Amazing that just a few weeks ago we still had frosts overnight and only last week I was still wearing a warmish jacket. Today was in the high 20s and felt like it in the sunshine.
An early start today - in for 8am as I said I'd pick Kaye up from Tiverton Parkway this morning. After a quick cup of tea I began with tying in the new growth on the climbing rose that I made hazel hurdles for a few months back - it is covered in leaves and flower buds are starting to appear too. It is behind a beautiful tree peony with huge raspberry ripple flowers, which made access difficult, but I managed to tie in the new growth and make it all look a bit neater. Another hurdled rose was much further ahead and proved very difficult to tie in, plus there was little to tie it to against the wall, meaning it was a bit off-kilter.
At break we all sat out in the yard and chatted to Emma about what she'd been doing at Trentham and to Jude about her week at Stackpole in Wales last week, then went up to Hollies wood (again!) to finish off what we'd been doing last week. We were weeding around lots of green Cornus (sericea?) behind the rhodoendrons and hydrangeas, and were faced with plenty of creeping buttercup, elm seedlings, brambles and the odd stinging nettle. My gloves weren't up to much so I got stung a few times and plenty of scratches. I've reacted to something and my arms are covered in tiny bumps.
When the sun got too much we moved to a shady bed and got rid of sycamore seedlings (those things are prolific seeders) and daisies, before clearing a birch and a large beech of the epicormic shoots (aka suckers, watershoots) at the base of the trunk and then weeding around a tiny Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) and finding a replacement bamboo stick for the one I broke pulling the plastic guard out of the soil.
While I was searching for bamboo I was stopped by a couple wanting to know the identity of a small shrub with black and green leaves. I was pleased when I was able to tell them what it was - a Pittosporum - and they seemed chuffed to find out.
After lunch it was back up to the same spot to carry on weeding my pine, quite a task in the fearsome sunshine, and then I set about removing low-hanging branches on a couple of lime trees to enable visitors to see under them. In doing so I revealed a huge number of rather overgrown Rubus, some of which had grown up into the tree canopy, which made getting them out rather difficult. Plus I had crap gloves on and so the whole thing was painful and difficult. Once we'd cut them back to about 4ft they were much more manageable, but I am pretty sure I won't ever be planting them in any garden of mine, as they are more than a little vigorous...
Kaye said during the journey home that she'd let me know if any jobs came up at Overbeck's in the next year, as they'd have my name on them. Which is rather exciting...
8 hours
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