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.