Hello all, sorry about the delay, been super busy with kids, planting, weeding, building walls, making new flower beds… it’s all happening.
So, kids first. Last week summerclub started off badly. It threw it down for the first at least 45 minutes at the garden, real Caribbean rain. The kids were in the pavilion doing colouring and some of the boys were kicking a football around (not very practical but they seemed to have fun) and we all moped about hoping it would stop raining. As soon as it stopped they all went into the garden to play the ABC hunt game, they have to find something that begins with each letter of the alphabet, ie, A = almond tree, B = Bananas, C = Cashew and so on. Then after that we made grassheads. It was great, they put a little grass-seed in the toe section of a pair of tights or in our case ‘knee-highs’ and then fill it with soil. Then they tie the bottom and make a face and decorate it how they want. They make a nose using an elastic band and then place their head in a cup of water and the grass grows to make hair. They are all starting to grow and have little sprouts of hair coming… hopefully in a couple more weeks there will be long and flowing locks on each of them. Of course there is always one that has to be different, he drew his face on the other way up so his head will grow a beard!
Okay, planting now. All our little babies are doing very well and the back wall of the shadehouse with all the LVV plants is filling up nicely. We are definitely going to have to build another shadehouse to house it all because we will run out of space fairly soon. The Statia Morning Glories are doing particularly well. I potted on the two I had sitting in the sun that were very happy and they are now trying to grow up everything in their reach… need to get them a little climbing frame asap!
Weeding is as always an ongoing job but at this time of year it’s every day. The weeds grow so quickly when it’s been raining and it’s been raining a LOT. The grass will grow up to your knees in a week in some areas and so weedwhacking is also a daily chore. Luckily Nadio is fixing my weedwhackers (again) and on Friday I printed him the online parts catalog… it seemed to make his day!
Building walls… we have now completed the re-building of the middle wall between the two play frames in the children’s garden. It was starting to fall down with all the kids running up and down it over the last couple of years and the weeds were just growing faster than we could pull them out. So we dismantled the wall, laid down some weed suppressing plastic material (keep the pesky weeds at bay) and then rebuilt the walls concreting the bottom layers with the largest stones and then laying the others back on top. We will finish it off by pointing in between some of the rocks with some more concrete just to reinforce it. Hopefully this wall will last us a few more years than the other one and if the weeds are kept back well then we will eventually repeat it with all the rock walls in the children’s garden as it will save us so much time pulling Corallita!
That brings us to the new flower beds. There are lots of flowers and plants at the bottom of the children’s garden but not so many as you move up the terraces. As we have now completed the new rock wall we are going to put some more flower beds in around it and have flowers and plants that can tumble elegantly over the rock walls and soften the look a little. Things like Plumbago with it’s delicate blue flowers and Firecracker that the humming birds love so much and intersperse it with some bright, colourful plants like Crotons and Ti Plants so that it’s more of a garden and not just a playground. We have summer club with us again tomorrow and the planting seems like a great thing to get them involved with… or maybe it’s just free labour… whatever!
I will let you know how it goes and hopefully get you some pics of the finished product!
Much love from the garden on the golden rock!
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