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| Garden following first tidy of the year |
On Monday, I took advantage of the sunshiny weather by doing as many gardening jobs as I could safely do, doing little by little, without pulling a muscle, straining myself, or falling over. It's a mistake of many fair-weather gardeners to overdo it after a winter of doing nothing. The garden has looked an unsightly mess for months but on Monday, I waved my magic spade and it's looking better alread. It makes such a difference just clearing away rogue grass from the edge of the lawn. You can see that the lawn itself is looking less than great, but that is very easily dealt with. I shall hand weed, feed, and start mowing it soon and it will soon be back in shape. Trust me. I've done it before. Look...before...
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| My garden and lawn at its worst, March 2017, after the fencing contractor had left |
...after...
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| My lawn, June 2017, after a bit of care |
And I planted the miniature apple tree in the south-facing border. It had been in a pot, but I am slowly reducing the number of plants growing in containers as sometimes plants are far easier to deal with when stuck in the ground—watering, for example. You can just see the apple tree with a white tag on it, in the top image. When the blossoms come, and they will, it will look beautiful.
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| Miniature Coronet family apple tree |
It's a shame that I felt it necessary to radically prune the family apple tree last year. I cut out the part on which the Cox's apples would grow. To save a long explanation here, please just check the link.
Everything is waking up at once. Thankfully, I have had a lovely patch of tete-a-tete daffodils and clumps of primroses in flower for some weeks. The primroses are delightful but I shall be dividing and moving them once the flowering has finished. They look rather odd where they are right now.
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| Clumps of primroses |
I'm not sure what to do about the hostas in terracotta containers. They are pushing up shoots and I cannot tell if they need dividing or replanting. The pots weigh a ton, so it's not just a case of tipping the pots upside down, removing the plants and checking the roots. I'd have to be some muscle-bound weight lifter to do that. And I'm not. Far fromn it. I would love to see the hostas growing at the edge of the lawn, spilling onto it, but the slugs... I mean, you just cannot control the slippery little suckers when hosta leaves are close to the ground. Yes, you can throw down lots of slug repellant (not good!), or ground coffee dregs (not sure that works), or whatever you happen to believe in, but still they come, like vampires in the night, sucking the life out of their victims. So it's a dilemma upon which I am dithering. Watch this space.