Short and Sweet

Hello Friends!

First, a heartfelt, country welcome to all my new followers.  You've found your way here by different hosts {Google, Networked Blogs, etc} and no one has told me you are here, but I've noticed my numbers have gone up! So happy you have joined my little page and I hope you enjoy your visits and thank you for following me.

Well, it has happened again. I've pulled my back. Let's not dwell on this, or how it happened {reaching for my pot of face cream this morning} but suffice to say my mood is low as, once more, it happens at the worst possible time for the garden. The lawn needs its regular mow tomorrow, there are berries ripe and ready to pick, and pots that still need watering despite the gentle summer rain today. So thankful for the rain, because, at least it puts a natural, not medical, halt to the gardening; however, there is tomorrow and the next day, and so on, when I will be sitting or hobbling and becoming very frustrated.  At least there is still Wimbledon for a few more days!  It's getting really exciting now, and I am riveted to it.

This does raise a big issue, though, as the increasing number of occurrences of my back going at the most inopportune times {but then again, is there ever a good time for back pain?} is making me seriously readdress what I'm doing, and going to do with my garden. Without dwelling on it, I also have arthritis in my spine, so feel I can never get ahead these days, and the weeds are seriously no longer a joking matter. I am rethinking deeply now, and researching a lot on line; I have to accept that I may have to get someone in to help me make the garden lower maintenance all round, at least to help me with the heavier work of digging, moving soil and big rocks.

With our changing weather patterns, I have spent about five years looking at what is doing well in the garden and what is not. Some plants thrive, others wither and disappear.  Some are nothing more than slug fodder!  Ah! Slugs! The bane of every gardener, I'm sure of it.

I am in the middle of measuring up the various plots. My Berry Patch turns out to be 36 foot long by 10 1/2 foot wide plus two odd shaped triangular bits on the end which I did not include. My former vegetable plot, soon to be a herb and tea garden, measures 17 foot by 23 foot not including a funky shaped bit on the end! I have not yet measured the lawn and borders, those are for another day, but my drive measures 65 yards long!  That needs constant weeding both sides and down the middle.  It is a lot of work for me, with all my other responsibilities too.

I have started making plans for all of these areas, and have bought myself a lovely Strathmore spiral bound art journal with 190 gsm paper to record my intentions and progress. There is lots of room to expand as I stick in seed packets and photos, as well as being a deliciously large A4 portrait format! Did I mention I bought two of them!

So, dear friends, this is my plight again, but in the meantime, and on a more cheerful note, here are some photos of what is flowering in the garden this week ~~~

Mothering Sunday gift, this will be nurtured and used in a border later on

Glam Rock hydrangea

Beautiful, prolific, frothy, acid yellow, and useful Alchemilla Mollis

miscellany of bits and pieces and my garden corgi "Igraine"

Fragrant red dianthus, quaking grass, Alchemilla Mollis

Monkshood {Aconite} 

Crocosmia "Lucifer"

Glam Rock hydrangea with the long, whippy stems of Verbena Bonariensis

Wild Field Poppies in my 'wilderness' bit

So, dear friends, I sit in miserable pain, but it gives me time to reflect on what is happening in the garden and what needs to be done to move forward.

Until next time ~~~
~~~Deborah xoxo