weeding weather

An article in the Telegraph said that this autumn was shaping up to be the third warmest on record. It went on to make dark comments about the onset of frost and snow, but reading the small print the snow, if any, was expected in Scotland, not north east Essex.  The Met Office five day forecast still shows it mostly dry and consistently above freezing.  That's great in early winter if you're a keen gardener, being weeding weather.  Even light overnight frosts are a drag, rendering the borders unworkable for the first couple of hours of the day, while heavy frosts can take out the entire day.  A mild run up to Christmas is an absolute boon in terms of getting the garden set up for the spring.

I enjoy these mild winter spells of weeding.  It's pleasant to get outside, and no, you don't get cold if you wear enough clothes, and get up and move about from time to time.  The weeds pull easily from the moist soil, and there's the satisfaction that nothing too much is going to grow in the space you've cleared as the weather grows colder, so it's a chance to make visible progress.  The robins follow me closely, perching on the edge of my bucket of tools and bin of weeds, nipping in to seize small morsels, and eyeing me with bright, beady, nosy eyes.  Robins are strongly territorial, so it is presumably different robins in the back garden and the vegetable patch, and maybe another one (or pair) again in the railway garden.  They pair off early compared to many birds.

The tide of clean ground is creeping along the railway garden, as I pick up the fallen leaves, and pull the fine seedling grasses and odd weeds from among the thyme plants.  There's an annual weed whose name I don't know, with tiny, clover-like leaves and yellow flowers (not at this time of the year), and a vetch, whose name I don't know either, but whose leaves look superficially very like those of thyme.  It gives itself away by its growth habit, branching in a V shape that's different to thyme.  I'm cutting the thymes quite hard back (scissors are better than secateurs for this) which makes them easier to comb through for stray pieces of grass, as well as removing the spent flower heads, and just hope to goodness they respond next year by making fresh bushy growth like they're supposed to.  Once I'm sure the ground is clean I spread more gravel, though that's a job for the middle of the day when the light's at its best, and I can make a final check for weeds.

I've just reached a section infested with a coarse weed grass with a running rootstock, which is more problematic, especially when it goes in among the thyme plants, heathers and conifers.  I'm teasing out what I can with a hand fork, and will have to keep hitting the regrowth with glyphosate.

I let the chickens out for a run after lunch, but they, knowing nothing of my desire to get on with the gravel, decided they wanted to go and play in the back garden.  I did a brief stint with shears cutting the long grass on the daffodil bank, before they disappeared further down the hill, and I had to go and weed one of the borders to keep them in my line of sight.  The results of my day's gardening can end up looking rather spotty when too much of my schedule is dictated by the chickens, on the other hand, cutting the bank with shears felt quite hard on the wrists, and I don't think I'd want to do it all afternoon.  I need to get on with the bank, though, since the snouts of emerging bulbs are beginning to appear all over the place.  I guess colder weather would slow them down, which would be quite handy.  There's something depressing about finding you've trodden on the nose of some poor bulb, as you look down at the bent, perhaps slightly split foliage of a plant you selected, and wanted to do well, and which was doing fine until you stepped on it.