Garden Path

I found a garden path today. It was so covered in earth and leaves I hadn't known it was there. At the end of it, by the fence, I planted my new rose, a white rambler called, appropriately, Rambling Rector. We got there eventually.

First I had to get the shed door open, and it was so swollen from the rain that it took trickery, threat and violence to get it to move. It was no good asking Tony, he'd rambled off to take a service at a little hilltop village somewhere. Dodger did his best to be unhelpful. Dodger thinks I can't see him romping about, but it's difficult to ignore him when he's sniffing at the door frame while I try to wrench it open. Then when I'd worked out where the path ended and the soil began I dug a hole. Dodger dug another one, which accounts for the heaps of soil everywhere. (Oliver makes no attempt to control him and Oliver being made of stone is no excuse. So is Dodger.)

To help this rose to settle in and thrive I dragged out the box of fertiliser pellets. Goodness only knows how they make them but they smell of the stuff we used to feed to the goldfish when we were kids, only worse. The best thing to put on roses is something that's been processed through a horse and left around for a while, but all I had was this well-rotted goldfish food or whatever it is. Knowing that it's highly concentrated and you mustn't use too much, I tipped the bag very carefully over the hole. And dropped it.

And spilt most of it trying to get it out.

And dropped it again. Dodger turned tail and hid behind the shed.

I stood back and wondered what would happen if I just dropped the rose in there, shovelled in the soil and walked away. Perhaps I'd look out in the morning and see it spiralling into the sky like the Beanstalk. More likely it would die of shock and overdose. It would be like me taking all my migraine tablets in one go and washing them down with a double espresso. But there was no way that I was exhuming all that stuff and putting it back in the packet. So I dug out most of it and planted the rose, then the rest of the soil got a share out of goldfish pellets. By then it was getting dark so I coaxed Dodger out from behind the shed and tidied up.

Hopefully the pongy pellets will made my garden grow like Chelsea Flower Show. Then again, the earthworms might eat them and grow to the size of draught excluders.