Dodging the downpours

"Mr Grumpy" from next-door, looking down his nose at us when we spotted him from the living room window the other day 😏  I think he's a bit annoyed that we are altering "his" garden 😉

We got some more work done last week but it really was a case of having to do bits here and there between the showers ~ some of which were actually rather bloody heavy!  Of course all the rain is also making the soil pretty damn heavy and claggy, so even when it wasn't raining it wasn't particularly nice to dig in the stuff 😳 

I had to make an effort, though, as the plants I'd ordered from Shire Plants arrived and I really needed to get them in the garden.  I started with the new little herb bed that I had finally managed to get cleared out.  We don't use a lot of fresh herbs in the kitchen, so the few I have now planted are ample for our needs.  I already had the chives, which came out of the planter which matches the one now on the new patio.  I added rosemary, oregano, two different varieties of thyme, and mint ~ the latter (hopefully!) safely ensconced in a pot, obviously 😏

The second planter from the kitchen courtyard has now been beefed up, given a few more coats of wood stain, and put in its new position on the patio.  Adrian made inroads into the soil mountain in the back garden when he filled up the planter; he then moved the soil that was left and dumped it into the empty raised bed in the front garden had been used as a holding bed for the plants I had dug up and wanted to keep.

He's very pleased to get the soil shifted, even though it will have to be moved onto a tarpaulin next year so that we can dismantle the bed to re-use it.  He really wanted to clear the area in the back garden so that he can easily access our second log-store over the coming months.  With the weather being so changeable there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to get the last raised bed in position in the front garden, not least because it will need a few coats of wood stain.  We may just get the new sleepers ordered and set them in place on the days when it isn't bucketing down with rain 😏

I finished off the first planter on the patio by adding an alpine-type plant either side of the rose.  I had already put in some London Pride plants along the back ~ there were a lot of them in the garden when we bought the house so I dig 'em up and use them to fill in gaps where needed!

I've saved two of the little alpine plants for the second planter and used the rest of them to make a little rock garden in the old wheelbarrow.  I made use of some of the fine stone chippings we had originally used for the paths between the old kitchen garden beds, both to mix in with the compost to help it drain more freely and to top off around the plants.  The pebbles and cobblestones were a mix of some we'd brought with us when we moved, and some we'd found in the garden here.

It's a simple little display but I am very pleased with how it's turned out 😊

Rhubarb and roses...

and a whole load of weeds, too!  This photo of stuff for the dump was taken way back at the beginning of July, and it was actually cleared away.  Sadly for us, we very quickly gathered up just as many more  bags full of weeds ~ which I, of course, forgot to photograph 😏~ but let me assure you that it was as bad as the pile above!  What is a teensy wee bit disheartening, despite the latest load having gone to the dump last week, is the sure and certain knowledge that we will have many more such piles to clear away before we've finished all the garden alterations 😒 

You may remember that we got the rhubarb bed from the front garden emptied out a few weeks ago.  We were able to move it round to the new, very much smaller, kitchen garden area in the back garden fairly easily and Adrian gave it a few coats of wood stain before setting it in its new position.  He then wheelbarrowed the rest of the rubbly soil that was left from the last bed we relocated in the front garden ~ which means there is now one less place out there for the cats to poop in 😉

He was hoping to make more of a dent in the little soil mountain to the right of the bed, but in the end not much was needed to top up the bed.  This was because he had to empty out the soil from second black wooden planter that was to be moved from the kitchen courtyard to the new patio.  By the time I'd put the rhubarb plants back into the bed, I didn't really need much more soil to fill in around them.  Still the mountain is further away from the stone chippings area now so that's some progress, and I shall need a fair bit of it to refill the wooden planter once it's been stained and is in position on the patio.

I needed "something" for said wooden planters, and there just wasn't anything I liked the look of that I could shop from the garden.  And, to be honest, what I really wanted was more roses ~ I do love roses 😍  So I treated myself to a couple more from David Austin, my go-to rose supplier.  I've had a number of plants from them over the years and can honestly say that I have never been disappointed.  

