Thursday 17 February 2011

Acceptance, Hope and the Three brothers Clem

This blog post was originally supposed to be about loss, death, the withering of beloved plants but I've now come to tell you, instead, a tale of hope, of growth, of second chances and reprieves!

This is what I thought I'd be showing you, and we do have a lot of that, but, more importantly, we have things like these...

And I have no idea what these will turn out to be but I'm hopeful and proud and leaving them alone until they make their identity known to me. (Do you know what they are?!)

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As part of our ongoing Beautifying our Backyard-/Garden-Space Project I'm eagerly searching for the best deals on garden furniture so we're ready to roll when Spring is finally sprung upon us here in London.

I've encountered a problem, however, and I need to rectify it quickly.

At the back of the garden we have a gorgeous Clematis (this is a picture of it in its heyday... it's the giant plant that rests across the top of the fence at the back of the garden)


and it's a source of pure joy each year when it blooms. (Of all the pictures I've ever taken; this continues to be a firm favourite.)

Clem was in the way when we were having our outback renovations done and he'd been trimmed back drastically to allow the landscaper to get into the area to work and then add the extended trellis on the back wall.

Now, several months later, it seemed to be that Clem had been over pruned and wasn't going to recover from the ordeal. I'd come to believe that Mr Clematis's time had come. His end had drawn near. He'd moved on to That Little Garden in the Sky where he could run around and play with other happy Clematises...

This is Clem...


So sad *sob*

I simply can't have just dry, withered Clematis vines at the back of my Please-Let-This-Be-Beautiful-and-Functional Space so drastic action was taken.

Allow me to introduce;

Three brothers Clem. (There are three of them. They are brothers. They are all named "Clem".)* Please excuse their varying states of undress.

Aren't they handsome?

I've unpacked them completely, fed and watered them well and am now waiting patiently for weather that is consistently 10 °C for longer than two hours a day so I can introduce them to their new home. I'm pretty excited.

For posterity (and this post) I went outside, intent on capturing pictures of the current state of death so I could show you just how bad it had become out there. (We saved, in pots, a rose and a fuchsia plant in the hopes that they could be replanted and placed around the garden as life, decoration.)

What's this?!



I'm not certain that this is Clem (as opposed to another plant that's wound around in the same viney mess) but I'm hopeful that it is. (Can you tell? Is it a clematis? If not; what is it?!)

And this is our sad, little rose...


But wait!...

A sign of life! Hope for our rose!

And our Fuchsia... Long-coveted by our neighbour...


Because our neighbour longed for this plant; when it was removed I tried to save some cuttings of it and get them to sprout so that I could surprise her with it. So far; my attempts have failed *sigh* I'm quite disappointed by it.... -ish...


There's hope! If I'm correct, those new shoots are coming from a section that had been sharply pruned back to move it out of the way of our satellite dish some time back and we'll have a fuchsia plant again! (Is it a fuchsia?!)





*When I have to explain it; some of the literary mystique is lost. Try to keep up.

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