Come rain or shine

Let’s start with the rain. A really cold, heavy rain driven by a blustery wind, managed to invade the usually safe haven of my patio and wet all my precious seed packets! I’d got stuff in envelopes saved from my own garden, little brown paper packets from the RHS gardens (these contained the more unusual plants) as well as all the brightly coloured packets bought in England and endowed with great hope! Now what to do? I know, I just know they’ll germinate so it’s asbsolutely necessary to get them in the ground, sharp! But I’ll need so many pots, so much soil, so much space and lastly, so much patience…. Gardening has taught me patience, but it’s of the long-term ,waiting-for-bulbs type of patience, not the short-term quickie patience needed for seeds!

The next day it was warm. A wonderful sunny day. With a little help from my friends I eventually found out how to prune Lantana .Pretty easy actually, but maybe I ought to wait for results before saying that.It was also a suitable day to exploit my grandchildren! I love being Head Gardener! I even bought myself a mug once in a garden centre saying just that! You’ve got to make things clear to people right from the start! The job was to dig up the Iris foetida and transplant it outside the garden in the “orchard”. Done. We were then able to plant a Hydrangea “Hopcorn” in its place. I bought this at the Chelsea Flower Show 2/3 years ago and it has been lovingly cared for in a pot since then. An oleander plant which was given to me was transplanted easily because it is still small, next to the one already outside.

And when I’m not in the garden? Well I fill in my 5-year gardener’s record book, look up pruning in the RHS handbook, and NEVER lounge on the sofa in the patio. But at least I’m still relatively sane.There are gardeners who are so enthusiastic that they use miners’ headlights to garden at night. Did you know?