Instant Gardening

With a family event looming, I decided last week to respond to compliments regarding the luxuriant growth of thistles in our garden. This year we are growing them in a number of ways: swathes through a patch of recently seeded lawn; odd specimen thistles in random spots about the drive and garden; lanky yellow seed pods nod through the collapsed gladioli in the ambitiously named flower bed; a gravelled trench on one side of the house boasts a variety of members of the thistle family; and our piece de resistance, a large glazed pot full to bursting with thickly stemmed and glossy thistles boasting their success in this most peculiar of summers.

Too late to grow replacement, and more accepted, varieties of flower from seed; I called in at a local garden centre to purchase some replacements for our thistle garden. Pots were emptied, new shrubs and flowers watered profusely in their pots as they sweltered in the current drought; and then I decided to tackle the profusion of weeds that inhabit the wall around the well. I hadn't appreciated that the roots of this weed formed the very fabric of the mortar holding the bricks together. With every dig of the trowel, a brick shifted position. Armies of ants protested at the disturbance, clambering over my arms and biting to make sure I knew they weren't happy. At the end of the afternoon a carpet of bricks lay about me and the hens, for once, proved their use in cleaning up the ants. No weeds, and no well wall!

It is the school summer holidays and I suspect like most parents, we spend some considerable time encouraging our children to 'do something'. One unsuspecting child was put in charge of re-build and, to his credit, he did just that.  In the end there was no time to insert the patiently lined up flowers before yesterday's event; but it didn't prevent a young niece watering the new well wall in anticipation, nor relations familiar with our garden commenting that they hadn't realised we had a well in our garden - the success of the weeds had been to blend with the lawn. I wonder what other architectural features lie hidden!