Behind the Scenes

Today the weather was better than the last few days and I was able to do some work in the garden. The sun was shining and the temperature had risen to about 10 to 11 degrees Celsius. I started of with pruning the Penstemons and of course Kadootje kept a careful eye on the proceedings.
This is what my Penstemons look like in summer. Very pretty, don't you think? And they flower for a very, very long time. Last year they started flowering in July and were still in flower at the end of November. The flowers are also good for cutting and last about a week in the vase.

This was what they looked like this afternoon, very messy and flopping all over the place and in serious need of a haircut.

Before
and after!

Of course my supervisor Maine Coon Vita was there to check if everything was done by the book.
After the pruning I went into my kitchen garden to check on my seedlings and to do some planting.
My seedlings are coming along nicely. The broad beans and sweet peas are doing fine. The rocket, lettuce and radishes had decided to pop up their little leafy heads and say hello. It was nice to see them again. In about a few weeks time I'll be harvesting the first vegetables from my kitchen garden.
Two weeks ago I had planted some cloves of garlic and I was curious to see how they were doing. One week after planting they looked like this.
And now, two weeks later, the garlic looks like this. They have grown quite a bit, even though the last few days have been cold and we had some night frosts as well.


Of course, Dolly was there to keep me company. She loves the outdoors so and is always curious to see what it is I'm up to. Here she's checking to see if I had weeded the flowerbed properly.
Three weeks ago I started chitting my potatoes in the conservatory. And after 2 weeks of chitting they looked like this. Almost there but not quite. Today they were ready to be planted in the new bed my garden assistant had dug for me.
So I got all my tools ready, donned my pink wellies and started planting the spuds.
And here is the finished result. Now we have to wait and see if and when the potatoes will send up any leaves and then we will take it to the second stage. More of that on a later date.

After all that hard work, I decided to treat myself to something nice. I like decorating and as Easter isn't all that far away I made this. Personally I think it's rather amusing that my spanking new watering can is the exact same shade of lilac as the violets and the pot they're in. I bought them a week apart, so yay me!
The most humiliating thing to me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man.
Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in the Garden, 1871