I finally finished sorting out the greenhouse. The geraniums and other tender perennials are tucked away, ready for me to shut the doors when frost is predicted, as it will be any night soon. Things propagated in greater quantities than I've managed to use so far in the garden have been weeded and kept for next year, potting them on if needs be, and the contents of pots that had died or gone horribly manky have been chucked out. The lilies are stacked under the bench, together with four Whichford planters containing next year's hyacinth bulbs. Last winter I left the hyacinths out, as I've always done, and the bulb plates rotted away in the extreme weather. Odd pots containing small bulbs that I never got round to planting in the spring have been investigated, and those with live, sprouting bulbs weeded and kept, and the remainder thrown away. There are a couple of nice things from the Avon Bulbs catalogue growing on, ready to be planted out in the spring when I've finished (ha!) the great tidy-up outside. So I struck 'greenhouse' off the list, which left only fifty items to go.
I set out to flame some odd bits of beekeeping kit that were sitting outside the garage. For the non-beekeepers, this doesn't mean burning them on a ceremonial pyre (though that is what will happen to your hive if it should have one of the nastier brood diseases). Flaming to a beekeeper means running a blowtorch over the surface of wooden beehive parts until they are lightly charred, which is a method of sterilising them. As wood is porous and you don't want chemicals soaking into the hive and contaminating the honey, heat sterilisation is a good method, and I'd been cleaning my kit as I stacked it away. What I didn't know this morning, but do now, is that the System's Administrator's blowtorch uses a butane canister, which won't work below 15 degrees C. I found the torch on the veranda, where we'd had it to light the barbecue, twizzled it to on, flicked the ignition button and - nothing. Repeatedly nothing, except for a faint hissing sound and slight smell of gas. I found the S.A. and grumbled that the canister must be running out (though it felt pretty heavy) and so learnt about the thermal requirements of butane. Leaving the torch in the kitchen brought it to a temperature where it would work, but it kept running out of oomph outside, and as the wind got up I decided that today was really not the day to choose. Pity. You know how it is, when you galvanise yourself to get on with a tedious job, and circumstances get in the way.
I scraped aside the gravel where the poor Teucrium fruticans 'Azureum' used to be, and couldn't see the rootball at all. I ended up probing cautiously with a garden fork, lifting sections of soil on the basis that the ground would crumble whereas the Teucrium would come up in a circular lump. It did. There is no top growth left whatsoever, and I'm not terribly optimistic about its chances of revival, but some shrubs have surprised me pleasantly by regenerating from below ground level after being hit by cold above, so I might as well find out if Teucrium fruticans is capable of that trick. Watering it correctly in the greenhouse will be key, as it needs to be on the dry side, and is currently fairly wet. The ginger scented rosemary went into the gap. If you come across one of these then grab it, if you like rosemary. It really does smell spicy and different to the usual sort.
The gardening afternoon was cut short by my monthly visit to the Pilates teacher. She was recovering from a vicious cold, and looked rather exhausted, but that's part of the deal being self employed. No lesson, no fee. I seemed to be particularly dense this afternoon about co-ordinating my breathing with the movements of my legs. I find formal exercise one of the dullest things ever, but that's part of the deal having a dodgy back and a hardcore gardening habit. If I do some moderately boring exercises reasonably regularly and take notice of my posture I can function normally. If I don't, I can't. The teacher is a nice and cultured woman, and congenial company, which makes the lessons nicer than they would be otherwise.
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