Gardening.

The forecast for today was heavy showers with possible thunderstorms in the afternoon.

They were right about the showers but those petered out by midmorning and instead of thunderstorms we had sunny and very windy weather. I held off putting the washing in the machine until late afternoon by which time I realised that even an hour in the strong wind would blow most of the wet out of the washing.

I was up reasonably early and had my morning caffeine hit out in the garden wrapped up in an all weather coat. (The garden chairs were too wet and I couldn't be bothered to take a kitchen chair out.) Lots of staring at the end bed helped me to formalise my plans though I keep swapping the placing of a hydrangea (I never knew there was an 'n' in there.) and a ceanothus. Having more or less worked out the layout I then went through all the steps I'd need to achieve it. Sort of on the lines of "If I move this to there then I'll have to dig up those plants which can be moved to (a different) there" and so on. That got me to a starting point and off I went. I began by weeding near the boundary wall and planting a fennel which if it grows will help screen the neighbours' sitting room. Next I cut down all the mint growing in the end bed so that I could see what I was doing. I'm keeping the mint but in different places. Then came the awkward task of crawling between the hydrangeas and digging out a couple of large bramble stumps along with their roots. More weeding and then I moved the tomato red azalea to between two hydrangeas. I cut it back quite hard and moved it with a sizeable root ball so hopefully it will survive. Now I've got to decide what to do with the bright pink azalea. It has some very long branches that I could train along the ground away from the yellow euonymus as the yellow and pink are a horrible clash. I'm not keen on yellow variegated plants but the euonymus makes a good windbreak. In the spring I'll cut off the branches that have gone up into the hedge. I still don't know what the green shrub next to it is but I noticed my neighbour has one in her garden so I'll see if she knows. Again it's a good windbreak. Now that I've cleared the bed I can see through to the wall behind, not very attractive. It does have that plastic wind mesh to help break up the power of the wind but I'm going to put another layer in front of the hedge for the winter and hopefully the shrubs I plant will cover up the gaps. Those will be a transplanted hydrangea (50/50 chance of success), also a buddleia with better chances and a ceanothus that is still growing in a pot. But first there are three more brambles to dig out so for the meantime I have bare messy earth to look at.

With the afternoon being so nice I wrapped up well and sat out crocheting and then knitting. No doubt there'll be many wet days when I have no choice but to stay indoors. Peter is cooking up sauerkraut, potatoes, onion and Polish sausage for supper tonight so my jobs are done for the day.