Surely not again, Sharon!

Contrary to how it must appear, I haven't been spending all my time slogging away in the garden... 

oh no, my lovelies...

I've also been creating a mess in my craft room 😏

"Ooooh, have you been busy making lovely things, then?" I hear you ask.....nope, I'm sorry to have to tell you that I've just been using it as a dumping ground yet again 😒

I amaze myself sometimes with just how messy I can be!  Anyhoo, I took the opportunity of tidying up one afternoon when the weather wasn't conducive to working in the garden.  I really want to make time to work on my dolls houses, too, and I will be sharing more about that on my other blog at some point 😉

It didn't take as long as I feared it might, to be honest.  Sometimes the thought of starting something is worse than actually getting on with it!

A couple of the crates on the bench have stuff in them that I want to try selling on Ebay rather than just taking to our local charity shops.  I've been putting off doing it for months and months, but it would free up more space if I got the job done so it's on my "ought-to-do-very-soon" list 😄

Beverly put up my new bunting and the beaded door curtain when she was over recently, which saved me from having to climb up the stepladder to do it myself or having to ask Adrian to do it for me.  It always feels really good when the room is nice and tidy, so I really should make the effort to keep it that way!

We've had some days when the weather hasn't been good for gardening, so I've been able to make a start on a new dolls house project ~ there'll be more to come on that in due course 😊

Front and back

image from Magnific.com

Yup, I'm still jumping from the front to the back garden ~ then round to the front again 😏

That's one of the two little soil mountains we currently have in the back garden.  We managed to get rid of some of this one when we filled in the hole where the old pond had been in the front garden.  Since this photo was taken, we've used the rest of the soil to start filling the new raised beds along the retaining wall in the front garden.  Hopefully we'll soon get the other soil mountain whittled away to nothing once we get going on remaking the pond/wildlife area out there 😊

This bed is situated between our garden shed and original log store, and in some ways its a bit of a nuisance to be honest.  We have wondered if we should dismantle the bloody thing but that would take a lot of time and effort that we just don't have the enthusiasm for.  Adrian dug up the bulbs and leftover bits of rosa rugosa that were in there and I knocked off the soil from the roots ready to get rid of it all. 

We've had a bit of a rethink about digging a new hole to accommodate the old pond that we moved in the front garden.  We had already bought a shallower, rectangular, pond which we were going to position beside the old one but of course everything changed when we had to have the wall rebuilt.  We will still use the new one out the front but have decided that the raised bed above will be ideal for the old pond.  Obviously we've still got to dig soil out of the bed, but hopefully it won't be as back-breaking as digging down into the ground!

We won't be tackling this little project for quite some time, I suspect, as we've got such a lot of other work to get done first.  Still, at least it will give any lurking weeds a chance to show themselves so we can whip the buggers out 😏

It was a pretty chilly and windy day when we cleared that bed, but I was on a roll and full of good intentions to get this side of the back garden tidied up too.  I plonked myself down to start on this bed but omg, it was like sitting in a bloody wind tunnel 😱 It was obviously much more sheltered between the shed and log-store!  I started to get ear-ache so decided to leave it for another day 😉 

I don't think it will take too much time to work my way around once I get going.  The second soil mountain, by the way, is just out of sight in this photo to the right ~ you can see a tiny piece of the blue tarp that's covering it in hopes of stopping it getting too wet and claggy when it rains!

This is the gathering-place for the bags of stuff that need to go to the tip at some point.  I don't think I'll be able reach across to sort out the bed until it's all gone.

I can easily reach these pots of dahlias, though.  I was surprised to see they were sending up shoots as they've been out all winter and there isn't so much protection for the tubers in these smaller pots.

It looks like the little fuchsia plants (Pink Galore) also survived the winter.  They must be pretty well protected beneath this escalonia as I believe they are only half-hardy.

After forgetting to take "after" photos of this bed when I'd tidied it up, I did remember a few days after the event 😄 

Along with the ferns, it also has some other nice little plants in it .  A fair few of them, though, have lost their labels and unfortunately I can't remember what most of them are called 🤷

I do know that this is a lamium but can't remember the variety.  It's a pretty little plant and is growing really well in this bed after being moved from elsewhere in the garden.

