>On Thursday evenings I follow a course as part of my development plan at work, but last week I got on the suburban train to go to the school when I suddenly realised that I didn’t want to get off at the stop by the school but wanted to just continue up to the summer house.
I arrived at the house around 5:45pm, so it was already pitch-black darkness when I got off the bus. Such is winter in Denmark, but after a few minutes my eyes adjusted and I began to walk up the road towards the summer house.
I light a fire in the wood-burner, made myself a hot cup of tea and then I had a stroll around the garden where I could see absolutely nothing. Still, there’s something relaxing about walking around a garden in the darkness of night, even if it’s before supper time.
The cuttings that have been placed in the guest bedroom in the annex look well; they’ve lost their old leaves and have set distinct buds for new growth. The budleiah cuttings have even set a few new leaves, so I’m quite thrilled about that. Also in the guest bedrooms are the non-hardy plants, mainly dahlias and Abbysinian gladioli, but obviously there’s not much to report about those.
I moved the planks for the planned raised beds unto the covered terrace so they will be dry and ready for treatment whenever I get around to it (maybe the coming weekend?). I want to give them an oil treatment before I assemble the frames and put them outside, so right now I’m looking into non-toxic wood treatments that can be used for the frame of a raised vegetable bed. I might go completely hippie and just use rapeseed oil, since this will definitely be safe to use near vegetables and is also something that is produced here in Denmark without any additives.
Most of the evening, though, was spent with a novel in front of the fire, but there was also time to update my house&garden log. I’ve brought a small notebook up there and am using it to log whatever I do when I’m up there. It’s not an elaborate garden diary; merely a few bullet-points about what I’ve done so I can later look back and see what worked and what might be done differently. After all, this gardening malarky is a learning curve for me.
Next weekend I will go up there Saturday morning and stay ’till Sunday evening. The weather forecast for the weekend says overcast but dry, so fine weather (by Danish November standards) for getting things done.
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