Tuesday 29 June 2010

Gardener Turned Painter?

We have lots of places to sit at Holly Grove - not that we spend much time using them! But they are an important part of the garden; the metal table and chairs outside the sunroom door make a lovely spot to sit for breakfast and the companion seat at the top of the circle lawns is perfect for an afternoon cuppa, then the swingseat in the evening sun...

To these the Handyman is adding a small gazebo in the shade by Valentine's gate. This was a structure he made for our previous garden and it has been sitting dismantled in the 'builder's yard' since we moved here three years ago, so as you may imagine it is in need of a coat of garden paint/preservative...my job.

Not quite the transition between gardener and painter that Monet evoked in his Giverny garden but then he probably had 'staff' to paint the Chinois bridge. The painting of the gazebo will take me several days to complete as I intend to attack it a bit at a time. At the same time I'm repainting the metal table and chairs, a glutton for punishment you may say, but the reward will be in having one new place to linger and another refreshed.

As an antidote to all this painting I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen garden removing the gone-to-seed rocket and radish (I always sow more than we can eat) to the compost bin and sowing two more rows of carrots and one row of Little Gem lettuce in their place. The cut and come again lettuce sown in the half barrel earlier this year has been a great success and is still flourishing and we had the first thinnings of our carrots last night for tea with the first of the sugar snap peas - delicious! I don't have a photo of these as they went straight from plot to plate in minutes.










In the greenhouse the first courgettes are ready and small green tomatoes are appearing on all the varieties. The first two tiny cucumbers have also materialised -- how exciting! Oh, and I glimpsed the first ripe raspberry as I was sowing the carrots; must go out and harvest it for my breakfast...
Yummee! Hoping for more in the coming days.

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