The bed is fairly densely planted, which all the plants seem to be happy with.  I do have to keep the lamium in check a little to stop it taking over, but all-in-all I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking and it's really nice to have at least one part of the garden that I feel satisfied with 😊

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)  

Back and forth

image from Magnific.com

 I've been dividing my time between working in the front and back gardens.  As I mentioned previously, work in the new pond area in the front garden has come to a wee bit of a halt for now but there's definitely no lack of other stuff to be tackled 😏

The pots of strawberries needed a home, so I tidied up this bed and plonked them in it 😄  At the moment it's only a temporary holding place for them, but it may well become their permanent home once we've decided what we're doing with re-jigging the back garden.

The bed near the bathroom looked very untidy.

Once I got going, though, it wasn't as bad as it had first appeared although there was a rather large dandelion in there.  It took a bit of getting out as it was entwined with one of the little blackcurrants.  I ended up digging them both up so I could disentangle the bloody thing ~ hopefully the poor blackcurrant will recover from the shock of being uprooted and replanted in quick succession! 

It didn't take too long to pull out the remaining weeds, though, and I gave the bay tree a good trim as well.  I will have a poke about in the garden to see what I can move to fill up the gaps in the bed.  I don't really want to buy more plants if I can help it, so shopping from my own garden is the sensible way to go methinks 😉

Adrian got one half of the new bed built and we manhandled it roughly into place.  For now it's just keeping the weed membrane from flying away, but once the other section has been built we can get them both as level as possible in their permanent positions.  Whilst I was doing other stuff Adrian gave the retaining wall a couple of coats of wood stain, which has smartened it up very nicely.

As the planters in the kitchen courtyard had already been tidied up, I was able to get the soil out of the one that had no plants in it.  Once it was empty Adrian and I brought it round to the new patio (it was way too heavy for me to move by myself!), and over the course of a couple of days I gave the base three coats of wood stain.  The four sides were in much better condition so I only gave them two coats.

Adrian helped me to make good use of the soil by wheelbarrowing it out the front to top up the potato plants.  We seem to spend half our time shifting soil from one place to another at the moment 😄

Once the wood stain had fully dried, I wiggled the planter over to its new home on the patio.  At some point I intend to move the matching planter from the kitchen courtyard out there too, possibly with one of the round tubs set between the two.  This will provide a barrier along the wall which, as you may recall, is now lower than it was before it was rebuilt.  I don't yet know what I will be planting in these containers but once again I intend to shop from my garden.

Eventually we will buy some nice new garden furniture for the patio, moving the old bench down to the rebuilt nature/pond area.  Realistically it's very doubtful that we will be getting any furniture this year as we still have a lot of work to do in the garden, not to mention the fact that we haven't yet moved the other two containers out to the patio.  Once they are in place, though, we will know how much space we have available for new furniture and will be able to start looking around to see what lovely stuff is out there😊

Meanwhile, out the back...

(the image just made me laugh!)

After tidying up a bit in the front garden, I thought I'd hop round the back as it's a mess out there too ~ I hope I'm not making you dizzy with all this jumping back and forth 😁

I started in the kitchen courtyard area.  The tubs and planters weren't too bad, to be fair, but still had their fair share of weeds.

The large "barrel" planter has a mock orange in it, which I thought hadn't made it through the winter.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did actually have some little green shoots, so I just trimmed off the dead pieces.  The only other things in there are a couple of ornamental dandelions ~ one has pink flowers (taraxacum pseudoroseum) and the other is white (taraxacum albidum) ~ and one lonely little primrose (Scentsation Rhubarb and Custard) that just keeps soldiering on, despite all its comrades having perished a while back 😄

As you can probably tell, the plant in the large pot is an elder (sambucus nigra Black Lace).  It survived the winter quite happily in its pot, but I thought it best to replant it into a larger one.  My plan is to put it into a large tub at some point, probably on the new patio in the front garden, and keep it trimmed to a maneageable size.  The other pot has a dahlia tuber in it which didn't feel soggy when I gave it a gentle squeeze, so I've just left it to its own devices 😏

Again, the other side of the courtyard area didn't look bad really despite the ravages of last winter.

I've no idea what kind they are, but the empty planter has had a number of fungi popping up in it.  I suspect they may be from the bark chippings I had topped the planter off with.

