Damp bahookie

There’s something quite liberating about knowing that no one is going to drop by. However, what I am discovering about my “liberated” self, is that she has not developed much from the 8 year old with a prized a baggie net, save for becoming more scruffy. (It is a known fact that, despite spending most of every summer damming burns and fishing in the river with my baggie net, I was a remarkably tidy child. My cousins and I would wend home after a day on the river, sustained only by midget gems, they looking like tattie bogles and me annoyingly pristine. It could be, as one cousin suggested bitterly when we met up a few years ago, that I was “ionised”. I think more likely it was a testament to the life threateningly tight pigtails my mum braided – they were nuclear proof.)

But I digress…….

Today was a designated no heavy gardening day. (The tendonitis in my left ankle has flared up again). It started off cool and I had some thoughts of a sewing project, but by the time we were back from the morning dog walk the sun was out so the good intentions evaporated. A goodly period was spent just wandering around to see what was new and admiring the tulips. The hostas are all starting to come up now and I think I like them best at this half unfurled stage. The tulips continue to dazzle.

In an attempt at productivity I braved the greenhouse to pot up a few more cuttings and plant up some seeds. I have added a tray of lupins (strangely almost all of them failed to overwinter for the first time in years, and they have hardly self seeded) and a rather optimistic tray of dierama seeds saved from one of the plants in the garden last year. We shall see…

After that I was fried. I resolved to combine cooling down with a job I had been putting off – namely, wrestling a cutting from the big yellow lily in the top pond. It really is much too big for the top pond and should have been in the bottom but a label mix up had it end up in the wrong place. All attempts to move it have failed. It has put out myriad roots into the wall and under the stones at the edge and is hanging on for grim death. I have been intending, and failing, to take a cutting to see if I can get one going in the bottom pond (much bigger surface area and rather in need of more lilies) for years. Cometh the heatwave, cometh the woman….

I donned the second best gutties and got in. Needless to say to get any decent purchase (I had to prise a bit out with a mini mattock) I had to bend down well past the derrière line and got a good soaking. However, the exercise was successful and a small offshoot is now in a temporary shallow bed in the bottom pond. If it thrives I will repot in the autumn and sail it out to the deep bit in the middle for the winter.

Seeing as I was in there anyway, I had a little wander round and can report that the Ibitha frog dancing pool is now very much a David Warner kids (well tadpole) play area and the frogs look knackered. Some have tried to escape their offspring altogether and have been hiding in the greenhouse. The transition from carefree yoot to careworn parent seems to be a universal theme…

After emerging from the pond, like the very antithesis of Aphrodite, I could have gone in to wash and change, but instead I bummed around the garden with a wet and slightly weedy bahookie all afternoon. As of 6.20pm I have “sun dried” but doubtless still present a rather grubby spectacle. Will I be changing to walk the dog this evening?? It seems rather unlikely.