dead heading – derrickjknight

A Layered Rose

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Jackie, Elizabeth, and I worked in the garden for much of the morning, and after lunch until the temperature rose too much for us.

Elizabeth began by weeding the front garden

which houses this fuchsia Delta’s Sarah.

Later, she mowed the grass and cut the edges.

Jackie gave the lavender border in the Rose Garden a severe hair cut,

during the process of which she discovered a rooted layered rose, and rushed off to plant it in a pot. Layering, I have just learned, is a method of propagation resulting from the formation of roots whilst the infant is still attached to the parent plant. Gardeners, to achieve this, will bend a suitable stem to ground level. Our carpet rose in question had done this naturally.

My task was dead-heading roses, including For Your Eyes Only and Creme de la Creme in the Rose Garden, where a hoverfly fossicked through fallen petals.

Did I miss any?

This evening the three of us dined on Jackie’s smoked haddock; piquant cauliflower cheese; creamy mashed potato; crunchy carrots and cabbage; and shrunken spinach. Mrs Knight drank Hoegaarden and my sister and I drank Squinzano reserva Rosso 2014

“Just Like Daddy’s”

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This morning I became a veritable barber in a dead-heading spree.

I began with the prolific Japanese anemones in the front garden.

As I look out of my sitting room window each morning, I think of that excellent blogging poet Pleasant Street, who commented recently that she preferred to see older blooms alongside the fresh ones, “like life”. Although our reason for dead-heading is not vicariously to deny the effects of ageing, but rather to promote new growth, Pleasant certainly has a point. In deference to that I have left the blooms immediately in view to nature.

I also gathered up some of the branches broken by the winds. As the day continued the winds gradually returned to approach the 60 m.p.h. expected this evening.

Remarkably little damage has so far been incurred. Here are the Palm Bed;

the corners at the house end of the Brick Path;

the Gazebo Path;

Elizabeth’s Bed;

the solanum and clematis draped on the dead tree;

perked-up dahlias;

petunias and begonias in large pots;

chrysanthemums;

and rose Gloriana.

The Small White butterflies flitted around everywhere.

This afternoon Elizabeth visited and we took a trip to Molly’s Den, where I photographed a few random displays.

Not quite so random was this scene, taking me back to one Christmas in the 1980s.

Louisa would have been about six or seven when Jessica and I bought her an ironing board. “Just like Daddy’s”, was her delighted cry.

This evening, before Elizabeth returned home, we dined on Jackie’s perfect pork paprika and wild rice. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and my sister and I drank more of the Fleurie.

A Trio Of Flamenco Dresses

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Watering and dead heading were the orders of the garden today. For the first time, I availed myself of

the Head Gardener’s dead heading trolley. This is basically an adapted IKEA sack barrow. The slot for secateurs has been obscured by the contents of the bucket of dead blooms. Scissors, weed- and slug-killers, stand in the top tray, so as to be readily available should the need arise.