It didn't take me too long to tidy up the tubs.  The standard redcurrant just needed to be staked upright again ~ I thought it better to just leave it leaning at a jaunty angle until the high winds had calmed down a tad 😉  The bay tree seems happy in its large pot but the winter winds really scorched its leaves.  I decided to cut it right back and let the fresh green leaves see the light of day.  I'm going to try to remember to give it a fleece jacket before this next winter sets in to see if that makes any difference to how it stands up to the winds.

 I think I may have shown you this "mystery" plant before.  It was given to me by a friend who is involved with the Orkney Food Bank.  When they moved to different premises the plant became rather surplus to requirements, so ever the sucker for a hard-luck-story-houseplant I took it in.  Now, it was given to me as a "houseplant" although no one seemed to know what it actually is ~ and I'm still none-the-wiser!  I temporarily put it outside last year.....and it ended up being out there all winter 😯  I kept saying to myself that I really ought to find it a space in the house, or even in the greenhouse, but just never got round to it.  However, it's stint outside in the cold winter weather (including snow!) doesn't seem to have done it any harm whatsoever.  

I kept thinking that I'd look out the kitchen window one morning and see that it had finally succumbed, but it stayed looking pretty much the same for the whole winter!  Perhaps it's some kind of outdoor plant rather than a houseplant ~ who knows?  I thought it deserved to be repotted into a larger container and as it seems quite happy living on the lower shelf of the potting bench, I put it back there.  It will be interesting to see how it progresses ~ I'll keep you informed 😉

Little words of wisdom

 

Sidetracked...

image from Magnific.com

In my last garden post, we had come to a bit of a standstill with re-making the wildlife area whilst Adrian was constructing the raised bed(s).  I couldn't really do anything to help him, so I drew a deep breath and veered off to make a start on tackling all the other weedy areas in the front garden 😳 

As you know, we've decided to considerably scale back the kitchen garden and over the coming months all the beds in the front will be dismantled ~ more on that in future posts 😉

One thing we do still want to grow is at least some potatoes, as homegrown ones are just so much tastier than shop-bought ones!  I was very late in planting out my chitted seed potatoes this year, and confess that I did wonder if they would actually grow once I'd got them in the ground.  I'm pleased to report that every single one has sent up a fine head of leaves so hopefully we'll have another good crop of potatoes again later this year 😊  I'm trying a different variety this time: Caledonian Rose.  Since this photo was taken, I have plonked a good layer of soil over the plants ~ as usual, I'm pretty behind with photo-sharing 😏

I'm only growing potatoes this year as we've got such a lot of work to get done in the garden, so the raised beds have come in useful as holding beds for the plants I've kept for re-planting in due course.  This bed had potatoes in it last year and I obviously didn't get all the teeny-tiny spuds removed, hence them sprouting away quite happily!

If the bed had been empty I would probably have left them to grown on, but I had already moved in some of the plants which had been in the beds where the new patio now is.  The potatoes were starting to smother the poor little buggers, so out they had to come I'm afraid. 

I was particularly pleased to see these dahlias coming through, as I thought the winter would probably kill them off.  I had them in pots last year and was just too lazy to store them "properly" over winter, so into the raised bed they went 😄  I suspect the fact that they were planted in a raised bed probably helped with drainage, and thus stopped their tubers getting too wet and rotting away.

This was the view I had through to the Hoy Hills whilst I was working 😍

These plants were what I decided to keep from the old pond area.  Some of the tiger lilies are currently flowering, so this part of the garden smells lovely ~ perhaps that's why next-door's cat seems to like it over here so much 😄

You may recall that this bed had large pots of strawberries in it.  Luckily it was a pretty straightforward task to tidy up the plants, disposing of the handful that had died, and move the pots round to the back garden.  They are in a temporary area at the moment until we work our way round to re-jigging the back garden at some point 😱  This will be the first of the kitchen garden beds to be re-purposed as part of the new pond area ~ all will become clear as the work out there continues, I promise 😏

I couldn't summon up the energy to tackle the garden borders, so compromised by tidying this bed over on the other side of the garden instead.  It looked worse than it actually was, to be fair, and didn't really take too long.  You'll have to take my word for it, though, as I forgot to take a photo when I'd finished 😄

I fairly often come across frogs on this side of the garden.  I didn't notice this one until I almost grabbed hold of it along with the debris I was clearing out!  It sat there with its back to me for quite a few minutes before moving off.  I'm hoping that once we get the new pond area set up we'll find more froggy visitors/residents in the garden 😊

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)