January,a normally grungy dark month,turned out to be rather productive in 2023. CP decided,unilaterally I may add, that all out effort would be applied to Spring cleaning! This positive philosophy was applied to the whole house,including areas (the garage; my office) traditionally under my jurisdiction.After a little resistance, I have to admit that her enthusiasm became infectious.This resulted in the purchase of a”garden tool stand” ,a bike rack and a few additional general purpose storage bins.
It must be Spring!
CP has skills way beyond my comprehension.With a single sentence she can initiate actions to resolve the thorniest of issues. “What can we do to make it easier for you to enjoy your gardening magazines?” ( my translation to that was “I find these little piles of magazines randomly popping up in various parts of the house a little disconcerting”). In order to maintain control, a process was spontaneously designed to identify articles of interest, remove them from the magazine, trim the edges, staple them together and file them in one of the recently purchased storage bins! – recycling the remainder of the magazine to assist in saving the planet. The result was a pile of about 100 magazines now condensed into 2 x 4” A4 storage bins. The beauty of this new process is that at the end of every quarter, recently acquired magazines can be dealt with “in real time”. The process has been future proofed as I have room for an additional storage bin and when all 3 are full all I have to do is throw out the 25% of articles that have proven to be of little value.🤗 I feel tired!
Lambs gamboling…. Only in the Spring. The Richhill walk!
Of course not to be outdone, I then initiated the Spring clean of the garden! Over lunch I casually dropped into the conversation “ I wonder how best to clean up the perennial beds to your liking ?” Reverse psychology- a newly learned skill – my first element of this years ongoing further education. Silence! – the bait was not taken. So I just went out and cut everything down and put it on the compost heap.
To my surprise,there was quite a lot of new growth coming through so I decided to mulch early, at the end of January. The objective to get it done before spring bulbs started to appear and minimize the risk of damage.
I had started to build up a relationship with Jay, a young, high quality landscaper who had set up his own business so we talked about “mulch”. The norm in our area is to used shredded pine bark that has been dyed black, brown or red – or even worse “pine straw” (say no more). I do not like “dyed” – an inappropriate use of chemicals so we went for natural shredded hardwood mulch (a saving of $7/ cu yd over “dyed”).
An interesting discussion re the quantity of mulch needed – Jay thought 40 cu yds – I thought 30 – it was actually 60!
Jay and his team of 7 did the job in a day.
Pots have been cleaned, the storage box reorganized, irrigation system extended, patio furniture cleaned, roses fertilized – not a bad start to the year…….. and when the dodgy February weather arrives , lots of well sorted gardening articles to read!
AndAllenGarden 