Winter weeding and gardeners' hands

My garden guardian

Perfumed white violet


The hole

Just returned from foray into garden, dug great hole and added yummy mix of sheep, cow and blood and bone to bottom of same at second spade depth level. 'The Alnwick' rose whose pink clashes with 'Graham Thomas' will get a new residence, it, and it's twin, will flank 'Abraham Darby' to balance the other side of my nescent secret garden with 'Just Joey' supported by two 'Jude the Obscure'. Don't you just love the name? It cunjures up times of chivalry and romance, of wimples and siken slippers. I digress. Back to earth.

Aren't you green with envy that I can just trundle down the
hill with my trusty barrow and fill it up at the sheep yards?
Then comes the hard bit, hoping that my daughter or one of
the grandies will take it up again. Not so bad really, usually
score a cup of tea while asking.


My back resenting the exertion, straightened opening a view
of the first rather moth eaten golden Jonquil,



also the grass having sprung up with the few days of rain
threatening knee height and blanketing beds and paths on
its inexorable march to infinity.



Can you guess what I mean when I say weeding, they sprang up while I was pruning roses ... really sneaky!

I'm game, I actually love , yes, Love weeding. Now I must tell you,
I am a person of great forsight, the Boyscouts motto and all that
you know....I always liked boys....ah well.... I bent to indulge myself
with an ogry of weeding only to discover that my heart had become
so jealous of my knees it would not allow my head anywhere near
them. A bit of a disappointment but I have my ways and means,
so down I went on one knee in proposing mode. Remember the
Boyscouts? Yes I was prepared for any eventualiy, my gardeners'
hands were soaked in Skin Repair to their eye balls, I wore gloves.
I even wear gloves at night to evade awakening to mysterious stiff
Polish sausages grafted to my wrists. Well there I was enjoying my
orgy when I spied some tufts of grass among the Freesias. The clump
of Freesias was rather thick and gloves are not known to distinguish
between them and grass. My right glove came off, but only for a
moment you understsand, and, as my knee was getting a bit stiff
from moisture and cold and hard ground, it formed a little, but
effective, insulator. Thereafter I did what I like doing best....
I weeded with gay abandon, savouring the moist earth, talking to
the worms and squashing the armies of little white imported snails.
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My cup runneth over. I am at peace.
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Flowering at the moment
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Surprise in the shade-house
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A violet from my mothers garden many years ago
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Cosmos in mid-winter?
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Tanacetum parthenium (Feverfew) with pine mushroom in background
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The first Hyacinth
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Ipheion uniflorum
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Ruby grapefruit, not really aflower, but so bright
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Glowing ruby seeds on honeysuckle
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Hail pelting down on front path.