The garden

This last week as I've been working in the garden, I've developed an appreciation and admiration for my sister who works in a commercial bakery. I spend a couple of hours on successive days working in the garden and I'm achy and stiff and sore and ready to stop, whereas my sister works on her feet lifting and moving and weighing things all day every day and has done for years. I'm in awe of her ability to keep doing this work because I'm quite wiped out.

I got the front garden done over the weekend; I planted some verbana, petunias, begonias, and a New Guinea impatiens (the regular impatiens is not available here because it just keeps dying). The flowers are all very similar shades of pink. Although there were other colours I liked, I chose this pink because it's most visible from far away. Ian thinks it's too much pink that's too similar but the flowers and foliage are all different and there's hostas in there to add colour, too. I think it's going to be lovely when everything fills in.

I spent yesterday working in the vegetable patch digging out some grass that had encroached on the patch, clearing out strawberries that had encroached on the patch and the path, clearing out raspberry runners as I see them, adding new soil to the patch, transplanting peppers, and planting some seeds. And pulling veronica weeds from the lawn; they're starting to flower and go to seed and there's quite enough of it in the lawn, thank you.

I still have quite a lot of work ahead of me. I went into a garden centre the other day just to look around and came out with rather a lot of perennials. We have an area at the back of the property that has been taken over by weeds and we want to put non-grass groundcover there so I bought 60 plants for there: 24 thyme, 12 irish and 12 spanish moss, and 12 of something else. Ian is going to help plant those this weekend.

Today I'd planned to plant the other perennials I bought: some more coneflowers to balance out the black-eyed susans, some stonecrop sedum, and a beardtongue (penstemon). Oh, and some hen-and-chicks sedum, which might go in the front, maybe, or in some rocks by the path by the waterfall in the back. I also need to plant the annuals that Ian's mom gave me, which include some red petunias, some zinnias, different kinds of asarina, and some salvia, as well as some pink begonias left over from the front.

However, I decided that I was physically exhausted and needed to rest more than I needed to plant so I did nothing at all. I keep discovering muscles that hurt - I understand why my back might hurt but how does my stomach get sore? And where did those muscles on my arms come from? I do feel better after getting some more sleep and soaking in a couple of hot baths but I'm nowhere near back to my regular self. The plants will be fine for a few more days before I get them into the ground, I think (hope). If I was my sister my garden would be done by now.