Gardening and dogs

Each year, we say “everything is early” or just as often, it seems, “everything is late”.  One of the good things about blogging is I have a record of what happened in previous years.  Now, I know that many gardeners write things down in notebooks, but I have never been very good at that and notebooks (of the traditional variety) didn’t hold pictures, unless the gardener had the time and ability to draw.

Will the peonies and iris be open in time for next weekend?

In 2013 the plants in my garden are certainly much later than feels right.  I always open my garden at the beginning of June and so this gives me a useful reference point.  Never before have  the wisteria been in flower for the visitors and the iris and peonies that are still in bud are also usually well over.  My dicentra spectabalis ‘alba’ is usually a distant memory by the time the garden opens, but this year its lovely white flowers are making a beautiful statement.

The wisteria should be the star of the show this year

Looking back I see that in 2010, I didn’t do the chop until July, so goodness knows when, and if, I will need to do it this year.

2012 was not a year for gardening.  The spring was cold and wet with some plants a month later than usual.  But then in May there was a warm, even hot, period and hose pipe bans came into force just around the time the garden opened.  The hose pipe bans did their job on Mother Nature as the heavens opened during the Royal Jubilee celebrations and it felt like it didn’t stop raining all year!

2011 was also dry Spring and I had to water for almost two months before the opening.  Of course, as luck would have it, it rained on the opening days, but at least visitors were able to see our roses in full bloom, while there is not a chance of that this year.

So, over the last four years, I have experienced one early spring and three late ones – so, is that climate change or just weather?

Usually I agonise as to whether or not to do a Chelsea Chop or not.  This is the practise of cutting back herbaceous perennials that have had their “first fling” to keep them tidy during the rest of the year and is usually done at the time of the Chelsea Flower Show, which is on this week.

The reason why I have to think long and hard about this is that my garden opening is the following week and while the plants quickly grow back, this does tend to take a couple of weeks.

In a year where everything is early, I tend to do the chop at least a week before Chelsea to give the plants time to look good again for the visitors.

This year however, everything is so late that the plants have a way to go before they put on their first show.  So, instead of having to do a Chelsea Chop, I have plenty of other jobs to do in the garden that the weather put paid to earlier in the year – thank goodness it is a Bank Holiday weekend!

Tonight I decided that I would do some gardening after work.  For once I had enough energy after work and it was sunny, but not exactly warm.  My task was to see how my fuschias had fared over the winter.  I never do anything special to them to get them through but rather leave them to their own devices and replace those that don’t make it.  I had noticed greenery in the pot but wanted to investigate further.

Fuschia – pre pruning

So, I set to removing the dead bits of fuschia to see what remained.  I tend to use small scissors for this job so that I don’t remove the new growth by accident.  Eventually I worked out that all the plants in this pot had survived, but that a number of hardy geraniums had also decided that this was a great place to settle.  Whilst I love the geraniums, this pot is not the right place for them.   I don’t have the space to nurture the very small seedlings and so decided to discard them, but there were two that were large enough to be considered as plants and so I decided to transplant them.

Fushia – post pruning

I therefore selected a new location for the geraniums, got my trusty trowel and kneeler to break ground.  My mistake was that I had the two plants beside me on the ground.  The very second that my trowel made contact with the soil, in swooped Anya and raced off with one of the plants!

Anya is now 17 months old and well into the wayward teenager phase.  On top of this, she has had the garden to herself throughout the excessively long winter period and really doesn’t yet understand that this is my garden!  Depite having had a run in the forest only a couple of hours before, Anya suddenly became a mad thing racing round and round the garden – jumping through beds (now I know why plants aren’t growing in that spot!) and storming past shrubs.  There was obviously not a chance of any command I threw in being listened to, let alone obeyed.  For a second she stopped, putting the plant on the ground in front of her.  I took a step toward her and she picked up her prize again and raced off in the opposite direction!  Then I thought that I aught to be videoing this behaviour to show you that all of us have this sort of issue to deal with and also how well the garden was standing up to the onslaught.  Luckily I had my camera close by having taken the previous photos.  I changed it to the video setting and then as suddenly as the madness had started, it stopped.  Anya hadn’t heard that sound before and so it was much more interesting than the plant.

Suddenly I had Anya’s full attention, so she and the others went into the house while I finished my planting.  I have no idea where the plant she absconded with ended up.  There is little doubt that what remained would not have made a successful plant.  This little episode has reminded me how much work I have to do to teach Anya how to behave in the garden, but at least she and the garden came out of the whole thing unscathed :).