It rained all morning. When I went out to let the hens into their run it was the sort of light rain that is barely more than moisture condensing out of the air, but by the time I'd finished breakfast it had solidified into a steady, light drizzle. That was OK. The garden had been getting dry, and gentle, continuous rain arriving at a pace which gave it a chance to soak into the soil was useful.
It gave me the chance to catch up with my ironing. That is not strictly true, since I could have done the ironing at any time I chose. I could have spent yesterday ironing instead of gadding about the countryside buying obscure plants and looking at lithographs by half-forgotten artists and getting caught up in unpublicised carnivals. Could have, but didn't. Housework comes a very poor second to horticulture and art, unless guests are in the offing and the dread deed cannot be put off, or the weather is truly inimical to outside work. There was a lot of ironing, really an embarrassing quantity, and it was just as well that the rain lasted as long as it did.
It has not soaked deep into the soil, and I'll still need to keep watering here and there, but it has usefully freshened up the top inch, and will give welcome relief to the asters in the back garden, which were starting to look stressed. They are shallow rooted plants, and will feel the benefit. I felt the benefit myself as I pulled a couple of buckets of weeds out of the gravel, a task made far easier when the ground has not set like cement. I was able to dibble out the tufty roots of weed grasses in a very satisfying way, and the rambling roots of the creeping sorrel pulled up in strands, instead of breaking off after the first inch.
A yellow flowered, drought resistant evergreen shrub with fine, bright green foliage called Halimium calycinum is doing so well in the gravel that I began to think I should plant some more. Life is too short to keep grooming gravel by hand: it needs ground cover. The hebes I've tried have mostly shrivelled and died, faced with the bottomless, hungry sand and root competition from the hedge, but the Halimium apparently thinks that life is peachy. I looked up propagation methods, but it doesn't appear to respond to summer cuttings. Spring (February to March) or autumn (October and November) were recommended. I tried and failed to imagine cuttings of a sun loving, drought tolerant evergreen rooting successfully in the late autumnal dankness of my greenhouse. The plant has a graceful, spreading habit, so would layers take root, if I pressed a few stems down into pots of compost? Lots of woody plants do root where they touch.
I planted my bun shaped conifer, Thuja occidentalis 'Teddy', and the conical Picea glauca 'Sander's Blue'. I am now totally confused about the ultimate size of the Picea, since I've just clicked on a site which gives the mature height and spread as twenty and ten feet respectively (while still referring to it as Sander's blue dwarf spruce). That nursery did describe it as slow growing, and another supplier puts it at four feet after ten years, with an ultimate height of twenty. I definitely want it to stay at the lower end of that range, but the gravel will probably slow it down. In fact, it may be too dry for it, but something that looks very similar, whose name I don't know because the Systems Administrator planted it, is doing rather well in that area. But it all depends on the precise run of the vein of especially bad soil. I planted a couple of evening primroses the other day, no more than five or six feet apart, and one went into soil that felt vaguely moist and workable despite the hot weather, while the other planting site was dust.
Dwarf conifers are still naff. A passion for dwarf pines just about passes muster, and yews are positively smart, but a love for miniature conifer buns and cones is the garden love that dare not speak its name. It's forty years since the 1970s dwarf conifers and heathers boom, and as yet neither have recovered. I don't care. I am as keen on obscure woodlanders that produce tiny sprays of green flowers lasting approximately three days as the next well brought up gardener, but that doesn't stop me liking dwarf conifers.
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