Recently, I made a list of the things that I absolutely, urgently needed to get done in the garden. Seedlings needed to be transplanted to flower beds, other seedlings needed to be pricked out of their seed trays and potted on into individual pots, calm weeding had to be done; horrific, intensive, manual-labour weeding also had to be done….. the list goes on. I did none of these on the days I was supposed to because Mother Nature had other ideas and sent rain my way. So, I made cake instead – with lemons. When life gives you lemons, you make Lemon Polenta cake.
Yeah, yeah… I had to say it!
But then, the day after came. And, there was energy-providing cake in the kitchen. So, really, I had no excuse but to start – with something, anything. That’s the joy of having a great, sensible plan go to pot. When trying to get back on track, the focus somehow abandons the precise and efficient plan and, instead, simply becomes the culmination of the tasks as the mood grabs you. For me, this started with trotting out the last of my Calendula seedlings – I moved them from my outdoor potting table to the front steps. I wanted them to obviously glare at me every time I came to the front of the house, so that I would finally place them in the two beds in which I’d decided they should reside. I watered them liberally and found myself starting to do the calm weeding while these seedlings drained.
You’re probably wondering what calm weeding is. This is what I term my snatches of leisurely gardening time. It’s when I sit on my trusty, empty paint bucket and use my clawed, hand-cultivator to pull weeds away from the soil. It’s not especially strenuous, and I quite enjoy it. It’s definitely a task for those days when you don’t quite feel like doing the heavier chores in the garden.
Of course, because life scoffs at plans, my need for some calm activity in the garden wasn’t quite what the afternoon had in store for me. I had to tackle the dock weed around my Hebe shrubs. These have such a strong, and long, taproot that I find a trowel works best. I dig, twist, jab, cut and pull at about 6 or 7 inches under the soil to the best of my ability. This is not a calm job. It involves standing, leaning over with your butt in the air, jabbing, pulling and grunting. Really, it’s a tedious task which has the potential to make one look like an ungainly twit. But, it brings about results.
After a couple of hours of weeding, I rewarded myself with the happy task of positioning my patiently waiting pot marigolds (Calendula) and transplanting them into their beds. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next month or so, when summer really gets into full swing. I have a lot of plans for my flower beds, especially those in this front corner-garden area, but those plans involve many bulbs which I’ll plant at the end of summer. They will come into bloom next year.
This year, however, in the main flower bed in the front corner-garden my Potentilla have started to throw out their dainty, yet striking, red flowers already. I grew these from seeds about 2 years ago and they have been a fantastic success in my very exposed site.
I also horrified myself and did the super manual-labour intensive weeding. I used my hoe-pick (mattock hoe) and cleared away most of the reeds that were growing in the wetter more compact clay soil area of this garden. Since the stone chips haven’t been put on the path yet, I figured this was the right time to start doing this yucky job. I can’t control where there clumps of earth and weeds fly once the hoe-swinging starts to eat up the ground. So, it is probably best that I get this task done now. I have decided to put some strips of weed prevention membrane down along the back of the flower beds at the far side of the pathway. I can’t be doing this type of hoe-pick weeding every month!
There’s a bit of non-glamourous, very hurty, and most definitely back-breaking work to get through before the path is done. I have the feeling that this will culminate in a flurry of activity and will be very quickly done. But that’s for another day!
At the end of all of this, today, I felt very happy. Not because I had done a few of the things on my precise to-do list, but because while I was sitting on the front porch letting the hurt drain off my body I discovered two things that got me excited. The first was that one of my favourite authors had published the next book in his epic saga – The Knights of Erador by Philip C Quaintrell! Eeep! Excitements! The second was that I discovered, on my tablet there on the porch, a TV series that quite interested me. Double excitements!
All in all, despite having to force myself to get on with the gardening tasks and employ tricks to get myself to action a good few points on my to-do list, the day ended with me feeling happy, blessed, lucky, grateful and just full of love for my home, my garden, my family and my doggies. It was a feeling of pure contentment despite hard work and hard times.
Aside: Are you familiar with bugle calls? Maybe you’ve heard of Taps? Well the Fatigue Call is really pretty and it’s used to call in designated personnel for Fatigue Duty which is the labour assigned to military personnel that doesn’t require the use of arms. Have a listen at the link above!
