A Quiet Weekend in the Garden

Yesterday afternoon the patch of backyard next to my vegie garden looked like this. It was annoying me no end. I had spent all morning buying lovely Christmas things at the Christmas market at a big old hall with lots of wood panelling and twinkly Christmas lights and then I spent all afternoon in bed reading Snuff by Terry Pratchett for about the fifth time because it is a truly excellent book, and eating the chocolate I bought to put in the Advent calendar, and then I went outside before dinner, and this.. it really didn't fit into my lovely day at all.

Mmm, no better from this angle. You can see the tiny spot I cleared last week to put in a teepee of beans. I had to bring down the hideous plastic chair that I found in the garden when I bought the house because the radio only works in the back garden at waist height. And here is one of the beautiful wooden day beds that The Man made for me as a parting gift before we broke up the partnership. He really is lovely. But sadly, it is about to be eaten up by the garden triffids. Which is a pity because the girls come outside to read their books and sun themselves and I don't want them to be eaten up by the garden either.

Sometimes I can come up with good excuses to get back into bed with another good book, and sometimes I can put on my Ignoring Hat, which is often quite effective, but sometimes I just have to get the shovel out of the shed and put my back into it. Which is exactly what I did, while The Girl and Posy made dinner (The Girl is home from uni for the summer. Happiness and general extra-person-to-make-dinner-joy). The horrible and vile triffid-like weed plague which I imagined would take about three weeks of full-time hard graft to quell looked like this after an hour:

Clearly I seem to have a very unrealistic view of the efficacy of hard work. This is because I spend so much time in bed reading instead of actually doing any. This morning I got up at dawn (aka 8.30am) to do some digging while this space was in shade. My main job was to make the space level enough to fit both day beds, which kind of worked out although my spirit level says, "Not quite there yet," in its most pernickety voice. This job means I win a 'get out of gym free pass' for the next week. I currently cannot move any of my limbs. In the process of moving lots of dirt I also dug up approximately one hundred and twenty thousand jonquil bulbs, each of them wrapped lovingly around with yards and yards of twitch grass (substitute the name of the worst invasive grass from your area with mile-long rhizomes and no redeeming features and you will know just how much fun I was having). Disentangling them was quite jolly, and now I think it is time for a little lie down.

Possibly next time I get tired of reading on the weekend (ho ho) I will get some decomposed granite delivered for a nice hard surface under the daybeds. Hopefully that will happen before all the weed seeds germinate (too late, they are probably doing that right now).

I have managed to carve out a little extra vegie patch. I think this will be the corn and bean patch.

Gratuitous photos of my vegie garden:

We are eating rhubarb, lettuce, spinach, rocket (arugula) and various herbs (plus one strawberry) and have peas, beetroot, capsicum, chillies, celery, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and squash coming along.

Here is the crazy enthusiastic potato patch.

And the tomato plantation.

And a baby cucumber in the tiny teepee I made to protect it from being kicked over by the hooligan blackbirds.

That is my weekend in the garden. Sometimes I get a little tired of my garden. It can be so needy..