The three that I planted in the wooden barrels to the left of the wheelbarrow are doing very well, and so I thought I'd fill the patio with more beautiful roses 😊  I've only been able to get one of my new purchases planted but the other should be fine in its pot until the second wooden planter is ready for it.  The one in the photo above is The Poet's Wife, which has rich yellow flowers and a strong, fruity, scent.  The rose for the second planter is called Desdemona, which has white flowers with a pinkish hue, and has a strong, old rose fragrance.

The roses in the tubs have been fine through winter, up to now at least, so I'm hoping that these new ones will be okay as well.  If I feel that they are suffering at all I will wrap either some horticultural fleece or windbreak netting around the planters to give them some protection.

Phil and Adrian took away the huge pile of stuff that was piled here ready for the tip last week, so I was finally able to reach this bed to clear it out ~ hence yet another full bag of weeds already to the right of the photo there!  It's only a small bed but it took me bloody ages to clear it out, and I know it won't be too long before more of the dratted buttercups come back to taunt me as I couldn't get them completely out from where they have embedded themselves right at the back 😒  I'll have to just keep on top of pulling the buggers out!

The ivy was being swamped by all the weeds, so hopefully it will feel better now that it's got some space around it.  The little plant to the right of the bed is a fuchsia, Pink Galore, that I'd forgotten I'd planted in there!  I don't know if it will survive to be honest as it was only a seasonal bedding plant, but it's been in there a couple of years now so we'll just have to see how it gets on over this coming winter without all those weeds for protection 😉  The rest of the bed will be planted with a small selection of herbs, which I've ordered from Shire Plants.  

These were all in the kitchen courtyard, so I just moved them across to finish off the new herb bed whilst we decide what we're going to do there.  I think we will probably just have a bench, or perhaps a couple of garden chairs, where we can sit and catch the sun as it works its way around the house 😊

I don't often post photos of myself but thought I'd show you my new hairstyle ~ not sure quite why I appear to be gurning so much in this photo😄  It's been years since I had my hair coloured and now that it is so white, I thought a bit of colour would make a change 😉

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😊

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 😊

Dreary January

image from Freepik

Both January and February can be such dreary months in the garden, can't they?  Especially, if like us, you didn't get round to tidying up the borders before the bad weather set in!  To be fair, though, I took these photos on Sunday and although it was chilly, the sun was shining brightly 🌞  

What dragged me out of the warmth of the house was spotting the flower on this rose ~ once again the lovely Eustacia Vye is putting out a bloom!  We'll ignore the thistle that's taken root in the tub 😉

Then I noticed that one of the rhubarb plants, Goliath, is also starting to put in an appearance.  I was a bit annoyed, though, when I saw that it appears one of the neighbourhood cats has been digging in the bed 😒  I think we will have to build a cage around the bed this year to keep the little buggers out!

On my way over to the other side of the garden, my eye was caught by the shining white flowers on this hellebore.  The plant label has long since disappeared, I'm afraid, so I don't know which variety it is.

I was sidetracked by the beautiful little hellebore on my way to have a closer look at the pretty pink flowers on this viburnum.  Although it does have a plant label, alas the lettering has completely worn away but I think it may be Dawn.  It's been flowering for a little while and seems to be starting to go over now, but nevertheless it's continuing to add a welcome splash of colour.

And back indoors I saw that this pretty pink-tinged succulent, the name of which I have absolutely no idea, is putting out a spray of little flowers too!  I suppose the motto is that even "dreary January" can have some little spots of loveliness 😊 

Still a very bad housewife!

image from Freepik

Nothing new there, Sharon, I hear you say 😉  To be fair most of the house is fairly tidy, but alas the same cannot be said for my little corner of the living room 😏

I have a very bad habit of just piling stuff up to "look at later".  Unfortunately "later" tends to become very much later indeed, until it reaches the point where the piles are in danger of toppling over 😳

Since we are fast approaching the time of year to start using the log-burner, I shall have to gird my loins and make a concerted effort to get my corner properly tidied up!

