Oh, The Weather In ‘Bonnie’ Scotland!

I feel like I’m running out of time for my garden projects, and I have the weather to thank for that. 

My boxes of 700 spring bulbs have arrived and there’s a terrible amount to do out there in the garden in the short dry spells that provide minute relief in this seemingly never-ending wall of rain and wind!

So far I have managed to plant up one bed, in my cluster of flower beds, with about 50 spring bulbs as well as calendula and cornflower seeds sown directly.  I’ve even applied the bark mulch topping!  Good right?  Newp.  Yours truly decided to have a massive brainwave yesterday and has convinced herself that she needs to buy a variegated holly shrub to plant in the middle of the back of that same neatly prepared flower bed.  And, of course true to form this idea has taken root mentally and is now dominating my gardening thoughts!

I must admit that I may be letting it dominate my thoughts because I know I have to get myself up the hill in the back garden to harvest some rocks that I need for bed edging in the front garden.  I also need to put down some weed membrane around the trees in the front garden and tote stone chips to cover it all.  It will look pretty, it’s the same pink stone chips I’ve been using for garden paths and for in front of my garden shed.  The thought of lifting stones and hefting stones and shovelling stones and barrowing stones really exhausts me though.  But again, true to form, I want to get it over and done with so this task is also dominating my thoughts – even though I have more seeds to sow before it becomes too late!

Besides these two tasks I have also marked out an extension to the front garden hedging bed and this requires turf to be lifted, membrane to be cut and stone edging to be set before the mulch goes down.  It’s simple to think about, but the manual effort will not be minor.  I will be pleased to see it done though, and since the front hedge is visible from the kitchen and living room windows it will be lovely to see it neat and orderly over the winter.

The weather is set to spit and drizzle all day today and I can hear the wind rush past as I sit in my home office upstairs.  But, I have a break from work and I have a feeling that I need to get going with quite a few tasks today. 

I don’t want to think of the rest of the tasks at the moment.  They’re daunting. 

Do you remember when I had to dig and clear ditches this year and last, between my cluster of flower beds and the rose hedge/ rubble heap area?  Well, also this year we laid down field pipework so we could close up the ditch.  This would help us with the lawn mower you see, as we could seamlessly mow that lower area to the garden instead of having to use the strimmer.  It makes a difference visually, as the mowed grass looks neater and fresher than grass which is unevenly cut.  It’s also a mighty pain to have to heft a strimmer in places where a mower could, and should, go.  So guess what? Someone has to go and compress all the soil that we’ve transported to cover the pipework.  Ugh. That means me.

You may be wondering at this point where the soil to cover this pipework came from.  Well you see I have a large black hole of a swimming pool at my back door where the wooden steps used to be.  Yep, the weather has blown in and totally put a halt to ‘the new back steps’ project at the worst stage – of course. But, looking on the bright side, while I’m waiting for the concrete steps to be built, I can extend the width of the walk way around the house at the back door area and plant up the slope, the length that the steps will eventually cover.  It’s a lot of work though.  Currently, the slope is full of stony lumps and bumps, grass and weeds, and it’s fairly steep. In other words it’s just like my extended front garden slope.  Boy, am I going to have a super fun time trying to dig things out, plant things, keep weeds down, apply mulch and keep my balance when tackling these sites.  Sigh, I should probably order some more weed membrane.

Anyway, I can’t think of those slopes today. I need to get going on seeds and bulbs in the flatter beds at the moment. Boy oh boy, I think this means I have to head out into the wet outdoors to try to get at least one of these projects done today. Eeep! Welcome to Autumn in Scotland, folks.  Rain and wind and spitting drizzle and wind and heavy wetness and…. WIND. Meh.

Update:  As frequently happens, if I have the time to write a post I generally have the time to bundle myself off into the garden to do something productive for an hour or two.  Today it was two hours and I got the weed membrane laid around the trees and the chips set upon it.  I have some replenishment of bark mulch to do in the same general area as well but with my back slightly achy from toting big stones from up the hill on our croft, as well as from barrowloads of shovelling and tipping stone chips, I decided to put that off until I’ve done my extension of the front-hedging bed as that area will need bark mulch too.  Hopefully it won’t be wet the next time I can grab some time for garden projects!