Garden Discipline

Maybe I'm not disciplined enough to ever be a good gardener. I started this afternoon with a quick walkabout, making careful mental notes of the work that had to be done. It was obvious that the Herb Garden was in bad shape, overgrown, full of non-herbs, with a whole bed of chives that had finished blooming never-mind-how-many days ago.... a mess, in fact. I made a neat list of the (many) garden jobs that need to be done and put and put Fix Herb Garden right at the top.

I started by cutting the chives right down to the ground. You might as well, the old stems will turn yellow and fade away anyway. Cutting them right back leaves a bare space for a bit, but they soon put up new fresh stems and will look alright for the rest of the summer. I have the usual magenta chives, but I also, thanks to some kind friends, have some pale pink and some white ones. And I grew some really tiny ones from some seed exchange seed, only about 5 or 6 inches tall, with flowers the size of small marbles. But they all need to be cut right back or they'll seed everywhere. Having done that, and remembering that they had already established an outpost in the Rockery, I went to cut those back as well.

Three hours later I was ready for a shower, having had a fine time weeding a corner of the Rockery.

 Now tomorrow, for sure, I'm going to tidy up the Herb Garden. That is, if I don't spend hours mooning over the Roses, which are opening and looking gorgeous even though the bushes are very short after the cold winter and which certainly need to be photographed.

Or admiring the Digitalis grandiflora 'gloves':

Or the wild hairdo flowers of the Honeysuckle that has climbed to the top of the birch tree:

 Or getting into any of the other fine activities that distract me from my careful to-do lists. Oh well, the great thing is to have an up-to-date to-do list. How else would you know what job you weren't getting done?