19-April-20: To prove Happy Soul Food moments come from many different sources, this weekend we not only enjoyed some fabulous food and wine but “tarted” up our garden a treat…
In our current house, we have a very small garden and are planning to move into what we call our “Forever Home” later in the year – why is that important – I LOVE GARDENING nearly as much as I love cooking and food.
So it’s been a little frustrating in this “tweeny” house, as we haven’t wanted to invest too heavily in this garden, don’t have a lot of space either and so, am somewhat constrained with what I can do. However, with lots of time to spare at the moment, I thought what CAN I do outside in this magnificent autumn weather to keep myself amused ?
Well, I do love an annual and specifically a pansy or a few hundred – so off to the local garden centre I went on Friday. I felt a bit guilty, as wasn’t sure this totally fell within the 4 reasons to head outside. Although I suppose you could argue mental health and preparation for “exercise” – depending on how hard the garden workout is 😇.
Spent up big on pansies, violas, lobelia and some new pots (can take them with me when we move into the new house!!!), not to mention bags of potting mix to boot…
I also decided that the dedicated bed for the Garden Terrorists could be planted out carefully to also look nice, as long as I leave enough digging room to allow them to execute their very carefully orchestrated attacks.
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The evidence -
Guilty
You see, we play a little game, the Garden Terrorists and I…
They dig out the “digging Bed” during the week, I fill in the holes and rake it over on the weekend and then we start again.
It does stop them from digging elsewhere and despite the level of walking, entertainment and general spoiling they get, Goldies do like a dig – our previous two were the same, so it’s not just a puppy or frustration thing – it’s just them !
Rather than fight it, we just cater for it. I am a big believer in if you are going to have dogs, you can’t expect them to be perfect little creatures that work in with all our idiosyncratic human expectations – they’re dogs, let them be dogs (with in reason of course – discipline and training is still a must) !
I also wanted to expirement with some hedging camilias to try out a plan I have for the Forever Home – so not only did I stock up on annuals, I also bought 5 well established hedging-style camelia bushes and some puppy fencing.
Needless to say I am now a member of the garden centre’s reward club and luckily, I have secured some secondary work now to pay for all this!!!
Well, it didn’t stop there ! No point planting out all this in the backyard with old shabby mulch around the beds, so also ordered 1.5 square metres of mulch for Sunday ! Chief Taste Tester has a new assignment – Chief Mulch Mover 🙂
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Guarded Camelia’s -
Pots, pots, pots
So, Saturday was planting day across garden beds and pots and Sunday was mulch day. By the end of it all, how happy were we – a very Happy Soul Food moment… what a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment at the result ! So needless to say, that deserves celebrating with good food and wine, so bring on Part II 🥰