Trees and roses

After a couple of strenuous afternoons, definite progress has been made in the garden. The roses went into their handsome green pots, and are looking very healthy. I followed the David Austin instructions to the letter, so hopefully they will grow well - I am very much looking forward to the flowers, and Matthew is even managing to get vaguely enthusiastic about them!

This afternoon we planted the trees - very hard going as the ground in the right hand side of the garden is very heavy, alluvial clay - the left hand side is much more manageable, presumably because it used to be a veg patch and therefore has been dug more recently. After much digging we ended up with three fine holes, and planted the rowan, silver birch and quince. We also decided to use the hole for the silver birch for another purpose too - when our previous cat, Gus, died back in 2006, we were a little taken aback on collecting his ashes from the vet to discover that they were in a very fine wooden casket with a brass name plaque! We had intended to scatter his ashes, but when confronted with this very handsome casket we didn't know what to do with it - so we didn't do anything! It didn't seem quite right to bury him in the garden in Dorset when we were about to move away - anyway, the upshot was that we have been wondering what on earth to do with him ever since, including through two house moves - and now that we were planting trees it seemed like a good idea to bury his ashes while we were about it. All the more appropriate, of course, because of his love of climbing trees (although he wasn't very good at coming back down in a dignified manner!). So the lovely silver birch is now Gus' tree, which all seems very seemly and fitting.

The garden looks very different now that the trees are planted - even though they have been in position in their pots for a few days while I worked out where they needed to be. It will be lovely to see them developing - as I bought quite mature trees, in the case of the birch and quince anyway, we should see them getting to adulthood before we leave this house.

Yesterday's post brought the latest consignment of plants (snow-in-summer, Spindles, and some more ornamental grasses) which I will plant out tomorrow (back too sore today after digging holes for the trees!). They all look quite healthy, which is good. So far mail order has been quite successful!