weekend activities

Saturday morning saw me becoming all hot and bothered, as I wrestled with some large , straggly and very thorny rose bushes. My mission was to prune a circular bed of 25 or so ancient and gnarly prickly roses. I have roses all over the garden but this particular bed always leaves me procrastinating on the pruning and weeding. You see, it's not very manageable and after an hour or so I gave up and worked on my new warp in the studio.

Oh, and cutting lots of fat quarters to take for our Creative Fibre stall next weekend, a much more pleasant activity.

Sunday morning saw me at the same place in the garden, but this time DH was within earshot (he was pruning the feijoa trees) and heard me muttering away. A very fast, impulsive decision was made on the spot and by late afternoon that pesky flower bed was no more !

Instead I have a lovely rock garden. The roses are all intact and replanted, tucked in with compost and a kind word or two, and my amazing DH staggered around placing 55 very large rocks ( that he had been saving for another project) to make a rock garden with terraces.

I will take another picture in a couple of months when you will see flowers amongst the rocks. There are four terraces grouped in a fan shape, and it is all going to be much easier to look after.

While Ian was working like a trojan, I had a meeting with some Morris Dancers. A newly immigrated couple to Nelson is wanting to set up a side of Morris Dancers and they needed a fiddle player ( me) .Well, I had a lot of fun for a couple of hours and really would prefer to join in the dancing instead of playing the music, but maybe I will have a chance to do both as the group is set up. We are all getting together again on thursday night. My first encounter with Morris dancers was when I was sixteen and staying with my family at Corfe Castle in Dorset. We were having a holiday in the UK visiting all our relatives and saying our final goodbyes to my grandparents. It was 1972 and the Morris dancers were all young farming lads. I got to meet them later with my slightly older cousins, in the village pub !!

The blossom is starting to appear now in the garden and the first camellia.

I finished the weekend transplanting these lavender cuttings and making another border. Very enjoyable and satisfying.