A red letter day for Sherlock as he had his first trip to the groomers. He normally has a fairly spaniel-like coat so it is bizarre to see him looking like a chocolate-brown sheepskin rug.

The day started out rainy but, just as I was about to give up on being able to get some planting done, the rain cleared and it turned into a lovely (if rather humid) day. We made the best of it and planted: four pungas, two cabbage trees, 12 feijoa trees, and six corsican mint plants. Planting the feijoas was a total pleasure – we have worked so hard preparing the bed for the hedge: digging out to a depth 2 feet or more, sieving the soil, mixing in our wonderful rich homemade compost and leaf mould and a generous quantity of manure (including some I opportunistically collected after a police horse answered a call of nature on the footpath in front of the house!). The pungas etc were harder work as we haven’t done the same level of prep out the back. Nick dug the holes with a mattock – and then got carried away and grubbed out a whole series of stumps, including one that I trip on every bloody time I go down the back. The only things left to plant now are the magnolias, the kowhai and the kakabeak but we think we will leave them in pots until we come back from Italy as planting them requires some serious prep. A large glass of wine and a nice hot bath to get the kinks out, now I’m off to bed. Tired but happy.