Gently pottering about

image from Clipart Library

When I posted on Thursday of last week, I was still beavering away in the back garden and had brought you up-to-date with what I'd got done on Monday.  The remainder of the week was spent in much the same fashion: tidying a little here, sorting a little there.  It's amazing just how long it does actually take to get these things done, and it can be a teensy wee bit disappointing when the end result doesn't look a helluva lot different from when you've first started 😏  Perhaps I should try looking at it another way, and remind myself that it doesn't look too different because I've been hard at work to keep it neat and tidy (ish!) out there 😉

Not really garden-related as such, but languishing in the garden nevertheless, are the old roof slates from when we had the house roof replaced the first year we moved up here.  Some of them were taken away at the time but a fair few were left hanging around.  We've made use of them over the years mainly for weighing down bags and tarps ~ indeed, that is exactly what some of them are doing right now up in the utility area 😄 ~ although they have come in handy for other little jobs, too.  

Anyhoo, someone on Orkney Merkitplace was recently asking for recommendations for someone to do some repairs to their roof, and a chap mentioned in one of the comments that he was on the look-out for old slates to engrave on.  I have tried to get rid of these old slates before, for free obviously, and although someone asked if they could have them, they never actually turned up to take the bloody things away or even contacted me to say that they'd changed their mind!  So although I messaged this engraver chappy to tell him he was more than welcome to have these, I wasn't convinced that he'd be interested.  But he proved me wrong and popped round Tuesday afternoon to take the ones he could use with his machinery.  So that's a few less broken pieces of slate to get rid of in due course 😊

Adrian helped me to get the kitchen courtyard area finished.  He moved the black tub from beside the arbour seat, across the stone chippings ~ no easy feat as it was full of compost 😯 ~ into the corner here.  You may recall that I decided to save the redcurrants when we dismantled the bed in the front garden patio area.  This standard bush was rather unhappy at being moved as it promptly dropped all it's leaves when it was dug out and plopped into a tub!  I'm sure you can well imagine how happy I was when I realised it appears to have forgiven me by sending out lots of lovely new leaves 😊  I thought I'd give it a larger tub to call home, so repotted it into this one.  I had filled said tub with forget-me-nots last autumn but sadly none survived the ravages of the winter weather.  I may add some of the London Pride plants from the path border in the front garden that still need to be dug out.

There were a number of pots in this corner last year.  As I mentioned on Thursday, the rosemary had gone extremely woody with over half the plant dying off completely, so I decided to discard it altogether.  The two mint plants are now in the wooden planter to the left of the bay tree.  The latter was repotted last year and seems very happy and healthy.  There wasn't quite enough space for its pot to sit between the planter and the large tub, but raising it on this chunk of tree trunk proved to be the perfect solution.

The final "tweak" was to bring this potting bench down from the utility area.  We will be making a few changes up there later in the year, and this needed to be moved.  I shall use it as a display area, with little pots of different seasonal plants and bulbs.  The bird cage had been sitting on the old bird bath (which is no longer functionable as it has a crack in its bowl!), which I have now planted up with houseleeks.  The cage already had houseleeks in it, so I thought it could be part of my new tabletop display.  The lump of pottery on the bottom shelf is something I beachcombed one year when we came up on holiday.  It's a weighty piece, which I think may have been part of a stone flagon, so rather than lug it home I managed to persuade Beverly to look after it for me until we moved up here 😏

It's such a shame that this lovely terracotta pot, which had one of the mint plants in it, got broken.  When I picked it up to get the mint out I noticed that there was a crack right across it, which of course lead to the pot breaking as the mint was so firmly wedged in that it was very difficult to dislodge!  Rather than smash it up to make drainage crocks, I just tapped off a little of the broken piece to that I could wedge it across the pot to make a double-tiered planter.  I will put some tiny alpines in it in due course 😊 

Ta-daa ~ behold the newly-tidied/rearranged kitchen courtyard!  I'm really happy with how nice it looks now, even if it did seem to take longer to do than I thought it would 😏

Oh dear, another blurry photo 😕  The tub had been sitting further to the left, on the stone chippings but Adrian slid it onto the flagstones, closer to the old arbour seat, for me.  It's planted with more of the rather disappointing seasonal bedding: pansies Matrix Mix Coastal Sunrise.  To be fair, I suppose, only a couple of the plants didn't survive but they are very much further behind the others which were planted at the same time.  Hopefully now that the weather is better they will catch up and put on a nice display. 

By contrast, the same pansies on the kitchen windowsill are looking lovely!

I had some little pots here last summer and thought it would be nice to have something pretty in the same spot to look at now.  The tulips, Apricot Beauty, are part of the collection of bulbs I planted in the kitchen garden last autumn for cutting for the house. 

