Tuesday 11 March 2008

Weather continues unsettled

I have moved the containers with the delicate plants indoors, where we can trip over them until mid-April. And I potted up all the other seedlings/little plants into larger pots. Amazingly, I did not cover the entire world in compost while doing this, which is a first.

The plants all seem happy so far, although the trays holding them now take up nearly the whole kitchen table. When we move house, whenever that is, I am holding out for lots of south-facing windows with broad sills. Or possibly a greenhouse. This house has smallish windows, which makes it very efficient to heat but cuts down on the places you can put plant-pots.

I also, rather daringly, re-potted the lovely yellow orchid which sits on our bedroom windowsill. The poor thing had big thick roots coming out of the bottom of its pot and spiralling round and round the cache-pot, but I was a bit worried that, this being so, I'd damage it getting it out of the pot. We'll see. I didn't snap anything off, or gouge lumps out. We've had it about a year and it's flowered beautifully (it's now on its third flowering stem) so I'll be sorry if this turns out to be a mistake.

Looking down from the bedroom window, you get an aerial view of the lawn, which is my next major concern. My mother has a theory that if it's green and growing in your lawn, and isn't a dandelion, it's grass. You could just about believe this if you squint at mine with half-shut eyes. If you don't, there are big lumps of clover, and large patches which are a sort of lime-green and are definitely moss. Irritatingly, the neighbours on both sides (neither of whom have anything in the way of plants in their gardens) have lawns which look much better.

I wouldn't mind the moss that much - it's soft and green, isn't it? which is mostly what I want from a lawn - but two summers ago, the weather was dryish and all the moss died and left big brown swathes which had to be pulled out and re-seeded. The wet summer last year obviously brought it back with a vengeance.

I must do something about it soon if I'm going to, because we want to be able to put the guinea pigs on the lawn during the summer, which means we can't put fertilizer or weedkiller on it for some weeks beforehand. Sigh. It's not so much that I don't want to do the work, but the lawn's going to look pretty scruffy for a while once I've yanked out all the unwanted stuff.

2 comments:

Pam said...

Thought I'd leave a comment. Hello. Hope the garden is continuing to bloom. Any pictures?

Tanya Brown said...

I thought I'd stop by and say hello; you were kind enough to come by my blog last month.

I must say that I find the idea of guinea pigs grazing on your lawn rather charming!