking out nettle roots.

But that fun is denied me this year as the nettles have already leapt into stinging lushness.

Another excuse for being late with my homework in the form of this blog?

A spot of instant gardening.

I have lifted the eragrostis grass clumps that are too close to their friends and moved them onto the brand new duck pond terrace.

I’ve had to water them in like mad. And of course this is the far. far end of my garden. The hose doesn’t quite reach. Cue bucket work. Plodding. Hauling.

And of course there is that alarming sight of so much bare earth.  I need to get chipping.  The branch mountain is growing down by the stables where I store the chipper.  But do I have time?

ARRRGGGHHHHH.