Observe and interact
I wish I can find the blog post, I searched high and low, but I couldn’t find it…. But anyway, the author still commented on how they stopped walking through their property making lists of what needs to be done, but rather just appreciating what is there. So that’s what we did this past Sunday too. No lists, no clipboard, no problems pointed out. OK… we tried… but there is a dead-looking cherry tree that is a concern. But I digress.
The top photo is of a cherry guild near the pond, looking very nice.
Overview of the pond, with strawberry and oregano “ground-cover” around a small pear tree guild, with one of the green spaces (fescue lawn loaded with clover) behind the pond:
A few photos of one of the peach tree guilds from various angles:
Garlic in the no-dig potager beds growing nicely, together with a few other surprises:
An apple guild in the driest part of the garden looking like it may survive summer:
Jet and Jazzie enjoying the leisurely day:
That’s all Folks!
How did you build your pond?
Sounds a great way to spend a Sunday. You’ve got a beautiful garden.
Thank you Helen! The pond is a three-part story:
Starting / construction: https://muchmoremulch.blog/2017/09/05/dont-duck-the-tough-issues/
Decoration and some technical problems: https://muchmoremulch.blog/2017/10/19/out-for-a-duck/
Problems fixed (eventually): https://muchmoremulch.blog/2017/12/23/the-gift-of-running-water/
Thank you, Martin – I will enjoy reading these posts this evening.
Sorry it’s a bit of a long story… but it was!
If I get the chance to do it again, I would make the pond deeper and wider, and the sides much less steep. All the pebbles run down the steep sides. (But at the time I was weary of driving the excavator INTO the pond – it was all dug from the outside – but if the sides were more sloped, that would have been easy too.) But all in all it’s working well. Chickens are in the incubator now, ducks to follow 🙂
Hi Martin, thankyou so much for reminding me that I need sometimes to slow down and just enjoy the beauty of it all. Thanks for sharing. I hope you and yours are all well xxxx.
Hi Kathleen – all good thank you! How are things going with you and your family? For sure, you have to take a break now and then, look and enjoy…. just work, work, work will burn you out!
Because I do not get to work in the garden when I want to, I do not consider all yard work to be work on Saturday or Sunday. I mean, couldn’t it be considered to be a leisure activity . . . sort of?
Hi Tony, I’m sure it can be considered a leisure activity, and especially if someone works in an office all week, it’s good to get out and get down dirty 🙂 For a lot of people that’s the only time they get to do it. We were just ending up doing it almost full time, and Sundays just became another garden work day. We needed that self discipline to take a break, kick back and enjoy it a bit – to put the leisure back in there!
Well . . . what if I work in landscapes all day . . . or on the farm with plants that will eventually be in other people’s gardens? That counts too as a different sort of work . . . right?
Sure Tony, I think it’s a bit about the “change of scenery” too. If you work on landscapes or the farm, your own garden becomes the change – the leisure – that breaks the work routine. We didn’t have that change of scenery, it was all there on site, go, go, go. So for us that break in the on-going activity, and the “forced rest” (even if it is taking the kids for a tiring bike ride) creates that “change of scenery” (even though it may still be in the same physical environment).
Our dogs always love a bit of ball time down-the-hill. We have various circuits that take in different bits of the tree field just to watch the trees growing…and fetch balls.
Our one dog (Jazzie, the brown one) is ball crazy – that’s all she wants to do, fetch, fetch, fetch – so she runs up and down the paths. Jet (the black lab x doberman) is more interested in the “live” balls with fluffy ears and tails, so he’s forever trying to sniff them out, but his mom doesn’t like it when he catches them…
Both of ours love a mousie hunt too – that’s when most of the damage to the mulch goes on. Dougie has accidently caught a bunnie a time or two, but the cats generally keep those away.
That’s what I meant by the fluffy live balls – rabbits. (Australia has a rabbit plague; they’re all over). Mice, we have too, but the dogs aren’t really interested… mind you Jet is interested – in licking the peanut butter off the mouse traps. He doesn’t listen very well when there’s food for the taking involved. One day he’s going to come running in with a sore tongue 🙂