Garden time

This morning I was informed by my firstborn that moms are just nervous people – apparently all moms, not just his. They warn you to be careful all the time, they get nervous when they’re driving, and nervous when their kids are climbing things. At least I know I’m not alone then. We had a fairly decent time in school, and we’ve now finished with Ancient Egypt and have moved to Ancient Greece. It’s all very interesting – we’re doing all the many Greek Myths as our read-aloud, which ties in with the history.

During the afternoon I was at a loose end – I was going to do some baking, but Nick suggested as an alternative that I could weed the front garden. Usually I bristle when he uses “you” and “weed” in the same sentence especially when “should” appears in between, unless it’s something like “you shouldn’t smoke weed”, but today I actually thought it was quite a grand idea. The portulackas are really doing well in both front garden sections, and looking healthy and succulent, so we want those to spread and cover over the whole of both beds. I weeded out all the other junk which had sprung up after the rain, which was quite easy because the ground was so moist – not muddy, just soft. I was pleased to see many little portulacka plants growing, which seem to have sprung up from seed. Once I had done the weeding, I thought I might give the bougainvillea a bit of a trim – it was really overgrown and looking scraggly. We haven’t trimmed it once since its major cut-down before we went on holiday. I was about halfway with that, when Nick came back from visiting Harry down the road, whose birthday it was today, and promptly got a saw and pitchfork to completely remove the thing. He cut down a few of the big branches first, with me as his helper laying all the strands and branches neatly over a string for later tying up (we made about five bundles of cuttings for the rubbish men to take away) before being able to actually dig up the root. He only did one of the three today, but the other two have been cut right down so will just need to be dug up. Nick has a little orange tree growing in a pot, so he’s going to reserve the space where the b/vs have come out for it.