Friday, May 02, 2008

Planting day in the rock garden


My husband, John, is a no-nonsense gardener. I took this picture of him last Sunday as he got ready to spruce up his rock garden. This annual job, which involves a lot of replanting, is necessary because many fussy alpines don't make it through the winter in our climate.

Notice the table and organized set-up: he's ready to plant the entire works in a day. Leisurely pottering in the garden isn't what John is about. His job as a doctor in a teaching hospital keeps him very busy, and he changes hobbies with dizzying frequency.

A couple of years ago, he swapped rock gardening and stone carving for violin lessons. (Stone carving might come back when he retires.) As with anything John does, music — which includes violin lessons, concert-going and daily practicing — has taken over, and now his garden plays second fiddle. However, he's still growing plants from seed for it, and wants it to look its best.

To make John's life easier, we asked our garden helper tidy it up from winter, so he could spend a day planting, and that's what he did from sun-up to sun-down. Done in a day: my garden beds take weeks!

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

1 comment:

  1. Hmm, it does look a bit like he's going to operate! The garden is stunning though, so I guess we can forgive him for showing us all up with his technique.

    ReplyDelete

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-Yvonne, aka Country Gardener