pumpkinstrokemarrow

So maybe three years ago, I dug the L-shaped bed in question over and bought a dozen or so plants from our community nursery - a place which doubles as a garden centre and occupational therapy unit. Plants looked fine when bought but stubbornly refused to thrive, despite occasional watering.

Then last year bought a replacement for a fatality from a proper garden centre and this one did rather better. It also cost rather more. I suspect the difference may have been that the initial batch of plants were recently rooted cuttings whereas the replacement was a more serious plant with more serious roots and so stood a better chance in the rock hard soil. Better but still not good. Whereas the violets seem to do all right. Not a spectacular plant but they do cover the ground.

And there the matter rested until FIL decided that it would be good to buy some more bulbs: daffodils, snow drops and winter aconites, the first two of which are getting shaded out at the bottom of the garden and last being something we had noticed at Hampton Court in the spring. From there but a small jump to deciding to put the bulbs in the spotted lilac bed where there should be plenty of morning sun in the spring. Should get a much better job in a clear dug and manured bed than by popping them in an established one.

So the bed is now dug over, to a depth of around 6 inches. Dug three barrows of rotting tree chippings & so on & so forth into half of it, mostly the product of the once splendid willow tree in the next door garden. Then this morning thought to take a north London pick axe - an odd thing with unequal prongs - to the other half to see if I could get any deeper than 6 inches. I was quickly reminded how tiring swinging a pick is. A dozen well delivered strokes and one finds oneself short of breath, perhaps because in order to be well delivered one is using most of the upper body, muscles which I do not get to use that often. But I am pushing down, more rock is getting broken, so maybe I will try again later.

In the meantime amused by the assault on Blackberry by our securocrats reported in today's Guardian. Social networking sites are the spear head of the free world when they are used to fuel riots against regimes with whom we have fallen out; we take a slightly different line when they are used to fuel riots nearer home.