The utility area of the garden, as you may recall, is much higher than the kitchen courtyard.  I usually take photos of this bed from the other direction, i.e. looking from the back of the house but standing on the raised area.  I thought it would make a change to take a photo from this angle 😊  

It also gave me the opportunity to see the pretty little narcissus, Tete a Tete, up close too.....

along with the larger narcissus, Sempre Avanti ~ they are both lovely 😍

Just to give you a heads-up that I shall most likely be MIA again for the next couple of weeks as I'm going to be rather busy ~ never fear, though, I shall be back to bore you all in due course 😉

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)    

Basking in the sunshine!

image from Clipart Library

Monday was another dry day, with lovely warm sunshine.  In fact, we've had quite the run of dry days ~ I may well have to water some parts of the garden where I've been planting out and moving things if we don't get any rain soon!

Excuse the quality of this photo, I don't quite know what I've done to it!  I upload my photos into PicMonkey so I can tidy them up and add a watermark but something seems to have gone adrift here, even though it seemed okay when I saved it to my files 😒

I decided to carry on with tidying up in the back garden this week, and moved my attention to the kitchen courtyard area.  I showed you this planter last month when the narcissus were blooming, which somewhat hid the disappointing "show" of primroses I planted last autumn.  As you can see, after filling the planter with them I ended up with a meagre four plants that actually survived the winter.  I shall definitely have to rethink my strategy with winter/spring bedding in future.  Perhaps a better idea would be to grow on the little plug plants in a sheltered place (perhaps in the growhouse within the old arbour seat if we manage to get the thing set up before this winter 😏), then plant them out when the worst of the winter weather is over. 

I had a similar situation with the old wheelbarrow (along with another dodgy photo!) I planted up in the front garden.  I think the weather did play somewhat of a part here as well, but it was exacerbated by one of the local blackbirds constantly picking through the compost!

Anyhoo it didn't seem worthwhile leaving just those eight little primroses in situ so I took them and the narcissus out from the planters. 

The primroses are now in pots beside the old arbour seat, and look very much happier.  I'm most likely going to plant some kind of perennial in the terracotta pot but haven't yet decided what that will be.  It did have a rosemary in it but I decided to be ruthless and dispose of it as it had gone extremely woody.  The moon-gazing hare, a Christmas gift from Sam and Beverly which has spent the last few months sheltering in the greenhouse, sits very nicely in this new little display area 😍 

Most of the narcissus (Tete a Tete) are now in this bed with the escallonia, up in the utility area of the garden.

As it was warm and sunny, I then took the opportunity to sort out the little solar fountain.  It's meant to simply be free-floating but because it gets pretty windy here at times, that's proved not to be really practical.  The fountain tends to get blown up against the edge of the bowl and the water then gets splashed out, which means that the level drops considerably.  It came with a number of different nozzles but I decided to stick with this one which stays low.  

It has four arms, which you may be able to make out, which draw in the water to be pumped out.  I wrapped some thin garden wire around the arms, anchored by a piece of broken slate at the bottom of the bowl.  When I was sorting through my craft room I came across some shells that I didn't think I would get round to using, so I put them in the bowl to cover the slate along with little pieces of broken pottery and china that we've come across when digging in the garden 😊 

I've never thought to take a photo of the bed from this angle before 😄  As you can see, I planted one of the clumps of narcissus beside the water bowl.  It will fill the gap nicely until the alchemilla mollis comes through.  I forgot to put the shell ornament in the greenhouse, so the winter weather has taken its toll on the painted finish.  I think I prefer the terracotta, to be honest, so will let it continue to flake off 😉  

I then turned my attention back to the planters in the courtyard.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and release my two mint plants from their pots into the planter ~ they can fight it out between the two of them in there 😄  The one on the left is Moroccan mint but the other plant has lost its label and I can't remember which variety it is.

The water dish was previously in the other courtyard planter.  The fairies were originally beside the pond in the front garden, then I moved them to the water bowl bed, and finally I decided to place them here.  I believe the terracotta balls are meant to be used as a top dressing on pots, but I have no idea what prompted me to buy them in the first place LOL  I've had them for absolutely ages and have finally found a use for some of them at least!  The large fairy is sitting on an upturned terracotta plant pot saucer, which I nestled within the terracotta balls. 

The tiny fairy did have a companion but she seems to have disappeared ~ perhaps I'll come across her when we finally get the pond and surrounding area sorted out! 

I gave this second planter an overhaul as well.  The chives are obviously very happy and just needed a tidy up.  I don't really use the stalks in the kitchen but I love the pretty purple flowers.  There were a couple of clumps of houseleeks and a lemon thyme in the planter, all of which were very much past their best, so once again I was ruthless and just pulled them out.  I was on the brink of doing likewise with the other thyme (Faustini) but when I looked more closely I could see that there were a number of new shoots lower down on the plant.

