I’ve taken to taking my lunch outdoors - good for some sunshine, the vitamin D and a break from working at the computer but I don’t know if it’s a rest! The view of the manure sacks, the brambles, sticky weed and dandelions don’t give my jobs list a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I do have a ‘wildflower’ patch - once laid down as a chamomile lawn where now clover, buttercup are allowed to gain foothold - and for the last two years a self sown spotted orchid. it’s the rest of the garden that spooks me when everything is growing so fast. No sooner than I have weeded one area when the other unweeded areas beckon - it’s like painting the Forth Road Bridge - never ending and never clear.
This year I’d decided to buy in some compost and take out the pernicious weeds - couch grass, buttercup and dandelion and cover with a mulch layer. Being a bit of a procrastinator when buying items online it wasn’t until the start of lockdown I decided I needed to get a move on and order. Next delivery slot 2 weeks time on 14th April. I could manage that. Delivery day came - my brother in law had his delivery. Mine did not come either that day or the next. Several days later I emailed. 5 days after that I had a reply. Your delivery now due on 23rd April. Let’s hope it comes today. I can sympathise both with the company and with the grower in these unprecedented times a bit of patience becomes us. As a company we too are doing our best to fulfil your orders and for most part despite the warm spring our plants will do fine.
Take time to enjoy my garden? Well when I do look up - the Exochorda macrantha is looking stunning and brings more delight as it reflects the house light in the evening, yellow spikes of scented shrubby mahonia are out, the lilac next door, cherry blossom both flowering and fruiting are now out. The last of the stately magnolias - which keep on giving and odd one here and there over the next few months. Early fronds of the wisteria, paeony buds filling out, strawberries starting to flower, clematis buds on the ready up the trellis. The lupins and hollyhocks have survived the winter - sown last year they have yet to bloom. A new cistus/rock rose now definitely established and sending up flower shoots. The rhubarb and hostas that I split at the back end of last year now all doing their stuff.
Sometimes it is surprising when you start to do a list of the good things that can get overlooked, as to how much there is to appreciate.