I have been forcing spring a bit here. The plots on the lottie are soaking wet squishy to walk on, too squishy to even do weeding. Having said all that, there are other tasks that can be carried out. To begin with my Bride insisted that I make the paths and arches passable. She wanted to be able to walk without being rubbed- on or tugged- at or otherwise hindered in any way whilst traversing the flower “acres”. Yep then, that was job number one for me, as I could see what she meant with her curly hair. She kept hanging- up with those wayward Lonicera or Clematis twigs and sprigs. Oké, point taken. Put on the Rossini, I’m going in. The work was cursory because we had more important fish to fry— we went out and picked up quite a few bin-liners full of wood-chips three days ago, and today, a second load. When we began three days ago, we were only doing short stretches of path as to not over- tax our “winter muscles”. The process is this— we remove the composted pathing material down to the root cloth...clean that off and then dump the new wood-chips onto the paths and rake it level. This work is a bit back-breaking with one of us standing loosening the old chips and raking the new chips whilst the other kneels and sorts the roots and weeds out of the departing path covering. You can see chips and cleaned-away root cloth. We began up front. Look at that Stokesia left of the path. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Well in the middle of our project, we discovered that there was free manure mixed with compost up by the clubhouse. Of course we would have to take a break in our work, while I took our wheelbarrow and trotted up to the clubhouse for a load of the steaming, richly fragrant soil decoration. Oh mates, it was heady. It was lovely to see, smell shovel. It was almost a romantic experience. Heh, heh, heh— who would say something like that except a gardener. Then today, we did a few meters more. Here you can see the variety of chippies we had picked up today. Looking over the area up front gave us a good feeling of accomplishment. We used the richly composted old chip pathing for plum tree nutrition. As we run through the norwegian binliners, we hang them up in the greenhoose to dry for re- use. Now then, the weather turned ugly on us so we headed for home...it was tea time anyway. We still have quite a bit to do— the stretch in front of the garden-house and along the side of the house running back to the canal and compost bin. We feel a bit stiff and are now hoping for some rain tomorrow. Ha ha.
Ha ha thanks Mart. Well, one has to work hard to stay warm outside. We are in for some freezing weather in a week or so. Burrrrrrrr.
