Dibbling

Not every adventure up here is abut the magnificent scenery.  Even in a spectacular setting, domestic chores require attention. It started with a cuppa with a friend.  A good start to any day.  When you add in a conversation about wool and patterns and lying in bed thinking about how to graft in rib, well, it's hard to top.  Nonetheless, our mission was liberating some snowdrops overpopulating a corner of a field, so we were off in boots and armed with garden fork and buckets.

One of the pleasures of getting to know a friend better is learning the things that you might not expect them to do.  'Can you climb  over the gate?' she asks, solicitous of me as a city girl and all of us of an age where various joints behave occasionally under par.  I did, thinking that she would wait on the other side, but she fair flew over that fence.  I'd need to go over fences at least half a dozen times a day for the next decade to catch up with her fence climbing experience.  Next time someone says something is like riding a bicycle meaning you never forget how--I think I'll add climbing over farm gates.

Collecting them was great fun--at least for me.  I hope my friend enjoyed it, too, but then after the collecting, comes the planting.

My bulb planter was missing in action and I have never had a proper dibble--a  pointy stick-shape sometimes with markers to indicate depth, but a trowel and a stick would do.  The bench is not just for highlighting the tools--at my age, I give my joints a helping hand whenever I can.

The bed formerly known as the strawberry bed has been offered to me, so this long narrow bed has become an easel for my pent up gardening creativity.  It is an awkward space, so I decided to define it with a line of spirea--my gardener suggested dwarf shrubs and told me about a new variety with different coloured blooms on the same plant. Not my mother's kind of spirea, with the lacy white blossoms, but a good memory nonetheless.

Here they are, spirea newly planted, lonely sentinels holding the space as bravely as they can and hoping for spring.

Then the first step was to scatter my newly acquired bulblets in a random pattern.  I do random well.
A little fortification with some mac and cheese and then I was at it

with dibble and trowel.  With the assistance of Solomon and  Sheba.
And in time, all the randomized refugees were in place.  Thankfully a friend stopped by for the last bit so I had company and an excuse for a cuppa.