In less chaos-related news, my faithful little Schlumbergera is putting out lots of buds again...

and ten days or so later, those buds are growing very nicely indeed 😊 More Schlumbergera progress to follow ~ and perhaps I'll even dust the poor little bugger 😉 

Somewhere that is a lot tidier is the dining room!  Do you remember the stack of crates filled with books that I'd weeded out from the craft room?  When I had my recent GP appointment, since we were getting the bus I suggested to Adrian that we could fill up my trusty shopping trolley with some of the books and drop them off at the library, which we duly did.  When they were handed over to the Librarian she was absolutely over-the-moon and thanked me many times, which made the downsizing "trauma" very worthwhile indeed 😊

We explained that we would bring the rest of them down gradually, since we don't drive and would have to transport them in the shopping trolley.  She was amazed that we'd hauled them there by bus and said that she would see if her colleague, who was at lunch, would come and collect the rest of the books to save us having to schlep them down one trolley-load at a time.  Adrian had a call from said colleague a couple of hours later, and she came and collected all the book-filled crates shortly after.  So not only did we rehome the books all in one go, we also got shot of the plastic crates at the same time since we didn't have any further use for so many of 'em 😏   

Nothing whatsoever to do with my lack of housewifery skills, but I thought I'd show you the potatoes I've started to harvest.  I'm very pleased with the crop so far ~ this is from a couple of plants.  I'm going to grow potatoes again next year but in large tubs rather than the raised beds.  As I mentioned previously I am intending to scale back somewhat over the next couple of years or so.  I really don't want to stop growing altogether, though.  At the moment, I'm still in the process of deciding how many of the raised beds in the kitchen garden to eventually dismantle but it's proving to be a hard decision to make!

Wall-to-wall sunshine

image from Clipart Library

We are currently having a run of glorious weather ~ warm and sunny.  This has made it very nice indeed to be out working in the garden, although I have had to water the beds and containers a couple of times.

The sunflowers are still doing well.  They are starting to develop their "true" leaves so I'll be potting them on soon.

The difference is probably not so noticeable to you, my lovelies, but I can see that the tomatoes are starting to look a tad healthier.  Fingers crossed their recovery continues!

I mentioned earlier in the week that I had moved the tulips, Apricot Beauty, out of this pot.  I've now replaced them with an erodium chrysanthum, from my recent delivery of plants from Shire Plants.  It has pale lemon flowers, and looks a little like a geranium I think.

Some of the dahlias are starting to come up: Cafe au Lait Twist and Cafe au Lait.  Hopefully the other three will follow on soon.

Whilst the tomatoes are starting to recover, alas the same can't be said for the poor French beans 😒  I'll leave them in situ for the time being and hope for a miracle!

The strawberries are starting to look lovely with their pretty white flowers.  I wasn't sure how well they would do after being moved this year, but they seem to have taken it in their stride 😊

The compost I ordered last week arrived on Monday, so I was able to top off bed 5 which holds this years potato crop.  I should think this will be the last time I top the bed off as there really isn't much space left to do so now 😄

Two more dahlias are coming through, Creme de Cassis and White Aster, beside the wooden tubs on the patio area in the front garden.

I've had a large tub either side of the dining and living room windows for a while now, both planted with similar plants.  Unfortunately I can't remember what said plants are called and, of course, the labels have disappeared 😏  I think the shrubs, though, are varieties of euonymus.  I had planted them in the borders originally but they weren't doing so well to be honest, so I moved them into these large tubs where they've been much happier.  The tub in the photo above is by the dining room window.....

but the little plants in the one beside the living room window died.  The euonymus is absolutely fine, and indeed is happily sprouting new leaves, so I don't know what happened to the two little plants 🤷  Anyhoo I've now replaced them with another of my favourite little garden plants, erigeron karvinskianus ~ let's hope they fare better than their predecessors!

To round off my working day, I decided to spruce up the wheelbarrow.  I was too lazy to completely replace the old compost but added a good sprinkling of chicken manure pellets to add some nutrition and did top it up with fresh compost too.

I've left space between the plants for them to spread out as they are perennials.  I may well lightly cover the barrow with some fleece, or even netting, over the winter to protect them a little from the worst of the weather.  I've planted pratia pedunculata, which apparently has sky blue flowers, in the back two corners, with two fuchsia Pink Galore between them.  There are two more pratia pedunculata, Alba, in the front two corners.  In the middle of the wheelbarrow are yet more of my garden flower favourites, this time three little bellis perennis.  This is a variety called Dresden China which has very pretty pink flowers.  Hopefully the blackbirds won't keep picking over the compost like they did when it was planted up with pansies!