Writer Fitness: Gardening, Mid-Spring 2016

Right, getting into the swing of things. Gardening is supposed to be part of my writing fitness regime—it also gets me out from in front of the computer, keeps the landlord happy, and makes getting ready for the annual rental inspection much easier, thus reducing stress.

It’s mid-Spring in the Land DownUnder, and season and garden waits for no man. Imagine my surprise when I went out after a long, wet winter and a fairly sploshy spring, to find my rose bushes already in full leaf, in need of a prune and covered in black spot… and then I looked at the peach tree.

I learned two things that day: black spot treatment and prevention, and leaf curl treatment and prevention. Here’s what I started with:

It took me a good hour to hand-pick all the black-spot-infected leaves off the rose bushes. I’m still working on the peach tree.

This is what one of my poor rose bushes looked like before I picked off all the black-spot-infected leaves: 

 

And here it is after: 

 

And another of the rose bushes:

 

And the poor peach tree - not a happy chappy:

 

More next Monday. Of what, I’m not sure, but I have two garden beds to plant with vegetables, some potted flowers to replant, three or four garden beds to weed, and an awful amount of pruning to get through… and then the budleia needs pruning and the cuttings planting to form a hedge.

A half hour a day is a good starting point, right… right?

Yeah... right.