Acid soil pottings

Today was beautiful. Sunny and mild, perfect for working in the garden…which is a good thing because I have a LOT of work to do in the garden.

First thing, though, I made Mirinda a cup of tea and headed for the gym. Mirinda was convinced she had a talk to give to a bunch of Vietnamese people at midday so she settled back and slowly moved into the day. Her throat was rather sore and she has the beginnings of a cold to irritate her so her joining of the day was decidedly sluggish.

Apparently (for I wasn’t there) she suddenly realised that the meeting was actually at 10:30. This started her racing around like an idiot, trying to get to the station asap. Failing to get a taxi, she decided to take Max. As I left the gym I had received a frantic text:

Urgent – pls book parking at Farnham station for Max

That’s the first text I’ve ever had from my wife starting with the word ‘urgent’ so, naturally I took it very, very seriously…and booked the parking. I then continued towards home wondering what had happened.

I didn’t find out until she rang me during lunch.

Unfortunately the compost I needed to rotate the conifers was now at the station car park (in Max’s boot) so I decided to start on the azaleas. First up I had to empty a big blue pot and cart it to the Garden of One Thousand Yaps. An irritating job because the pot was full of big rocks concreted together with mud. Still, it was lovely sitting in the sun digging and chopping away.

I then had to create a brick platform for the pot. I always find this makes things a lot easier in the future. Otherwise the pot just gradually sinks into the earth making it next to impossible to move. This way, the bricks sink and the pot remains gloriously accessible.

I then planted up one of the azaleas (we only had one bag of ericaceous compost) and left the other two for next week. The other major job I did was to cut back the roses. This is always a bit worrying but I’ve not lost one yet so, hopefully, they’ll survive.

There was also a fair bit of weeding…as usual.

We also managed a walk up the park after lunch though we did lose Emma’s ball. I say ‘we’ when, in fact, it was entirely my fault. I flickered the ball into a big bunch of brambles and poor Emma couldn’t find it. She searched valiantly, catching hair on the thorns and generally finding her movement increasingly difficult.

Avenue in the sunshine

It’s a good job we have plenty of spare tennis balls.

There were quite a few other dog walkers out and about but I noticed that I was the only one in shorts and t-shirt, everyone else typically reluctant to hang up their winter clothes.

All in all, a lovely day for me but a crazy one for Mirinda…Oh, and just to compound her confused day, the audience was in fact NOT Vietnamese. She had to change her talk, on the fly, appropriately for an audience who understood what she was saying. Still, she’s so brilliant that this was not a problem.

Actually I think it’s quite good to have her complacency shaken every now and then with these little tests.