The week-less week

Hello friends! This week is a Wellington Week-free week. Because I am surrounded by boxes, we are 90% moved into our new whare (house), and I am very tired with a bit of free style rambles for you. I can feel the edge in my mood, where I have not been able to use the kettle, or cook a full dinner (where’s the salt), where I have had a coffee with actual caffeine instead of decaf, where I have had a gin to calm down and my body is grumpy. Where are my snuggly socks? Who knows. Cue a post with much less pep and much more sniping at the world.

Damn, it got hot!

One thing we noticed this week is that (I kid you not) we have started needing to water gardens. Some were bone dry, because the sun had done its thing. Some were not bone dry, but the sun was so hot that the leaves of the plants were transpirating (losing water) faster than water was being absorbed by the roots (the plant was wilting, in other words).

This is not necessarily a failure of any one thing, in Spring the heat and moisture swing wildly around, but I was surprised and a bit annoyed to find that some garden beds are so dry that they needed a good soaking. Dig a little hole in your garden bed and see how damp it is in there- the dirt should gently stick to your fingers and feel damp.

Moving plants is no fun

I strong armed my daughter and her lovely friend Oskar into helping me move my houseplants- all 3 uteloads- I have come to accept that I may need to downsize.. Here are the Hallway and Lounge plants awaiting the Kitchen, Bath, Bedroom plants (ooh! And me taking the photo in the window).

Also some extremely dry pot plants, which have all inexplicably consumed all of their water since they were last watered on Sunday.

Why do people keep doing this to Acers?

Please ignore the clearly damaged decking, it is on ‘the list,’ things to address.

When my friend bought his house years ago, there was a red acer planted hard up against the house, growing into the spouting and generally bothering the cladding. Why did they plant it there?, he asked me… I advised him that everyone seems to want to plant Acers hard up under a cover, in a location that they will always conflict with.

He was amused to get this photo of the Acer on my new deck. Let’s liberate all of the poor Acers and plant them further from the house, eh?

Leave your buxus alone

It is beautiful, it is covered in light green leaves. If you trim it before mid December, you will kneecap it severely and it won’t grow well at all. The classic rule always applies: don’t trim your buxus before December.

What now?

Well, because of the time of year, my inbox is flooding with your ideas, aspirations, questions and concerns about your gardens. What I can tell you is that you are doing just fine. What your garden most needs is for us all to have a cup of tea and do some dreaming. The weeds will come and go, go, go. The grass will slow and not need mowing nearly so much come Christmas.

Plant some seeds. Plant lots of seeds. Help your young kids throw some seeds around, and anxiously buy seedlings to pop in where they threw the seeds, in case your seeds didn’t grow.

The rate of plant growth at this time of year is AWESOME, have fun with it and harness it!