Autumn Garden Jobs

 .......just don't seem to have been done this year and I can't really pinpoint why. Firstly the "Summer Season" didn't wane, the flowers kept on blooming and I hadn't the heart to cut them down. Then we noticed enormous bare patches in the front "lawn". Whilst the mornings were moist and the rest of the day warm we decided to rake out the moss and reseed. This turned out to be a much bigger job than we anticipated and so far, after more than three weeks, has not yeilded a single blade of grass!

The next "hiccup" was that the weather forecast declared that we would have a frost. This is normal for this time of the year but suddenly my emphasis had to move to lifting the 80+ geraniums immediately in front of the house. I imagined that it would be a simple job, lift and repot, job done in a day. So far I have repotted half and keep debating whether the rest should go straight onto the compost heap. That seems a waste but I still have so many jobs to do that it will probably be their fate in the end. By the way a "proper" frost did not materialise until yesterday.

Next pressing job, 3000 bulbs had arrived and needed planting. We initially planted the narcissus and daffodils, easy peasy with our trusty bulb planting drill. After a couple of days hiatus buying and planting pots for an elderly friend (she took us out for lunch so it wasn't any hardship) we turned our attention to planting our own tubs. Unfortunately we discovered that all the tulips were of poor quality with mainy showing signs of mould. I have used this bulb company for years with no reason to complain however as you can imagine they got the full force of my tongue,via email, on this occasion. They said that they give 100% guarantee if they don't flower. That's little comfort when this fabulous display I had in my mind's eye for Spring doesn't materialise!

Well all this bewailing doesn't get the jobs done so I better get cracking outside.