Just Forking About...

Today I have been doing an extraordinary amount of serious gardening. Old raspberry canes trimmed and inspected, infected leaves promptly removed and the new buds checked for early frost damage. The old rhubarb crown has now been split - Barbara turned in her position and Barnie, her "other half", planted out in the front. She's going to sulk something furious as I accidently snapped her main tuber, but she's got plenty to be going on with - I'll leave the first crop until later in the year to give her a chance to rebuild.

The ancient lavender bush in the front has heavily pruned and re-bound to stop it collapsing again - quite frankly I'm amazed it's still going. The hydrangea has had it's many heads lopped off, but much like the Hydra of Greek mythology, it will come back with twice as many next year. I also took out the weaker, less conveniently positioned sycamore saplings, old fuchsia branches and stripped chunks of grass from the borders.

The herb garden has been thoroughly manicured, old chive stems removed, the thymes cut right back and the first-year rosemary stems taken out. The miracle passionflower is twined back into place up the fence rather than across the baby gooseberry bush. I'm deeply impressed with this little plant and it's phoenix-like regrowth since the rootshock of moving it nearly killed it off - even the frosts haven't stopped it, anyone would think it was summer already.

I also planted a line of daffodils and crocuses, double-headed and singles, all planted along the front edge of the fence for splashes of vibrant yellow come spring, and will be thinking about doing some seed trays for smaller early summer flowers in a month or so.

I'm looking forwards to seeing the garden next year. It'll be fun to get some more vegetables rolling this time too - shame my packet of leftover lettuce, onion and radish seeds and my unopened carrot seeds blew away when my greenhouse got totalled in the storm. I'll have to find some green PVC tape to repair it.