Spring Gardening

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all well.

It’s been really wet here in the last few weeks and the garden is bursting and budding left, right and centre.

I have done absolutely nothing to it over the winter and despite all the new growth, it’s looking grubby and unloved.

On top of that I’m feeling increasingly fraudulent as I’ve had quite a few compliments about it from pictures that were taken in more energetic times.

If only you could see it now.

So urged on by those dark childhood feelings that at any moment I might be found out, I got down to a bit of Spring gardening over the weekend.

I started by sweeping up all the old leaves.  This turned out to make a huge difference immediately.  Good place to start.

Plus the shadows on the wall were so beautiful…

Then I re-potted some great bargain buys of lavender and hydrangea plants I found going cheap in Monterrey Market and Trader Joes.

I put the lavender in an old bucket that had a hole in, which worked really well as the silvery green of the leaves looked great with the old metal bucket.  And what with some smooth grey beach pebbles,  I had a bit of a silvery grey theme on the go…

And of course I filled buckets and buckets of weeds.

So tell me…what is it about that feeling when you pull a young green weed out of the soft wet earth…. roots and all?

Ten out of ten for job satisfaction in my books…something about tugging those complete roots slowly out of the ground…oh yes…

Something a bit primal going on there.

And while weeding I picked up all the odd bod terracotta pots lying around the garden, filled them with a bit of earth and peppered them with two or three different kinds of seeds.

I am a big sweet pea fan and love lots of different poppies for a splash of color in what is otherwise a garden of various shades of green.   Weeds apart.

While I was doing all of this, my six year old was happy as Larry seeking out salamanders, roly poly and worms.  He gave them all names and and generously made them new and elaborate ‘homes’…

Yes, I know – they were definitely the fall guys for my spell of uninterrupted gardening…gawd bless ’em…

While he was creating a whole new look for the worm family and I was lost in the satisfaction of weeding, our conversation went like this…

Him: Mumma…

Me: …yyyess…

Him: Justin Beaver is dead you know…

Me: Really?

Isn’t it Justin Bieber?

Him: Oh no, I meant Mozart…he is actually dead…

And so the afternoon wore on.

And you will be glad to know that despite howls of protest, all the small creatures were returned to their natural homes, if a little dazed and disorientated.

So all in all,  for not much work, the garden suddenly looked a whole lot better.  The earth ( in at least one bed anyway ) looked deliciously dark, damp and crumbly and ready to take on new life.

One thing is for sure, all the time I spent outside had benefited so much more than the garden.

That’s it for now.  Coming very soon are some roadside find makeovers – working on them right now – so watch this space…

See you all soon,

Ros

ps  And welcome to all you lovely people from Beach Cottage – thanks for stopping by.