The One-armed Wheelbarrow

On an overcast, more sultry, morning we cleared clippings and I dead headed.

With no change in the weather this afternoon, Jackie set about chopping up the cut foliage from the plants in the front garden corner

while I transported it to the compost bins and added the more woody sections to the ever increasing heap on the Back Drive.

The hydrangea will stay.

Later, Jackie tidied the area and took

hydrangea cuttings which will be covered with plastic bags and placed in the greenhouse

My post “Five Years On”, from October 14th, 2019 shows, not only the said drive as it was when we first arrived, but also some of the fires that dispensed with the vast amount of brushwood that we cleared from the jungle that was our garden.

It is now apparent that we will need some more bonfires that will call into service the one-armed wheelbarrow in the same way as one was employed before.

Later this afternoon I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/09/04/a-knights-tale-27-eventually-chris-twigged/

This afternoon Elizabeth came with baskets of dirty washing to avail herself of our washing machine because hers has died. This took some hours and she shared our takeaway meal from Red Chilli. She and I finished the Comté Tolosan Rouge while Jackie started on another bottle of the Pinot Grigio Bluch.

To The Lawn Bed

Yesterday Jackie cleared the bank outside the Back Drive gate, leaving brushwood on the gravel path for attention today;

this morning she worked on removing the stump of a scentless and rarely flowering philadelphus, while

I cleared the Back Drive debris;

and further strengthened the arch spanning the Phantom Path by inserting supporting angle irons that she had recently begun. On this day of sunny intervals it was difficult to walk through the garden without admiring the

Brick Path looking towards the house,

or through the Gothic arch now festooned

with mina lobata.

Later, the Head Gardener completed the task of extracting the philadelphus stump, and that of

a leycesteria in the wrong place;

filling in the holes and covering the gaps with broken pieces of marble which once bore the much abused wood burning stove that we inherited from our vendors, thus completing the

opening of the view from the West Fence to the Lawn Bed. The last nine photographs are Jackie’s.

This afternoon I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/08/28/a-knights-tale-23-corporal-punishment/

This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy pasta arrabbiata; crisp broccoli, and tender green beans, with which she drank Dolomiti Pinot Grigio Blush 2020, and I drank more of the Faugeres.