The big blow

The weather went a bit mental today. Following a night of torrential (though nothing like Queensland) rain, the wind started. It was a big, swirly, buffeting kind of wind; the kind that normally blows pot-bound conifers over.

One of the smaller planters

After Skyping with mum, doing the shopping and walking the dogs around the Park, I headed into the garden to start making the wire fence which will separate the Wild Flower Patch (that was Emma’s Jungle) from the rest of the garden…and the dogs. One of the great things about wire mesh is that the wind just blows through it. This made erection quite painless.

No, the hoisting of the fence was fine, however, the uprooting of grass and weeds was a bit labour intensive. When Chris the Gardener prepared the Crazy Bed, he worked up to a line of bricks which I’d placed, loose on the ground. This delineated the end of the bed. The line of bricks stayed there for when he laid the wild flower mat as it also delineated the border of the meadow. This is all well and good except that the strip of brick-wide ground was completely covered in grass and dandelions. It was the clearance of this strip that took up most of my time.

Once weeded, I then had to dig a shallow ditch for the bricks to go into. I then started on the fence. I managed the first four metres (or so) before having to call it a day. At the moment it looks a bit stark but eventually, with climbers tumbling all over it, it will look a lot more attractive.

The first bit

Elsewhere in the garden, the various plants were treated a bit roughly by the near constant wind but, it seems, they all survived. Best of all, I didn’t have to pick up any fallen conifers now they’ve been transplanted to planters rather than the round pots they came in. And no broken terracotta! That’s definitely a bonus.

Clematis montana before the wind