Last Thursday afternoon, I shut up the shop while Victoria went into a 7 day lockdown. Apart from upsetting our Friendship Frolic and delaying the finishing of the event, it actually hasn't been too bad. And to be totally honest with you all, I have really enjoyed the last 6 days.
Friday I spent the day catching up on paperwork and bill paying......probably not everyone's idea of a fun time, but having one full day to pull everything together felt kinda good.
Saturday, with Russell home and the shop closed, we decided to get the team working and make our apple pies. Russell peels and chops up the apples, and I make the pastry, roll it out, fill the pies and bake them. At the end of the 5 hours we had 16 apple pies and 3 apple and mulberry pies. They are all bagged, labelled and in the freezer.
(sorry about the crappy photo quality.....Russell took it on his phone......an Oppo.....enough said!)
Although the nights have been cold (and sometimes frosty), the days have been beautiful. I decided on Sunday to get a head start on my 'Month of Gardening' that I have planned for June. I do have a lot of roses to prune, weeds to be pulled, as well as deadheading and pruning to be done. The first garden bed was my new one that I established last year, followed up by 'Mum's Garden'. I did a live video from the garden the other day, explaining how it had been left relatively unkempt over the last 12 months as I had seen the back end of a snake disappear under the overgrown penstemons last Spring. It took two full days, and although you might not notice a difference, believe me there is. All of the Agapanthus have been deadheaded, plants and roses pruned back, leaves raked and weeds pulled out.
It was then time to prune a few more roses. These missed their hard prune back last year, so copped it this time around. I've never killed a rose so pretty sure that these will survive!
With this bed done.....yes it's small but sometimes it's good to have a quick finish!.....I moved to another area of the garden. More Agapanthus deadheaded.....
and continuing around the corner.....the before photo...
and afterwards......
This will give the Hellebores a chance to flower, with most of them starting to send up their flower spikes.
I dug up some self sown Foxgloves, Violas and Feverfew from other parts of my garden, and transplanted them in amongst the roses. Hopefully this will provide a little extra colour to the garden come Spring.
With the arrival of these four boxes of fabric this afternoon, my day tomorrow will be spent inside......unpacking, cutting and rearranging the shop to fit it all in.
So while I have enjoyed my lockdown, my thoughts are with family and friends in Melbourne who are not as fortunate as us in country Victoria. Take care everyone and I hope that it is only another week for you all.
With restrictions easing in regional Victoria, the shop will reopen on Friday 4th June at 11am. It is now mandatory for you to check in when visiting the shop, either by scanning my QR code (which is a very simple process) or by signing in using the register. For the next week (at least) face masks will be required in the shop, so please make sure that you have one with you when visiting.
Linda :)
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