In the Garden again - March

Mum comes round on a Friday morning.  She does my cleaning for me ..... I do pay her.  She keeps asking if she can retire, especially now  I have given up work.  I keep telling her that I didn't give up work so I could do my cleaning!  I also tell her that I know there will be a time when I have to do her cleaning, and that I won't be getting paid.

Anyway, this started off when I was working full time.  Mum had semi-retired and we thought it would be a real big help for me and a bit of extra income for mum..

Now that I'm off we kind of do it together.  You'd think it would take half the time, but it doesn't.  It actually ends up taking about twice as long.  Today, she was here at 8.30am, I wasn't even up, and she didn't leave till 2.30pm.

We do tend to get very easily distracted. Over the last few weeks we've spent lots of time looking at Peggy's treasures, chatting and having coffee and cake!  It takes longer, but it is more fun and we both really enjoy it.

Mum loves gardening and today was our first post cleaning gardening session.  We finished the cleaning by about 12.30pm and headed out the back for a good couple of hours.  My grass cutting man had been to give the grass it's first cut of the year so the garden already looked lots better.

We set ourselves the objective of tidying the border in front of the shed.  This is where we always start.  It's a nicely contained bit of border, with the shed at one end and the patio at the other, so it's a good 'bite sized chunk'.  The problem is that we never seem to get to the rest of the garden, maybe this year will be different.

Once we'd cleared all the winter debris, the planting looked a bit haphazard.  I never understand why plants don't seem to stay where you first put them.

Mollie the Witch

We ended up digging up the majority of what was in the border and re-arranged the plants in a far more orderly fashion - tall stuff at the back and lower growing at the front.  One of the things that got moved was a peony, mlokosewitschii, or Mollie the Witch as it is commonly known.  We bought this from Hidcote, a National Trust garden, a few years ago.  When we bought it, it was in flower, but we've not had flowers since, though we get lots of leafy growth.  I am hoping that moving it might shock it into flower.






Filling the Gaps

We then found that we had a load of gaps, so I ended up digging up some foxgloves, aquilegias and forget-me-nots, which had self set in random places, to fill them.

The crocosmia had also gone a bit crazy, so I dug up a load of the bulbs and used them to fill a gap in the border in the front garden.

When we'd finished we were both absolutely shattered, but really pleased with what we'd done.  With any garden, it is definitely a case of a good effort at this time of year, makes for far more enjoyment later on.



Magnolia in Bud

One of the things we're always pleased to see in the garden at this time of year is buds on the magnolia - this was a wedding present and it generally speaking is in flower on our Wedding Anniversary.  It's looking like it's going to make a good show this year.




Before and After

The problem now, of course, is that one bit looks great, really tidy, which makes the rest look really scruffy.  This will hopefully spur us on to do more over the coming weeks.