My forearms, my right index finger, and my left shoulder are all smarting. That is because the nettles are virulent by this time of year. The back of my throat and my nose are tickling and slightly sore, but that is because I am on the brink of getting a cold. I used to debate the nature of colds with my GP, now retired. He maintained that you either had a cold or you hadn't, while I was of the opinion that they lurked in your system like childhood exposure to chickenpox, ready to break out again in times of exhaustion or stress.
Pulling up the latest crop of weeds by the mysteriously dry wildlife pond seemed like a worthwhile and soothing way of spending the day, and kept me out of earshot of the shredder while the Systems Administrator chewed through the enormous pile of hedge trimmings from yesterday's mammoth pruning session. I have nineteen small hellebore plants to go into the space, and it would be nice to get them planted out this autumn rather than leave them sitting in their little plastic pots all winter. Hellebores in pots are not always the easiest things to manage long term. There should have been twenty, but the pink spotted one that was very small indeed when it arrived failed to grow on, and quietly died in the privacy of the cold frame.
I might risk splitting and moving some more primroses. In theory I should have done so after flowering, and maybe primroses are one of those plants that don't grow much in the autumn, and perhaps I will kill them doing it now, but somehow I doubt it. The soil is still warm and reasonably damp, but drains well, and my hunch is that they will be fine. I have in the past got away with splitting asters in autumn, despite the received wisdom that it should be done in the spring when they are in active growth. The biggest risk on soil like ours is plants dying from lack of water in spring and summer, not rotting in the ground.
There is some self seeded Tellima grandiflora among the weeds. That can stay, as it covers the ground and is quite pretty, though it can become too much of a good thing. There are forget-me-not seedlings, though I honestly don't know where they came from. There are seedlings of a sedge that might have originated from the one that used to be in the other pond, and which I have been heartlessly weeding up since it is one of the dullest plants imaginable, grows quite large and seeds itself insanely. There are bulbs of actual wild bluebells, self seeded out of the wood. There are some young foxglove plants. And then there is an awful lot of bare soil, which on the one hand represents a thrilling planting opportunity, and on the other hand an awful lot of future work weeding, since I don't have plants growing on to cover all of it.
I do have some of the true Poet's Narcissus waiting to go in there, Narcissus recurvus, bought from Peter Nyssen and recently potted. It will need companions that don't swamp it while it is growing. I am hoping my pots of Sarcococca cuttings will root, then they can fill in at the back between the purely hypothetical small trees I haven't even planted yet. And I have just remembered that I have some trays of sweet violet, nibbled off the existing plants in the back garden last spring. They will be fine so long as the cats continue to scare the rabbits away. Rabbits do not like hellebores or daffodils, but they will happily chew their way through Viola odorata, or at least ours will.
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