It’s days like today that I’m glad we don’t own a grand piano. Apart from the fact that I can’t play the piano, which would be a waste, I really have no desire to move one around a room. A gazebo, while lighter, is annoyingly similar when it comes to perfect placement.
Mirinda decided to work from home today (that’ll be this home and not the extension at Canary Wharf) and, given the fact that the sun was out, I decided to tackle the garden. The sun didn’t last long but was hidden by regular bursts of evil mothership proportioned black clouds which rained down upon all and sundry before moving on and allowing the sun to return. A strange day with a lovely warm light between the showers and hailstorm.
This makes it sound quite horrendous but the timings were perfect for me. I worked in the sun and managed to be inside for the rain. Sorted. And the poodles managed to avoid getting wet as well.
My first job of the day was to plant the two (red) bleeding hearts we bought at the garden centre yesterday. I put them in the holly bed, in front of where I planted the white ones the other week. They look quite spectacular at the moment and I hope that some flower eating nasty thing doesn’t turn up to munch through them.
Bleeding hearts looking lush
Next I had to move some crocosmias from the decimated lavender bed near the back door (decimated because Mirinda went mad with some weapons of plant destruction on the weekend) to the Home of Crocosmias down in the hot border.
Crocosmias are quite odd in that the bulb splits and grows and splits and grows until you have a big bunch of bulbs. I think (if you’re a proper gardener) you’re supposed to break them apart and plant them up as separate plants…maybe I shouldn’t write that I didn’t. I can always plead ignorance…D’oh!
My next job was not very nice. Mirinda wanted me to move the gazebo a few feet. The gazebo is a thin rusty metal structure on three legs. Not particularly heavy but a pain to move, especially when plants are growing up the legs.
Actually, to be completely honest, only one leg had a plant growing up it (a clematis) and I unravelled it pretty much successfully. Another leg had the rose from last week but that hadn’t started entwining yet.
So I moved it. Then I called Mirinda to come and tell me where she actually wanted it. Being a man (and the person responsible for big object movements in our house) I naturally left one leg near the clematis so it would be very easy to just re-tangle the vines around the leg. The only thing that had changed with this leg was the angle, the other two legs were in completely new positions.
Mirinda didn’t like it. She also didn’t like the other 340 positions she had me move the gazebo into over the next two hours. Finally, however, she was happy. The clematis was now two feet away. Two feet! I had to transplant the clematis two feet.
Why all the fuss, she asked...
Still, I did. And all was well with the world. I moved the rose, extended the mowing strip and, finally, had a lovely relaxing, cleansing shower. It’s the best bit, if you ask me.
I am now waiting for Mirinda to go out, look at it, frown and ask me to move it six inches to the left…Carmen’s face says it all…
She wants you to what?
I would suddenly be very deaf.
love mum