Oh Rats!

First things first......hooray, I got out and did some gardening yesterday. This is the estate of forty cottages near Mudeford. The few in the picture are at one end, and as the small front gardens take care of themselves at this time of year, all of my work was done throughout the large back gardens that wrap around the outside. Mostly just a bit of the remaining dead heading left over from last year, a little leaf clearing and a bit of pruning at this stage, but it was nice to get back into it.

This particular Mahonia I planted when designing the front gardens. It has to be kept hard pruned every year as it block the owners window otherwise, but the flowers are just the best at this time of year.

This very small border needed colour for the spring and winter to tie in with surrounding borders that have colour at other times. Just mixed evergreen azaleas wrapping around Cornus 'Midwinter Fire'.

Cornus are among my favourite shrubs as they can provide immense colour in the winter if planted en-mass. Mix the colours up by using Cornus stolonifera Flaviramea, Cornus sibirica and Cornus Midwinter Fire, and it gives a real show, but you need a large border to get the right effect.

Healthwise, oh well, the scan showed a clot, and so now I can look forward to five days of injections in the stomach and six months on Warfarin. Yep!.....rat poison is coursing through my veins as well as the drug that I can't remember being stuck in my gut.....whoopy do! The pain has pretty much gone so something must be working, and the outlook is apparently quite hopeful. They are still unsure as to why I, apparently being sooo healthy otherwise, never smoked and always kept active should contract such a problem...I suppose I'm just lucky!  The main problem will be not cutting myself, as the warfarin would be a problem and they tell me I could bleed out quite quickly. Given that, as Amanda reminds me, I come home virtually EVERY day bleeding from somewhere, and the occasional hedgetrimmer etc accident happens, I am going to have to spend the next six months suited up, so no short sleeves or shorts.....hmmmm. Not feeling full of the joys of spring!