The garden still has two large bare patches from when the water pipe was replaced. One from replacing the water pipe, and one from removing a concrete sewer access thing that stood in the middle of the front quarter of the garden. I’d started to plant bushes around that lump of concrete to try and hide and camouflage it. The idea of removing it had never occurred to me. But when the digger was here anyway, the workmen asked if I would like to be rid of the sewer access, and my answer was an immediate yes.

At first I was just going to sow grass in its place. I don’t know what I was thinking! this prime location, where the soil has now also been thoroughly tilled so it is easy to work with, deserves better than grass. Why would I want more grass in my garden, anyway?

I planted a witch hazel bush and some ferns and Epimediums, among other things. Given some time I hope this planting will grow into one whole with the hedge next to it.

Eric is playing something exciting (Destiny 2, I believe) and Adrian is sharing the excitement.

In the background the room is a messy pile of boxes with stuff from the kitchen, as well as things that didn’t fit in the laundry room any more since part of the kitchen moved there. I’m looking forward to getting some space here again.

The grass in the garden is getting kind of high. I guess it might be time to do some mowing, even though I don’t much like the look of short grass.

I gather that it should be possible to convert this “lawn” into a meadow by simply removing grass, to gradually lower soil fertility. So this year I will remove the grass after mowing.

Eric’s niece just graduated from high school and had a party today to celebrate.

It’s national day and I had vaguely thought we might go somewhere and do something national day-ish, but the heat is such that I have no energy for anything like that. Instead we had a picnic in the garden, in the shade of the cherry tree, with the most cooling food we could come up with – a strawberry and melon pasta salad and iced elderberry cordial.

tretton37 summer party at Skansen.

The kids took the train to town together and met up with me at the office. We then took the tram to Skansen. (Eric had a restful evening at home instead.)

We had time for a brief walk around Skansen before it was time for the party itself. It was closing time and the whole place was empty. I liked Skansen this way, without all the crowds.

Then we had summery drinks in the sun, and a buffet dinner, and ninja masks and ninja making kits and ninja tattoos.

It’s that time of the year: the bleeding hearts are flowering.

We’re continuing work on Adrian’s boat-ferry-thing and now attaching the cabin thing to it. The builders working on the kitchen kindly lent us two minutes of their time and cut the parts for the cabin on their power saw, so that Adrian could focus on the fun part, which is measuring and then assembling it all.

I wanted cake but have no oven, so I made rhubarb cake in a pan. It worked surprisingly well; I even managed to flip it so it baked evenly on both sides.

Not a pancake, but perhaps a pan cake?

The ground cover in my front flowerbed is mostly doing pretty well. I’m a bit peeved that the Lamiums all died, while their wild cousins turn up here and there in the new hedge, full of vigour. I even see Aquilegia in there but I’ve given up hope about them blooming.

The flowerbeds I remember from my childhood summers in my grandmother’s cottage had single flowers planted at regular distances: tagetes, lilies, gladiolus, hostas. In between the plants the earth was bare. And I remember my grandmother and mother sitting and weeding those flowerbeds to keep them tidy. It must have taken up so much of their time.

I think that aesthetic is still quite in fashion in Estonia, although nowadays the general recommendation is to cover the earth with mulch of some sort to reduce the need for weeding.

The result can kind of look elegant if you can keep it totally pristine, but that bare-earth look just seems so unnatural to me. All gardens and flowerbeds are unnatural by definition, of course, but mulched or bare-earth flowerbeds are like perfectly even monoculture lawns and giant paved patios: it’s no longer bringing out the best of nature but a constant battle to completely dominate nature.

All philosophy aside, it’s also a giant waste of time.

Last summer I also planted some ground cover under one of the new hedges. I couldn’t make up my mind so I bought three different species and gave them equal shares. That turned out to be a very good thing. Out of the three, one has died out so completely that I can’t see even enough of a trace to recall what I may have planted. The second one (Waldsteinia) is growing well, and I’m planning to get more of those to fill in the empty section. The third one (Vinca) is surviving but not exactly doing a good job of covering the ground.

The front hedge I left to its own devices, because the “lawn” there has a lot of species that I thought might spread and cover the ground – Creeping Cinquefoil being the foremost among them. It is generally categorized as a weed, but I find it completely inoffensive in all ways and would happily let it take over all the ground under the hedge, and block weeds I don’t like. The cinquefoil is doing pretty well but there are places it hasn’t spread to yet, and those are now being invaded by less attractive weeds, so I think I will be buying some commercial ground cover for those spots to speed things up.