Sunday 30 March 2008

plantings


First day warm enough [for me] to do some gardening. The soil is sandy and free draining here, but is saturated today with all the rain we have been having.
I think I read once that Native Americans despair of our English attitude to rain, they say that if we only reported it as a blessing, instead of moaning, we would have a happier more balanced reaction to weather.
I suspect the NA may not have lived in Carlisle, which should be pronounced phonetically to rhyme with drizzle.
Rain was forecast but so far has not arrived to bless us.
I chopped down a large portion of the yucca. This fat spiky fellow had outgrown the conservatory, and so after much kicking at it's stubborn pot, was eventually separated from same and placed in the common soil outside my workroom window.
I assumed it would then not do very much, facing early morning frosts and winds straight from Siberia,topped off with a weedy English sun.
However it grew an even sturdier trunk, divided to make a tree, and threatened anyone who approached with blindness. But over the years I have ceased to admire and become querulous, how about my yellow rambler rose in the shade behind this exotic, where ever yuccas come from they can now go back.
I threw some little daffodil bulbs, [received from polite ladies who lunch, a gorgeous yellow on a dank day, but now just straggly leaves], into various holes had a word with the lilies [all soggy and not trying] and pronounced myself - Done.
Most of the flowers in the church yard are plastic, and have added some gaiety to counter the threat of the dark yews.
When the church was demolished by the doodle bug they rebuilt it with an entrance path from the road. I suspect they [god's bureaucrats] sold off some church land to pay for the concrete eyesore they then erected, which meant the original path was leading nowhere - no comment].
However the yews that stood along the abandoned way still gloom at each other.
I take the doggy that way so she can wee in the pightle that runs round the outside of the churchyard and not on the incumbents, but i don't walk between the yews.
God's busybodies have tried to ban doggies and plastic flowers at different times but failed.