We’ve had some landscaping done recently, and our front lawn is now a front dirt-patch. Finally the builders and digger-drivers have finished, and we are able to start thinking about grass again. Of course, it’s winter now, so we may or may not be very successful, but we’re going to try to plant the lawn.
Today we went and bought grass seed, and some plants for the border, and a new garden broom because ours miraculously broke a couple of weeks ago – apparently after the children had finished playing witches and sword-fights and who-knows-what with it and put it away. It must have just broken in two pieces while no-one was looking, as there are NO witnesses. Hmm.
Pearl helped me choose some seedlings. I wanted some snapdragons, but they all looked sad and scungy, so we chose love-in-the-mist, lupin, larkspur, and pansies – hopefully lots of glorious colour in a few weeks!
So this afternoon’s job was to clear the mowing strips and dig some compost into the borders, which have had clay and mud and all sorts of “stuff” dumped in and on them during the works. While The Dad attempted to dig out a long and recalcitrant sycamore root we found sticking up in the middle of the “lawn”, I worked my way along the border, clearing the mowing strip and turning over the soil in the border. It was hard work!
Fainjin rode his scooter up and down the driveway like a demon, narrowly missing the seedlings in their box each time and gleefully skidding on the corners.
Babess kept bringing the pansy seedlings up to where I was working, and asking whether I was ready for them yet. Then she wanted to dig. She took her trowel out into the middle of the “lawn”, just where we don’t need a hole at the moment. I called her back, and pointed to the border I had just dug over. “How about you help me here?” I suggested. “Dig in that bit, that will make the soil softer for our flowers.”
“OK!” and she went to it with a will. I kept clearing the mowing strip and working along the border. After a little while I looked over my shoulder. She was right behind me, digging all the soil out of the border and onto the mowing strip.
She was quite disappointed when I (with muttered imprecations) shovelled it all back in again, but eventually we finished our task and the border was ready. Babess went back inside to watch from the lounge-room window, nice and warm, but Fainjin was very keen to help.
He stood on the driveway and told me where to put each plant. That’s his idea of gardening!
© UpsideBackwards 2012.
UpsideBackwards 
June 2, 2012 at 9:48 pm |
Im more of a Fainjin style gardener myself, pointing and directing.
June 2, 2012 at 10:01 pm |
I have to confess, I usually am too – The Dad does most of the hard graft, and I pick the flowers when they bloom! 🙂