Ready for planting

It was back to school for me this week, but with no Saturday lessons, weekends really are weekends: two full days of fun and frolics.  The intention was to start planting in the new garden, as I last weekend I had ransacked the Cut Flower Patch at the old place for a load of stuff to start populating borders.  But in between a trip to Hive Beach and visits to the sick and elderly (our three surviving parents are taking it in turns to be Harry Hill’s “Most Sick Person of The Week”) we did not get do anything till Sunday afternoon.

But we got a lot done for what was officially our first proper stint in the new garden.  Mrs B wanted to start with the back yard border which last summer was inundated with geraniums that had taken over the place.  A new challenge for us here is to sort out a pond, so with images of Monty (or more pertinently Charlie Dimock) in our heads we donned wellies and started dredging our water feature.  It turns out that not only was the pond a lot bigger than we thought, it also contained a wealth of plant life that seemed to be choking itself – though not apparently a large number of frogs that were idly lolling in the bottom.

We took a lot of water lily out (laying it on the side to allow any fauna to find its way back, just like Monty had told us) then cleared geraniums, rearranged some of the bog-type plants around the pond and planted irises.  I say we – actually it was mainly me as Mrs B was obsessing about the frogs that both intrigued and repelled her.  She did not want to go near them, but was equally worried that they would be unable to escape the pond if we did not put a stairway of stones for them to ascend.

Elsewhere we planted snow drops which are the harbingers of our wedding anniversary in February.  And in front of the house I started digging up part of the lawn to extend a flower bed into which the echinacea and more irises went.  All-in-all it was a good afternoon’s work which augurs well for the future.