We gardeners share so many delights in our gardens: beautiful flowers, delicious produce, peace and tranquility, vibrant colour and sweet scents…..However, we also share the not-so inspiring aspects of our chosen passion.
Doc has recently spent a lot of time and energy experiencing (yet again) the hard, manual graft of so-called gardening. He continuing the re-landscaping of several areas of the garden including hard pruning a border - though this is an understatement. It is his second massacre event and Doc would feel more at home on a building site or in the Amazon jungle.
The paths between the raised beds in the vegetable garden are laid with bark to prevent weed growth and in theory this is easier to manage than grass or gravel. However, the bark is popular with birds and disappears over time. What do they do with it, I wonder? What is left eventually turns into compost and despite having a membrane underneath, it becomes home to weeds. This year Doc and I agreed that the bark would have to be topped up.
Doc would have loved to buy a few bags of bark chips from the garden centre and get the job done easily and quickly. However, Springfield is much more challenging. Firstly, it needs enough bark to empty a forest and secondly, the bark has to be barrowed from the driveway at the front of the house, down to the vegetable garden, which is inconveniently on a hill and feels further away with each barrow load.
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| Barkgate |
It took Doc 3 hours with 2 pit stops at the back door for some elderflower cordial and biscuits. What we thought was more-than-enough bark is about half of what is required to finish the job. The paths are more like bottomless pits than walkways. 2 more expensive bags the size of the one above will have to be ordered so we are hoping it lasts 5 years. Or better still, could it not possibly ‘see us out?’
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| A Drop in the Ocean of Bark |
Doc was ready for a break but there was still work to do. After the bark debacle he disappeared into the long border along the fence and emerged a couple of days later, during a rain storm. He had to climb from behind a wall of debris and then barrow it to the bonfire area. Reluctantly, he reserved some of the larger branches which he will take the axe to to feed our log burner one of these cold winters. (Well, we have to offset the cost of the bark, don’t we?)
When Doc has recovered he will be able to appreciate the result of his labours. He will see that the long border is actually a lot wider than we originally thought, with lots of potential. There are some prize specimens such as the lovely variegated holly which has layered itself in a couple of spaces and these young plants will make nice presents for the family. The rhododendrons, amanchlier, azaleas and pieris japonica are already breathing a sigh of relief and will soon sprout again, filled with renewed vigour. In a couple of years they will provide that area of the garden with colour and interest. The juniper tree, however, adds nothing to the new picture and will have to be felled. We will plug the gap with something more manageable and attractive.
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| Indiana Jones in the Garden |
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| Damson seedling is now a tree but the Juniper behind it has to go.... |
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| More scope with the Holly haircut - don't put the saw away Doc! |
In the meantime there are 2 large bags of Cotswold stone chips to be barrowed, paving to be laid, and a whole day spent burning a small forest. Oh, and not forgetting the bark when it arrives! Doc is doing a wonderful job and I am so lucky that he is strong, willing and able. My disability holds me back and all I can do is cheer him on from the sidelines. I must go and put a couple of bottles of beer in the fridge for him and make sure he has double pasta rations for supper.
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