raspberries for L

Some weeding as a surprise 50th Birthday present for a friend.

I was roped in for the 'initial consult' to determine what had to be done: pretty much my suggestion was get the obvious weeds out of the way, trim down whatever needed to be trimmed down, and clear the raspberry bed.

The initial idea by the organiser was to actually plant things and pretty it up. I put the kibosh on that: best not to add difficulty to their maintenance or put in things that they don't want to the garden. She may have an aesthetic that we can't envision, so don't do anything that might complicate that.

But clearing the weeds thanks to the help of friends? Is definitely a plus. Even I struggle to clear weeds, etc. on my own. Having someone else willing to chip in, if only for an hour? So good.

I couldn't make the Saturday the others had planned (I had my own permabee that date), so I went on Thursday lunchtime and did some weeding of the raspberry bed.

There are raspberries in there, we swear! Anyway, I ended up taking on the raspberry bed, because the others barely realised it was a raspberry bed and didn't know what raspberry canes looked like, let alone how to prune them. I'm pretty sure L would trust me with her raspberries, though.

There was quite a bit of dead wood; I cut as much dead wood as I could, but I'm not 100% what type of raspberries they are - the kind that fruit on last year's wood or the kind that fruit on new wood. So I chopped them all down to about knee-height, and will have to charge Louise to notice where the green shoots grow come spring.

Unfortch, her neighbour spotted me while I was weeding the garden on Thursday lunchtime, and although I swear I mentioned that it was a surprise present in our little chat, she emailed L telling her what lovely friends she had who would weed her garden as a gift!

*sigh*

There went the surprise. Although apparently L is delighted with the gift now that she's found out, it would have been nice for the actual surprise and maybe have her husband or kids video her expression as she realised?

I do feel a bit left out of the Saturday bee, though. By the time my own stuff was finished at my place, they said they were cleaning up. And then fifteen minutes they took a photo of all them...without me. *sigh* I have serious FOMO.

Anyway: mischief managed, and I'm happy to talk to L about further planting plans. I have a couple of ideas for a rocky section that's really hard to weed and probably a bit of a pain to deal with, but I would run them by her and her hubs first. (They're the ones who'll have to look after it, after all!)