Gardening Blitz

We are on hand to help today in a major gardening blitz, which sees the garden cleared of old, long-since-pecked-clean seed heads and other tall dead stuff, opening up the view and reminding us we actually have a reasonable size garden (25' by 100').

It's long overdue. Mum has pruned the roses and attacked the hollyhocks and old sedum heads etc in the upper "circle" garden, while Dad has cleared Californian poppy and yellow horned poppy foliage, magnolia leaves and died back Erigeron from the gravel out front, plus chopped up the old Christmas tree, and cut away all the sport suckers from the base of the lilac, and the old stems of purple loose strife and asparagus.

Finally they joined up to cut down the tall canes/plumes of the two big ornamental grasses down to 6 inches or so. This act is the real garden opener, because these two tall tufts create a very obvious visible barrier between top garden and what we call the "ha-ha" bank, below which is the pond.

Plenty of time, though, to sit back and chill on the terrace, which was reasonably warm. The pair of robins show their appreciation by swooping down on the disturbed soil and flitting about picking up spring-awakened grubs and creepy crawlies. Mum and Dad are hopeful that the robins will nest.

They tell some awful story of me as a puppy killing a robin which flew into the greenhouse and stunned itself, one of the then breeding pair with a half built nest, which was then abandoned. They have not nested in the garden since. I don't remember this but if it's true then it's probably in this blog somewhere. Think I'd not get away with it again, though, so maybe I'll avoid robins in 2010.

Deefski

The Colour Purple

Our garden seems to move through colour phases as we progress through the heat wave. The early yellows (daffs etc) are long gone, and the blues and whites (vibernum, snowflake, new frshly-opened Erigeron (Spanish Daisy)) are now giving way to floods of purple. The big ol' Paulownia (Foxglove Tree) is the most covered in blossom we've ever had it. I say "old" - it's actually only about 12 years old - they grow so fast it's already 16-20 feet.

The lilacs (ours and next door's) carry on the purple theme on the left side, a purple aquilegia is doing it's stuff in the circle garden, and all around the Erigeron which opens white and then turns purple are giving us ground level purple. Purple honesty is fading but some geraniums are stepping into the breach. We don't plan it like this - it just happens, honest.

Mum has the "proper car" today, as she has a day off work and is on a mission to assist the move of Denis (Rags's Dad) from hospital to a local care home, so our Dad has happily taken the 2CV to work via picking someone up in Ashford. He returns with a beaming smile, the roof rolled right back in the blazing heat, only lacking his usual straw hat (doesn't really go with the hi-viz jacket and workwear "uniform" apparently) for the complete "yokel" effect.

Barking

Deefs