Well, it’s been… a while.

We last left off at the end of our first and busiest ever NGS season. Ten events – five public – five by arrangement – and a record amount of money raised. We were coming down from the high of NGS and recovering from a season of openings. The garden was slipping into Autumn but there was still lots of enjoyment to be had from it. As jobs, I’d neatened the border edging all the while ignoring the chaos in the borders that had accumulated over the summer.

Exhausted, we took a step back and relaxed with other things decidedly not related to gardening. There would be a natural break in garden jobs until later in autumn.

Which is when it started to rain.

And it’s not stopped since.

I’m glossing over months of other life-events that had a serious impact on me, but keeping to gardening, the wet weather and consequently wet garden prevented me from being able to do my usual winter clean up in early spring. Early spring all too quickly turned into early summer and still the rain persisted and the garden never dried out.

It’s still wet now and there are borders that I’ve not been able to properly reach since last year because the ground is so wet. In our heavy clay soil, footsteps on wet ground remain imprinted for a long time. We’ve had light showers today and stepping onto the grass gives the characteristic “squelch” that has been the bane of my existence for the last six months.

The worst thing about our soil is that it is heavy and seemingly always wet.

The best thing about our soil is that is it heavy and seemingly always wet.

Case in point – I tried to weed the border (yes, it is almost June and I have not been able to do the first round of weeding) but managed to cake my gardening gloves in soil that was so wet and sticky it wouldn’t rub off while also leaving a huge dent in the grass at the border edge. I couldn’t grip my gardening tools since there was so much soil stuck to my gloves and the handles, they might as well have been covered in grease. I’m not that heavy, but I could feel myself slowly sinking into the ground as I stood trying to water in some newly panic-bought plants with a watering can.

On the other hand, it is almost June and I can still lift and divide established clumps of moisture-loving Astilbes and hostas, and replant them without worrying whether they would dry out. The ground is so wet they haven’t even slightly wilted and I probably won’t have to water them in much either.

It’s all very well waiting until July or August for the weather to dry out but I have the first NGS Open Garden event of the season in just two weeks and there is still weeding to be done, plants to prune and border edging to make-good. I doubt I will manage to get all those jobs done. While scanning through last year’s photos of the garden around this time, I saw how immaculate and well-presented it turned out. I caught myself saying, “goodness, I didn’t know it could look like *that*”, what I have this year could be classed as a more “naturalistic” look, if one were being generous.

So it’s back to bedlam and running around like a madman trying to prepare – as best as possible – for the NGS season. We had a few people round for a garden pre-visit where they didn’t seem to notice creeping buttercup running rampant though a border or that grass had entirely gone from a long section of path (thanks, flopping plants) and had yet to re-grow. They didn’t notice the roses hadn’t been pruned or that a lot of the winter clean up hadn’t been done. While that is encouraging, I’m still sat on the weather forecast for any chance that we might have more than 48 hours without rain so the garden might have a chance to dry out and in turn, I might have a chance to actually get some work done in it.

It’s not looking good though, I’m only writing this now since it’s been raining (several times) today it’s looking the same tomorrow.