The Garden

My poor garden gets very little time in this blog (reflecting I suppose the amount of time it has spent on it: not enough.) Normally in summer I am out there planning what to do next, shifting things and trying to outwit the slugs and snails, but this season I am stuck in the house, decorating. This is because we have decided to move to be nearer the children's school, which is 20 miles away. In theory, we then won't be using as much petrol taxi-ing them backwards and forwards; they will be nearer to their friends: they are neither of them alas country children so it seems fairly pointless having all this when it's not used. The ultimate plan is to move back out to the country in a few years when they've finished school: to a nice small cottage with a hefty acreage. One day I'll plant my orchard.....

But back to the decorating. As a dedicated watcher of Location, Location, Location etc I know everything should be pale, but I am so, so, so bored of neutrality. The next house is going to be COLOURFUL. I have a copy of the Farrow and Ball colour card, and it is my colour porn. I look at it, and lust after the deep reds; the stoney greens and the dusky yellows.

Having said that, last summer my daughter and I painted her room: it is a rosebay willow herb pink. Plenty of colour there, and that's how it's going to stay.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the garden. It may look fine, but I must tell you that I have been very careful to cut out the grotty bits I have not got to yet. The veronica I moved from the highly unsuitable south facing border it has been for years to a much shadier spot and it is now romping away to such an extent it's verging on becoming a pest.
The dog is one of my larger garden pests. Though she is lying there innocently in the photograph, she has worn a fine path through the vegetable garden over the winter, and has only been stopped by an elegantly constructed row of canes. I now know why my rare white rosemary died. I stupidly planted it in a sandy corner which also makes an excellent bone-burying spot.

The terrace and paths look a lot better now that we have restored the gravel areas, alas sadly trodden in over the years. My husband and my sister, who was

staying with us at the time were firm in their contention that 3 tonnes would do it. I did the last gravel top up, and it took 4 tonnes. We were all wrong. It took 6, which is a lot when you have to barrow it all from the yard as it is impossible to swing it into the garden without taking the trees out.