It's about this point in the week that I start thinking about what I want to do at the weekend... And yesterday £40 of RHS vouchers landed on the mat! (From my mum who had meant to continue paying my RHS membership, as I was for her, but the direct debits relapsed to ourselves so she thought she owed me a present..!!)
I have a location in mind for a Berberis thunbergii 'Helmond pillar' which I got from the sad plants corner in Rosemoor at New Year. I think I will put it at the back corner of my rockery to obscure a messy gap at the side of a shed. In front of the rockery I have a corner shaped gap which a selection of heucheras should be filling, but they're not growing as vigorously as I expected. I'm going to move my pinkish winter-interest euphorbia there.
I have had a dug-up clump of Monarda 'Squaw' sitting patiently in a recycling box since the autumn, I think I promised a division of it to someone here (Maud?) and I will put the rest of it in the front garden in my red white and blue scheme.
I haven't started any edibles from seed yet. I have a bag of 50 pink and red dahlias waiting to be planted somewhere. I didn't get all my spring bulbs in the ground by a long margin. Don't know whether to whack them all in now and hope for the best, or keep them in their paper bags until autumn.
I think I might spend my vouchers on a quality fruit tree rather than the unpredictable ones from Costco. I also want an evergreen clematis (Montana?) to quickly cover the nasty wire fence along my front path, but I may need to sacrifice a Solanum which is becoming more tree than shrub like and I worry the roots are too close to the house. I am toying with the idea of moving my climbing/rambling rose 'Open Arms' to the furthest front end of the fence, and then one day taking it over a gate arch frame and along the front wall, as well as down the fence towards the house to interweave prettily with the Montana. That bit is inspired by a lovely (huge, venerable!) rose at Hyde Hall planted at the corner of a building, which has been trained along staked wires to make a sort of screen extending about three metres each way from the plant, and once the main stems reach the end stake, they are gently turned back on themselves and eventually there is a sort of plaited or knotwork effect.
We also have a couple of hardware jobs to do ASAP - one is getting the secondary water-butt installed against Shed 2! We never actually finished the external panels on the shed when we put it up last spring - just narrow planks to cover joins, nothing structural. I have a length of guttering and lots of brackets and downpipe attachment things, and the diverter whatsit for the butt. After the winter we've had, I doubt there will be a hosepipe ban (the cheek of it, if there was!!) but it's better to use rainwater anyway on a lot of things. The other hardware job is putting the tension wire between the stakes in front of the house which will support the raspberry/tayberry/loganberry bushes. I may also need to Heath Robinson some sort of cage frame arrangement to be able to net them in the summer when the fruit start developing.
Roll on the weekend!!