Tim Bowen Antiques, Carmarthenshire, Wales

Diverting dahlia’s

Thu. March 28, 2019

There is a list in my note book – brought forward tasks.  It’s a little longer than usual, the list that is.  Tim picks the children up and they phone me on their journey home.

‘What’s for supper?’

‘Ah,’ comes my reply as I realise I haven’t defrosted the chicken or prepared spuds or anything else. ‘Pasta,’ I say quickly, racing to think which sauce I can knock up from the contents of the larder and in a hurry.

wildlife pond at Bowen HQ

It began with  dividing dahlias,  then discovering vine weavel (nasty but treatable), gathering enough pots for the divided dahlia’s, buying a few more tubers for potting on, and so on.  Then as I filled the green house with sheep’s wool topped pots (good stuff for avoiding slug damage, if a little smelly) and shuffled around some sad looking salvia’s and pelargoniums, the problem widened from dahlia’s to seeds and planting them, finding the seed trays, (how I envy Monty Don’s potting shed) heated propagator,. Many seeds have been set.  Window-cills are full, a new apple tree is planted, the wildlife pond dug last autumn is now full, of plants, no wildlife yet, unless you count the up-turned bee I lifted (alive) from the pond.  The old potato patch is prepared for the arrival of new hens, safely fenced from preventing them for pecking at my plants. Sweet peas, cosmos, zinnias and many more baby plants are being chased around the moving sun to be hardened off.  Self-seeding forget-me-nots, digitalis, teasels are being moved to fill gaps between tulips and the perennials.

Tulips in the sun

And so the-end-of-year-stock-take will have to wait for the wet weather, the on-going projects are progressing slowly, the house is being neglected.  Blame it on the dahlia’s. They’ve led me to a full blown obsession with the spring garden.  Hopefully it will all pay off in a month or two. Now, where did I leave my secateurs?

Pond on the hill