We are over half way through April now and the countdown to my hip op is well underway. I am focussing on those jobs that involve prancing around or grovelling on the floor, activities which may well be on the prohibited list during the immediate aftermath. On sunny days I am mostly weeding and “reshuffling” with a side order of mulching. When it rains I am making curtains for the bold boy (you need to grovel on the floor for the cutting out phase). Progress is, frankly, spectacular. I am now three (yes 3) pairs of curtains in and weeding and mulching proceeds apace. I have treated myself to a wide bladed, slightly serrated, Japanese knife/trowel thing called a hori (special offer) and it is veritably the dogs bollocks. The point is phenomenal at winkling out buttercups (mine are crossed with octopodes) and the edge cuts through everything. I keep it in a dashing holster with my new Japanese secateurs (same offer) and feel quite the thing. I now have the highly satisfactory sensation that, should a Russian operative decide to eliminate me whilst gardening, I could, with an unexpected left handed thrust, disembowel them.
The nuttery (yes autocorrect, this is a thing don’t change it…) is an absolute joy this month. The wood anemones are still flowering valiantly, yellow species tulips have been and gone in a blaze of glory and now we have large clumps of erythronium and bluebells (well pink and white bells) starting to flower. Some of the ferns have produced copious babies which I have been moving into the shaded centre along with offshoots of a huge green heuchera thing which seems to quadruple in size annually. (You just rip off a limb and plant it to get a new one). I also had the treat of packing up a load of our vast stock of squirrel sown nut trees to a friend in Lancashire – which was much better than composting them. If you are reading Fionne I hope they take…
One of the huge willows on the back (front? it’s all a question of perspective) had to come down last week. The roots had started lifting and, come the next gale (of which we have many), it was aiming for the roof. It was strangely compelling to watch the guys at work. As Keith succinctly put it – they surely knew their physics. One chap swarmed up to the top and with every strategic cut signalled to the others where the limb would fall. Eventually he was at the top of a lone stalk, which they felled in a oner. It fell in exactly the right spot. Magnificent. My dad would have loved it. He could wax lyrical for an hour on the precision use of a crane or forklift and he was not wrong. It’s all too easy, sitting at a desk and operating on the basis of what things cost, to underestimate the skill involved in turning the physical world to your ends with deftness, foresight and economy of movement. But the market plays funny tricks and cost does not necessarily equate to value. Skill though, remains skill and is always compelling to watch. Anyway, the lads shredded the brash as it came down and this is my new mulch mountain. On fine days I can be found transporting barrowloads through the orchard to the pond border, where I hope it will deter snails from attacking the delphiniums I grew from Raymond’s seed last year.
The Rhubarb in the kitchen garden has gone mental. It is now so muscular we can’t get the forcers on it. This led to a new pudding –rhuboffi pie – last Sunday which really was rather good. There’s so much of it (rhubarb, not pie – that disappeared pretty quickly) that I’m going to have to come up with more ways to use it so watch this space rhubarb growers….(For once, I also wrested the Sunday roast from Keith and made a decent fist of it so have posted evidence..). I have eschewed seeds this year as I suspect poling up and down to the greenhouse on crutches daily might be tricky. I have (hangs head in shame) bought some bedding packs of antirrhinum. However, I’m still going to try to get some cuttings in because, to be honest, I just can’t bear not to. What gardener with any soul can walk past a perovskia, nepeta or hardy chrysanthemum and not take a cutting…..
Moral of the story is do not creep up on Caren when she is weeding with her hori.