Faustini therefore had a reprieve!  I cut it back very hard so now I'm hoping that it pulls through the drastic "surgery" I've subjected it to🤞 

I really do love hares 😍

The primroses, Scentsation Rhubard and Custard, are so very pretty 😊

And to finish off the post, here's a close-up of the sweet little terracotta fairies 😊

What a difference a day (or two!) makes!

image from Clipart Library

The sunny and dry weather continued over the weekend, with the added bonus of the wind being less chilly than on Friday.  I had another full day on Saturday working mostly in the back garden, but must admit that by Sunday I was starting to flag somewhat so only did a couple of hours in the morning!

My first job was to yank out the handful of weeds in the bed between the garden shed and the log store.  As I mentioned previously there was quite literally barely even a handful of weeds to be honest, so that little job was soon done.  I think it took longer to haul all my stuff up to the bed than the task itself actually took 😄

I started with the raspberries and blackberries in the tubs.  Considering the soil in the tubs came from the infamous soil mountain, which as you may recall was chock-a-block with weeds of many kinds, there was barely anything to pull out at all!

I gave them all a slight trim to tidy them up, then just fluffed-up the soil and sprinkled over some chicken manure pellets.  Adrian is going to get the leaf blower out at some point to clear out the leaves that have gathered behind the tubs. 

I've been pleasantly surprised at the lack of weeds at the moment ~ it's certainly made tidying up the beds much easier and quicker.

I trimmed the escallonia in the galvanised tub to a slightly better shape.  I planted two little trailing fuchsias, Pink Galore, with the escallonia but forgot to dig them up last autumn.  You can imagine how surprised I was to see that they appear to have some tiny green shoots on them despite being out all winter!  It will be interesting to see if they do indeed grow again ~ I'll keep you posted 😊

Everything in the water bowl bed seems happily settled.  A job I really must get done this year is to repair the poor hare's front legs 😳  I took the tops off the pottery toadstools over winter so that they didn't get damaged by the high winds we get.

I still need to sort out the fountain in the water bowl as it's come adrift from the wires I attached to hold it in one place.  I couldn't face putting my hands in that very cold water, though, so left it for another day 😉

Ta-daa!  Adrian has now given the old arbour seat (or what's left of it LOL) three coats of wood stain, so it's looking very smart.  Now we've got to do some research on what will be the best growhouse to fit within it, as we've decided we're definitely not up to making it into one ourselves 😄

Little words of wisdom

 

Chilly!

image from Clipart Library

 Friday saw me back in the garden, continuing to make the most of the dry weather.  It was lovely and sunny but the wind was bitingly chilly ~ thankfully my gardening gloves have a nice fleecy lining!  I was amazed to see a young woman walking her dog, wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt (the lass, not the dog, obviously 😄) ~ meanwhile yours truly was wearing a camisole beneath an old short-sleeved top along with an equally old cardigan and fleece jacket (all of which are saved for gardening and "dirty" jobs), topped off with a scarf and woolly hat 😯 

You may recall that I planted some celery last year.  The plants didn't do anything, not even putting on much growth, nevertheless the ones that survived have come through the winter.  As you may have guessed, I have no idea what I'm doing here ~ I've decided to just let the plants do their own thing and see what happens!

I decided to get all the vegetable beds weeded before things started to get out of hand.  There were more weeds in the asparagus bed than the other three, but even so it really didn't take long at all to tidy them up.  I'm not convinced, by the way, that the asparagus will grow this year as there is no sign of any shoots whatsoever.  If nothing is forthcoming I think I shall probably put it down to experience and use the bed as part of the crop rotation.

This is the old strawberry bed, which I have now planted up with this year's potato crop.  I have two varieties: Kestrel and Jazzy.  As you know, I like to divide my beds into approximately 12"/30cm squares to try to give some semblance of order 😉  I find this works out very nicely for my potato crops ~ I can just put one seed potato in the middle of each square and then I roughly know where to start harvesting in due course.  There were only 10 Kestrel seed potatoes making up the 1kg I bought, so I decided to move a couple of the pots of tulips (that I'm growing for cutting) into two of the corner spaces in the bed.  I had too many Jazzy for the 12 allocated squares, so the leftovers have now been planted in large pots.  I did that yesterday and the pots are now sitting beside bed number 5, on the Jazzy side of course 😃 

Once I'd finished with the raised beds, I turned my attention to the upper patio area.  I completely forgot to take any "before" photos, but to be honest you probably wouldn't notice much difference 😄  The tubs had barely any weeds in them, so it was mostly a case of lightly pruning the roses and buddleja and "fluffing up" the soil after being pounded by wet weather over the winter.  I also gave the roses a sprinkling of rose feed granules, and the buddleja a scattering of chicken manure pellets.

