Not only but also . . . . . .

There's a saying : 'Never explain, never apologise':

however, 

as I am not Royalty, I will do both.

Not only has the past week been 

"the birthday week", 

when I pay more attention than usual to

togetherness,

it has also been my last ditch attempt at knocking the garden into shape

before the grand opening next weekend.

Hence my temporary absence from

the blogosphere.

I am guilty of neglecting my friends' blogs as well as my own.

Forgive me.

Problems, problems.

Firstly, the English weather, what else.

Winter left huge gaps in beds and borders, needing camouflage

in the form of smoke and mirrors,

shrouding semi-dead shrubs in annual climbers and bedding plants,

strategically placing terracotta pots and rusty metal watering cans,

as well as large lumps of rotting tree trunks, rocks and pebbles; 

the canny gardener has all these tricks up her sleeve,

just in case.

Several expeditions to expensive nurseries 

helped to deplete my gardening budget and fill a few more gaps.

Secondly,

the most essential ingredient to gardening success,

trusty gardener, 

hurt his back. seriously enough to drop out of my schemes for two weeks.

He came in one day, crooked and not his usual cheerful self at all,

just to mow the lawn.

In spite of being a selfish sort of employer, and frantic to boot,

I forbore to get cross with him, commiserated and asked

how soon he thought he might be well again.

That's gardeners for you, anything for the cause.

So, here he is again.

I am plying him with tea breaks,

kind words and consideration.

He is almost back to normal,

complete with gardener-isms;

today he suggested, that somebody should

"draw a diaphragm".

I love gardener-isms.

I love gardener even more. Today he defined the edges between the lawn and beds and borders, and  weeded all soft paths as well as between stones and slabs on the hard ones; both these jobs make an instant difference.  He staked tall herbaceous plants securely, weeded a deep border and strimmed the daffodil lawns, a long overdue job, leaving me free to do delicate hand weeding on narrower beds, which I can do kneeling. As it's Saturday he left early but he has promised to come back on Thursday. I shall continue to get out there between showers as often as I can, so I might not be around that much this week either.

All I need now is a few days of sunshine to get some colour into the borders which are still quite sad looking. Tidy, but colourless.  Wish me luck.