On another warm and sunny day Jackie continued the
refurbishment of the Westbrook Arbour begun yesterday.
Apart from recording the event and carrying out a little dead-heading of Welsh poppies I cleared up some of Jackie’s weeding and pruning which I added to the compost, being careful not to cover Félicité Perpétue, the splendid climber providing a scented canopy to the degrading material.
I wandered around the various paths seeking trugs filled with the garden refuse. The Brick Path was viewed from beside the Westbrook Arbour; the second image takes us from the Weeping Birch towards the Rose Garden; the third contains the house seen from the Shady Path – the Chilean lantern tree is on the left and pink pelargoniums hang from the baskets on the right. The larger picture takes us from the concrete patio towards the Rose Garden.
The large portrait image here leads from the shadows of Fiveways towards the Rose Garden. Accessing the gallery by, as usual, clicking on any image will facilitate enlargement and reveal further descriptions of the contents.
Her task complete, Jackie gleefully reclined on the bench now free of plentiful guano and surveyed the rest of her creations.
From her vantage point she could look down the Phantom Path towards Florence sculpture with the Agriframes Arch on the left supporting clematis Dr Ruppel and red rose Super Elfin; and the two-toned rhododendron on the right. She could look to her left and view the section of the garden leading to the home of our neighbours in Mistletoe Cottage.
I have to confess that I took the last two photographs above before removing Jackie’s neatly stacked garden tools. Knowing that she prefers pictures to be devoid of evidence of labour and that she had made the Arbour all neat and tidy, it seemed only fair to reciprocate for the post. To my mind the tools tell part of the story, but my wife is, after all, the Head Gardener.
This evening we dined on a takeaway meal provided by Forest Tandoori. We shared crispy popadoms, onion bahjis, and a plain paratha. My main choice was king prawn jalfrezi with fried rice; Jackie’s was chicken biriani. Mrs Knight drank Hoegaarden and I drank Benguela Bay Shiraz 2018. We couldn’t eat it all so some of the leftovers will supplement tomorrow’s fare.