Greening up

The broad beans have gone out this week and I am preparing the fencing for the sweet peas and runner beans.The greenhouse and the poly tunnel are now rapidly filling up.I have started the cuttings of pelargoniums and tender plants adding to the pandemonium.
Checking along the borders, the irises are starting into growth and I regret that I did not thin them out last year.I have made a note to attack them with a vengeance later this summer.I have a feeling they would take over if left to their own devices,they always try to head into the lawns ,never the other way.I end up burning a huge pile every few years.I made the mistake of putting them on the compost heap a few years ago and had irises poking up in odd places for years - worse than couch grass - well maybe not! One little job I make sure I do now is to go over all the borders while they are still easy to navigate looking for nettles and brambles and creeping buttercup,which is very bad this year.While they are young and green and the soil is very soft they are easy to get out.There is nothing worse than a proud stand of delphiniums with a great clump of nettles in them or a lovely shrub with a great bramble sticking out of it.They are very difficult to get at later in the summer.It looks like it is going to be very wet for the rest of the week and over Easter so these are pretty urgent tasks before I become a slave to the lawnmower.With the clocks going forward there is more time now,so when I can, I try to do the mowing during the last couple of hours of the day, as it is still very damp until the afternoon.That is in theory,it never works out like that,if the last few summers are a guide it is best to mow whenever you can as it might well rain for days.The the ground is mostly clay so mowing can only be done when it is dry or it looks just awful.