Ferns!

The raspberry bushes weren't the only thing I dug for today: I finally got my ferns! Polypodies (kallioimarre) and soft shield-ferns (kilpihärkylä).

I moved the little hydrangeas, which will probably kill them but they weren't really thriving in that spot anyway :/ Let's hope they do better at the other side of the yard.

Clearing the raspberry block

Today I've mostly been digging in the garden.

This morning I decided that this was the perfect day to move one of the raspberry bushes so that it wouldn't block access to the garden gate (once get a proper garden gate, that is). What made it perfect? Well, the fact that I was inspired to. Nothing in this household happens by design; if it's going to happen at all, it'll be ex tempore.

The gate corner before work started

 There was sooooo much soil and roots and soil and rocks and soil. Gaah.

I'd got to this point when H showed up and asked where I was planning to put all that soil. I made like I knew what I was doing.

 The hawthorn hedge on the other side of th fence keeps invading our side. The crabapple tree (just out of the picture on the right) has roots everywhere. Lucky thing H and his manly muscles were there to sort out the worst. The biggest root we cut was as thick as my wrist, but there were lots of finger-thick ones.

Together H and I lifted the whole bush with as much of the roots intact as possible; unfortunately not much of the root system made it, hardly any bigger ones at all.

After that H's wrist decided it wanted no part in these fun games, so I went on alone. At the end of the day there was actually too little soil rather than too much, so that worked out all right.

Now the gate corner is only waiting for the new gate to be put in! We'll also get some more stones for the path.