Not such green fingers.....

So the garden is taking shape, slowly, very very slowly, but it has gone from this.......

To seeing Paul, our very patient landscaper getting almost to the end of the marathon.....

and in the meantime, I have developed a sudden and quite inexplicable obsession with gardening. Now you must understand that I haven't a clue what I am doing. There were lots of large shrubs in the area that has been paved over, so I dug them up and planted them in other parts of the garden. 

Then I watched Gardeners World on the TV, which told me that you should put a few handfuls of compost or something into the hole you have dug for the shrub. So I rushed out and bought the stuff, pulled the poor shrubs back out of the ground, added the compost stuff and put them back. Poor things.....

Especially when, a few days later, as the landscaping progressed, I thought 'hmm, I think I planted this yellow bush in the wrong place', out it came again to be replanted in a totally different spot. So far, everything seems quite perky, even the plants that were uprooted three times before they reached their final resting place look okay, but I bet if plants have any sort of sensors, they want to curl up and die when they see me approach with my little trowel in my hand

The other thing I have learnt is that some plants that I have been nurturing - great big tall spiky things, I gave them a good feed of fertiliser - turn out to be a rather nasty weed. Well, how was I to know? And how is it that garden plants that you have to nurse along as if they are babies, fertilising them, watering them, staking them, grow at a snails pace, whereas weeds that get no attention at all, spread like a wildfire and grow at a staggering speed.

The final thing I have discovered (well, apart from the fact that you can spend the equivalent of the gross national income of a small country just in one visit to a garden center) is that someone invented gardening gloves as a necessity, not as a fashion accessory. I tend to forget this, so my nails (never my best feature) and hands now look as if I have taken a new job helping those guys who are permanently restructuring our motorways. 

Finally for today, it's Max's ninth birthday today, here is the card I made for him - suitably quirky I hope. Milo was seven yesterday. Happy birthday boys!