In Which I Spend Some Time In The Garden

Look! Irises! Ignore those buttercups...and that persistently obnoxious grass. Makes me feel quite faint, all those interlopers, because it reminds me of what I'm going to be spending the next 10 years digging up, assuming I don't win the lottery and do the Grand Tour with FDPG (this is her fondest wish at the moment: start in Egypt, move to Rome, Alexandria, Greece, India...ending up at the Studio Ghibli Museum in Japan), because of course that SO could happen.

Wait. How did I get to Studio Ghibli? From irises?

(just call me the Queen of the Segue)

It was cold on the weekend, but not cold enough that I couldn't go out side and do some sawing of fruit tree limbs, or digging of weeds under fruit trees, or mulching with straw, or putting terracotta cloches over rhubarb (sticking its red little buds out of the ground already). So I did.

I made plans to make paths for easier walking, dug drainage trenches, dug holes for more fruit trees, and had a change of heart and replanted the Horribly Rust-Prone Pear Tree that I'd flung into the bushes last year when the crop of pears went funny for the THIRD TIME. Yes, I admit, I had a Fit of Pique. My Jane Austen self is rather mortified at this lack of restraint but there's only so much rust a girl can take before Flinging Stubborn Trees Into Bushes becomes a highly viable option. As Richard said "That'll show it!" (contrary to Richard's sarcasm I think it MIGHT show it)

I hope no one saw me out there. I wore a down vest, a down vest I think my dad used to own. My hair is in need of a cut and looking quite scrubby. I also wore my Garden Outfit (yes, I DO have a Garden Outfit, doesn't everyone?) and it's getting distressingly decrepit, so of course I looked totally dorky.

Totally dorky. If I didn't already guess it I would have known it by the looks my early 20-something neighbours gave me when they went off to their carefree university gym/chick-watching experience: incredulity mixed with a little unbridled mirth, and a touch of horror.

Good thing I've had kids - I can take a little public humiliation now, without even flinching.

But it was fun. And there were lots of little surprises. Like that clump of irises. There is very little to rival the blue of an iris. And I'm not even a blue sort of person. And look at those primroses up there in the last photo. I LOVE those primroses. I can't believe I spent so many years buying those grocery store primroses, the ones that never seem to come back after their brief gloriously colourful twenty seconds on my porch. Even my little lemon trees are doing nicely, considering how horribly cold and biting it's been of late. They look glossy and bright. The lemons are, dare I say it, getting larger? It's a bit wet under all that Reemay, and I'll have to work in some sand once the weather warms up, so I'm still in Holding Breath Mode. Lovely Lemons...wasn't that a Strawbs song?

The upside to cold weather: nice sunrises and sunsets...