Watering, pruning and tidying-up on Friday, 9th August 2012

In the garden, and a bit later today, for there were things to do at home before I could get outside.

It's just one of those times to contend with!

Anyway, I managed to get to the garden about 9.30 and immediately watered the vegetables even though there had been early morning rain; and after the water, a solution of soapy water to keep the bugs at bay.

It's an overcast morning and a little dark, and the cabbage whites are nowhere to be seen until about an hour later, which is good. In the afternoon, it becomes brighter and sunnier and then there are plenty of butterflies flitting over the garden but by then, I've given my cabbages two sprays of soapy solution and the butterflies are definitely keeping clear of the netting, which is brilliant.

I work until approximately midday and then return for a little more paperwork and a chance to put my feet up, do a little shopping, prepare supper and read for a short while before revisiting the garden scene.  On the way, I collect a pair of long-handled secateurs, shears and some garden pots for lavender cuttings and a few mint plants.

A quick watering again, to keep my new plants in good form, and some soapy solution against the bugs!

I've been trying to reduce the size of an over-sized laurel bush that's gone wild and the luxuriant growth is only a thin veneer of glossiness, for underneath it's all deadwood, moth-eaten leaves and a fine congestion of ivy and laurel leaves entwined about each other.  My small secateurs cope with the top leaves but not the dry old stems and branches.  I need to cut the front section clear away to give the bush a chance for re-growth.  I spend the next hour doing all I can to reduce the bulkiness of the bush, and to allow a little more light into the border, around the base of the bush, where there is a high accumulation of ivy mixed in with a variegated, small leaved creeping plant.  It's managed and now I shall only need help with the thickest of branches, still holding out against removal, and the opened-out middle section is looking good.

By now, I'm hooked on using these new tools,so I have a go at the bushes on the opposite side of the garden, and manage to cut away quite a few, low-down, thicker stems which have resisted my earlier prunings.

I plant a few more herbs, water the veggies and herbs again, and store all my tools away for another day.  It's too late now to take another photo-shot but here's one from earlier in the day...

Easy on the eye garden!

....and you can see the trimmings littering the right hand side of the garden and the rather bare herb bed over to the left hand garden side.  The bush at the left far-back, has had another trimming today and now, with my extra tools, I shall be able to reduce it's width to an even more acceptable girth!

A last good watering and I'm determined to go home....but, it's so easy to become hooked, and time simply runs away with you - out in the garden, on a warm and sunny evening, with the daylight slowly fading away and that sense of wellbeing suffusing soil-grubby little you!

Daisy xxx