Home

We had a very strange warm Saturday that beside one's self me from all of my other responsibilities and plans. No one else was at dwelling when I rose in the prime of day (except the parakeets). I looked at the loads of laundry, considered the posts I wanted to add to my blog (on homeschooling, mostly), the bills to pay and the ten thousand other little duties I have to do on a weekend. Then I looked surface. Sunshine. Veritable sunshine and substantive warm sunlight. I wheeled the parakeets exterior so they could enjoy the day. I found my garden gloves, my garden shows, and I put on some plashy parachute pants to get filthy in. I tied my hair back and dropped my trustworthy knee pads onto the still-dewy lawn.

And I dug. There’s something freeing about foul matter. I pulled up chickweed and used the trowel to get under the dandelions, mendacious dandelions and thistles that were wearisome to get a foothold in my blossom beds. The day was not cold and I lost trace of time. Not much was blooming - yet - but so much had the pledge of opening up to the sun! I unwavering to get two flower beds done: the ones out front, under the big rhododendrons, and the big “isle” in the back, by the camelia. I refused to direct the eye at the camellia, which had equitable tipped spent its prime. Camellias don’t last much more than fifteen minutes, and this one is no leaving out. It’s redeeming lineament is the trunk. Veritably. And the ten minutes that the flowers are to the full open, still vibrating and pink with noon-day yellow stamens. Then they revolve brown and ill-favored, fall off the tree (shrub? Mine is pruned to direct the eye like a pygmy tree)) and turn round into slug ooze on the ground below the camellia. Slugs won’t eat them, by the way: I imagine they consider the defunct flowers are as muddy as them, so why bother? No, slugs eat my irises in the room.

Ah! But I was a step in front of the slugs this year and purchased some fair wire ribbon from Lee Valley Garden Store which I staked around all of my irises. The slugs creep up to the copper and hit it with their slimy antennae. It is the gastropod tantamount of licking your touch and sticking it into an groundless light socket. Zap! No pest ever worked as well and was less toxic to the ease of the garden. That was what else I did while the parakeets watched me operate.

Read more...