more weeding

I woke up feeling as though I definitely might be developing a cold, or resuming the cold that had just been going away when my father's health took a dramatic turn for the worse. Aching, snivelling, sore throated, sticky, smelly, and generally not very nice to know.  But after a shower I thought I might as well put on my gardening clothes and see how I felt once I'd had some breakfast, before abandoning myself to a day spent sniffing on the sofa, and once I'd had some breakfast I felt better than I had when I got up, and the sun was shining and it was forecast to be unseasonably warm, so I tottered out.  Not up the scaffolding to resume battle with the hedge, but up the the meadow to continue with the weeding.  Falling off the Henchman seemed like a bad idea, but crawling about it would be easy enough to lie down if I suddenly felt worse.

In fact, fresh air and sunshine and messing about with plants had the opposite effect, as it usually does.  I dibbled up copious quantities of goose grass seedlings and hairy bittercress, cut off the flowering stems of nettles (please let them not have shed their seeds yet) and bagged them up to take to the dump, and tugged and chopped at the odd brambles that had sprouted again from the bits of root I failed to dig out last time round.  Into the newly cleared space I planted white violets and some of the young hellebores that have been growing on in the cold frame.

I didn't have the heart to disturb the primroses, which have sprung back into life with the autumn weather and looked so fine and leafy it seemed a shame to dig them up.  Instead I went and lifted some of the plants that had seeded themselves into the bottom lawn in the back garden.  In contrast to the lush specimens in the meadow, they were still in their shrivelled summer state.  By the time the birches, the Zelkova and the wild cherry at the bottom of the garden have drunk their fill it doesn't leave a lot for shallow rooted plants like primroses at this time of year.  By spring I daresay they'll have staged a miraculous recovery.

Back in the meadow alongside the wood the soil got appreciably drier close to the base of a birch that seeded itself near the wildlife pond, and which we left since it was making rather a nice job of softening the transition from wood to garden.  It seemed a waste to plant any of the hellebores too close to it, and so I still have an arc of bare soil to fill and no plants to hand to go in it.  Epimedium  x perralchium 'Frohnleichten' sprang to mind, evergreen and drought tolerant.  All epimediums are not equally forgiving of dry shade, but that one is supposed to be bullet proof.  The Chatto gardens have them in stock according to their website.  Click and collect at the Chatto gardens is very tempting.  I still have a box of three geraniums and two orange flowered poppies sitting by the front door waiting to be planted out since the last time I let my fingers do the walking.