Thursday, November 10, 2011

Guess what . . . . . I'm back!!

Oh, dear readers, what adventures I've had!!  I rowed across the Pacific Ocean on a plank of wood with two teaspoons for oars, I won and lost a gazillion dollars at the 'Go Fish' tables in Las Vegas, I scraped the peeling paint from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and gave it a nice coat of Dulux Ceiling White, and I walked backwards up Mount Everest wearing flippers!

In the meantime, the weather has turned warm, hot even, and the garden has been a mass of blooms.  The roses have had their first massive flush and are now crying out for a good dead-heading.  Which I ought to be out there doing.

Instead I have been inside working steadily on the creation of a website of family memorabilia.  What started out as a steep learning curve soon turned precipitous and still stretches out in front of me for a little while longer.  It has called for great attention to small details and has been most rewarding and intensely frustrating all at the same time.

In the meantime, in the garden, I have been made redundant as a 'gardener': I am now solely a 'weeder'.  And if I was truthful with myself, I would have admitted long ago that lurking in the garden here and there are some of the most vile, evil weeds that ever I could meet.  I knew they were there, I just chose to ignore the fact.  That can be the case no longer.

In one particular area of the garden, in amongst the oxalis and radium weed, was a type of grassy stuff which I blithely pulled at, mostly just managing to pull the tops off and not disturbing the roots at all.  I decided I would research what it was - it was just such a mat of growth in the garden, I knew it couldn't be something good.  Oh shriek of horror, it's nut grass!  Every little bit of information I find about it out there in cyberspace tells me that once it is in your garden, it is impossible to remove.  That's it, it's just described as 'impossible' - no herbicide, no home remedy, no nothing - it's impossible!  I have tried to prove them wrong by digging it up and going through the soil with my bare hands, trying to remove every last piece of root and every last 'nut'.  One square metre of digging can produce three bucketsful of nut grass.  And still it comes up.

What I don't understand is, if I pulled the tops off some expensive, nursery-bought plant in the garden by mistake, it would instantly die!  Without exception!  Why, oh why then do things such as nut grass simply thrive on being beheaded.

However, it's not all doom and gloom.  The perfume in the air from the roses has been such a treat, things that make me happy have flowered, like the Johnson's Blue geranium, and my dear old mother's irises -



and the mulberry tree has been almost lying on the ground with the weight of fruit.  There will be no jam this season, unless I hurry up and get myself organised.  The only fruit I've picked have gone straight into my mouth.

One day soon I will be back to being a gardener, not a website builder.  Bring on that day!

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