Monday, January 31, 2011

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...




5 comments:

Tzivia said...

COLD??? Are you joking?!? :-)))

Here in TO, it'll be -11 tomorrow, and my MIL in Calgary creates her glorious garden in only about 3 months of the year.
So, so jealous of those primroses and irises; I cannot even begin to tell you.
Nothing here is green - nothing. The world is entirely bleak.

sheila said...

Eeks! That IS cold. Bleak is not good, is it? The winter blahs get their grip that way. I'm sending you virtual woollies, Jennifer: warm, sunny ones.

Funny, as I was writing about the garden I kept flashing to some of the women I know in the Okanagan and how their summer comes and goes in a flash, but it's SO MUCH HOTTER than it is here. And there's your MIL with a similar season. It might be milder here, I guess, but the rain sucks when it sets in.

I think I must have been a wimpy cat in another life...

Samantha said...

Ha ha! You are so cute, complaining of cold while working in your garden! Some of us can't even find our garden under the frozen white tundra that is our backyards. We are about -10 around here... too cold for much of anything outside. I can't complain - my husband is in Saskatchewan where it has reached -45, a temperature too cold for me to even comprehend!

Gorgeous sunset photos. We've been getting a lot of those as well. That tree is amazing by the way.

p.s. I'll send you a picture of me in my gardening outfit this summer, just be prepared to laugh.

Andrea said...

This is the time of year I have to skim your posts because the green jealousy (pun intended) wells up and blinds me.... Andrea... -23 with windchill this morning.... frozen wasteland in my garden....

ipsa said...

It was -1 here yesterday. Brrr.

Love the sunset photos. You've inspired me to go out and get reacquainted with my garden.