Strawberries!

My neighbour borrowed three eggs yesterday. She's just returned them and this came with them along with a head of broccoli.

Yum - and the perfume is simply glorious. If I could I'd leave them out on the kitchen bench but I'll succumb to commonsense which dictates putting them in the fridge.

Gardening - At Last

Not that I got much done before the rain came. Still something is better than nothing, I suppose, and although my surgeon has said I can start to do some gardening he did stress that it should be 'gentle'. I am trying very hard to be a compliant patient because the last thing I want is to have to go through all this again.

Bearing his instructions in mind I pulled on my red wellies, grabbed my spade, trowel and loppers and headed out to the veggie patch. I have been pulling a few weeds every day and went over some of the ground with a dutch hoe but this is superficial stuff and I knew I had to take on the biggie if I want to get any winter veg at all.

The problem is that because my veggie patch is heavily composted, fertilised and mulched it has become a magnet for invasive roots from my neighbour's garden. They have a curry leaf tree, which is very lovely with its delicate, fern-like leaves. It's a great flavouring in curries, too, but in the garden it's highly invasive which is why the one I have in is a pot and will be staying there. My neighbour's one is not so confined. Its roots come under the fence (which is sunk over a metre deep), then come up beside it and spread across my garden. The roots consist of quite substantial ones up to 3 cms in circumference as well as masses of fibrous roots - some bunches of these that I pulled out today were 45 cms long and 10 cms around. Both of these suck the nutrients and moisture out of the ground and block the roots of anything I want to grow. They sucker like crazy, too - the furtherest sucker I've found was 30 metres into my yard - so at the change of every season I have to go along the fence line with a spade, uncover the roots and cut them off, knowing they'll be back in a few months.

So that's what I've been doing - very carefully - this morning. I was hoping to do more but the rain has arrived  - and truth be told, it's probably just as well because once I start working in the garden I tend to find it hard to stop, doctor's orders not withstanding. I did do one other thing though. See. Here are the seeds I sorted ready to plant. All I have to do now is to put them in their punnets or into the ground. I might wait until the storms we're expecting later today and tomorrow pass before I do that, though.

Here's Something Pretty

Not much of anything is happening in my garden at the moment due to my run of surgeries. I've finally been given permission to do some work there but it's going to take quite a while to catch up on the weeding and other tasks which have been pretty much on hold since last October. I did manage to grow some summer veggies but that was only because I planted them out before everything went pear-shaped. The garden still gives me lovely surprises now and then, though, and here is today's.

I have several large pots of these beauties - yellow bearded irises are among my favourite flowers -and I'm making the most of this bloom now because they are quite fragile and I doubt it will last long if the storms we're being warned about hit tomorrow.

Awww. The Cuteness

I'm sick today but I found this and thought you might like it as much as I do.

Puppy sleeps as though it is turned off