Garden heroics

The weather's gone all change-able so quite often our walks are snatched between rain showers but we still seem to get about, covering all the usual favourite routes - "cemetery and rec", "back of the allotments", "boatyard and town", "boatyard and school fields", "high ridge path" etc. There are plenty of people about so we keep track of all the friends.

Mum and Dad occasionally get "one on them"; that look in their eye about some aspect of the garden which is slowly but surely starting to over-power their veiw on how it should be; a small tree which is now starting to block light to the sun-terrace, a climber led up a trellis which now threatens to collapse the trellis with its weight, a nice spot-plant which has now started to merge with its neighbours on all sides, that kind of thing.

Last month it was the Denis Memorial Bay Tree which came to us from Denis when he was alive, as a very healthy 3-stem tree about 5 foot high and quickly established itself. At some point Dad cut down 2 of the stems to reduce its bulk, but the one left, relieved of competition really started to motor. Soon there was no sun on the terrace at the vital 4-6pm time, and the top of it was on the level with the upstairs toilet window. That had to go, lopped clean of branches and then chain-sawed down to 2 foot by John to become the post for a Denis Memorial sun-dial. The terrace is a sunny place again.

Next up, this weekend, was a massive thatch-thick jasmine which started life as a nice shady cover for an arbour, giving you dappled coolth as you sat on the gravel garden looking at the pond. By now, 10 years later the trunks of it, all gnarly and wound round each other go 4 inches thick, and the top of the arbour has layer upon layer of dead, decaying "thatch" going about 2 feet, with this year's new growth hooping out of the top another 2 feet. The timbers of the arbour are twisted and bowed by the weight and growth-forces of the jasmine, and the whole rocks alarmingly in a cross wind.

Or it did. Mum and Dad got that look in their eye again and soon they were armed with secateurs, pruning saw, grass-hook and bill-hook. The floppy sides of the "roof" were first cut back to the perimeter of the arbour, but then roof "panels" were cut away one by one. Now there is a great pile of cut jasmine on the gravel, and a naked, twisted, weak looking arbour waiting to be taken for recycling when it's not actually tanking down with rain. We had just under an inch of rain last night. It's hammering down.

Look after yourselves

Deefski