Everything in the raised bed ~ that Adrian made taller last year ~ has survived both being moved from elsewhere in the garden, and the ravages of the winter weather.  Again, there weren't too may weeds to be dealt with although there were a few dandelions that I know I didn't get completely pulled out, so they will be putting in an appearance again very soon no doubt 😒

Look what I found!  That, my lovelies, is a piece of the humungous fuchsia that Beverly and Lyndi removed from beside the pond last year!  Good job I found it otherwise it would be trying to make a come-back bid 😏

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)    

Getting back into the swing of things

Whilst I was pottering about yesterday, Adrian was in full-scale demolition mode 😄  You've seen photos of the arbour seat many times over the years being utilised as a temporary shelter for plants, most recently for the dahlias as I didn't get round to taking the tubers out of the pots ~ I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I still haven't done so but I promise it is on my list 😉  It's never been used properly as a seat, even when we still lived in Hitchin, as the bench is just a little too high to be comfortable ~ plus I wasn't keen on sharing the space with the spiders that like to make their homes there!  I can't remember now if I ever mentioned that rather than get rid of it, we decided we were going to try to convert the structure into proper, designated, place for plants, and that's what Adrian made a start on yesterday.

It took him a few hours to dismantle the storage bench section because all the screws were rusted to buggery, and as he didn't want to damage the "shelter" part of the structure, he took went at it very carefully and slowly.  We're undecided at the moment as to whether to add shelves and doors ourselves, or see if we can find a readymade growhouse that will fit within the shelter.  I suspect that as our carpentry skills are rather basic, it will be the latter!   

I forgot to mention yesterday that Adrian did another little job for me on Wednesday: namely, numbering the kitchen garden raised beds.  I bought the numbers, which are on little slate plaques, some time back but we just never got round to fixing them to the beds before the winter arrived.

It all looks very efficient out there now, almost as if I actually know what I'm doing.....which we all know of course, isn't true in the slightest 😏

I spent most of the day in the back garden tidying up the beds in the utility area, although I didn't actually get round to this bed which is between the shed and log store.  To be fair, it shouldn't take long to do as there are only a handful of weeds in it at the moment.  I'd forgotten how many daffodils I'd moved into the bed from the front garden!  They look lovely, as do the catkins on the willow, although it was hard to take a decent photo as it was pretty windy.

I decided to get the other beds weeded before I move back out to work in the kitchen garden.  Again, these two beds weren't too bad and it didn't take long to get them tidy again.

I needed to tidy the fruit tree bed so that I could move the remaining strawberries from the kitchen garden.

I also wanted to do something with these bulbs that have been languishing in pots all winter, having been dug up from various parts of the garden.  Some of them haven't come up at all, so I suspect that the bulbs have rotted away, and some have just sent up leaves.  I'll probably plop the latter in the border with the bay tree to see if they flower next year.

As you can see though, the tulips (Orange Beauty) and narcissus (Sempre Avanti) are flowering, despite the less-than-optimal growing conditions!  The latter has a rather lovely, delicate, scent although you do have to put your nose very close to the plant to appreciate it 😊  

I dug out all the strawberries and planted just over a dozen in the fruit tree bed, along with the tulips and narcissus.  I'm just using the strawberries as ground cover, really, so if I manage to harvest any berries before the birds get them it will be an added bonus 😄  I've still got a fair few London Pride plants in the front garden that will need to be moved so I'll put a few along the back of this bed, again as ground cover.

I was amazed at just how many strawberry plants I dug up, and even after I'd planted up this bed I was still left with more than I needed.  As it happens Thursday is the day we usually have a home delivery from Tesco, and fortuitously the driver this week was a chap that has a large fruit and veggie garden, so he happily took the spare plants off my hands!  

Next to be tackled was the bay tree bed, which as you can see was a tad more weedy than the previous one. I'm not too sure what's happened to the bay tree, but I suspect Adrian got a little snip-happy when he cut back next door's shrubs that were overhanging our garden 😉  

Nevertheless, it didn't take too long to tidy it up and I now have a clear run for plopping in those other bulbs, along with some more of the London Pride.  I tidied up the bay tree although it's still a bit of a weird shape!  It seems to like it in this spot, though, so hopefully it will soon grow out to be a tad more symmetrical. 

Our neighbours  have lots of flowering currant shrubs in this part of their garden which are all in bloom now and their lovely scent, along with the sunshine, made this part of the back garden a rather super place to be working in. 

Sorry for the "yellowness" of this photo but I had to close the curtains as the sun was shining through the windows so brightly!  Anyhoo, I thought I'd show you that Miss Schlumbergera is merrily in bloom again, after putting on a lovely display back in November 😍