You old prune

At long, long last I’ve wielded the secateurs in 2014.  Pruning day. Well, afternoon.  I wrote out my list and realised that there was a theme.  Time to cut back the usual suspects.

I started with the grape vines in the courtyard; moved onto the roses in both the herb garden (the New Dawns) and the seven planters of Gertrude Jeykll roses in against the wall of the guest house and the main house.

Being short sighted it makes it rather treacherous leaning in to cut back to a bud.  I probably didn’t cut the roses back by one third as I ought. But at least every branch has been trimmed.  And I didn’t tear my skin to shreds.

Next up was the sage in the herb garden. I badly need new purple sage plants. And so far they have been very easy to propagate.  Just cut them back, plonk them in a large shallow tray, and in a few weeks there are roots.

But I don’t want to boast about my future successes as that is bound to spell disaster.  So I’ve taken heaps of cuttings, and inserted them into the compost in the two large seed trays.

Artur was inspecting as I worked. He was cross that I crowded his preferred afternoon sun snoozing spot on my potting bench. I tried explaining that is was My Potting Shed, and My Bench. But there’s no getting through to the cranky creature right now. He seems to have reverted to a savage cat in the month I’ve been away.

I suspect he doesn’t like the smell of the sage leaves either as he slouched off to stand in the sun for a bit while I finished.

No doubt he’ll be back on his favourite perch now that I’ve come indoors.