Playing catch-up ~ yet again!

image from Freepik

Apart from my reading round-up post earlier this week, I've been very remiss in posting recently.  It's not that I've been doing nothing, but I must confess that it's been a struggle to push myself to get on with things.  I mentioned in my last "proper" post that I was feeling pretty tired, and to be honest I've found it rather hard to shake that tiredness off.  Some of it is genuinely feeling tired with the physical work as I'm extremely overweight and unfit, plus I'm not as young as I used to be 😄  

However, there has been a large splodge of procrastination thrown in!  I worked my way round the relatively "easy" sections of the garden/kitchen garden but all the while the spectres of the ornamental borders in the front garden were dancing about in my head, most of which haven't been tackled for about three years 😱       

Behold, one of the overgrown borders 😏  Actually, I forgot to take a photo before we started to tackle it so this is after Adrian had dug out three overgrown shrubs!  I guess it doesn't look too horrendous from a distance.....

but once you get up-close-and-personal the disarray is plainly evident 😯  This photo was taken after some shrubs had been dug out, sadly not all of which were salvageable.

The poor rosa rugosa (which we inherited when we bought the house, and transplanted from the other side of the garden) had what I'd bought as a dwarf fuchsia planted in front of it.  Turns out that it wasn't such a well-behaved shrub after all ~ it just kept on growing and pushing into the poor rose.  Still, rosa rugosa are hardy buggers so I'm sure it will soon regrow into a better shape 🤞

Everything in the right-hand side of the border had got out-of-hand, too.  

We are still working on the border but already it was starting to look better by this point last week.

Whilst it's probably not the best time of year to trim it, I nevertheless decided to cut back the escallonia somewhat.  I didn't cut it down as low as I really wanted to as I didn't want to lose all the flowers.  I'll save the final chop for later in the year.  It doesn't look particularly pretty at the moment but like the rosa rugosa, escallonia are tough shrubs and I'm confident it will bounce back in due course.

We did manage to save three of the smaller shrubs, which have now gone into the low bed in the front patio area.  Needless to say, they have all lost their labels and I can't remember what they are called, although I believe the middle shrub may be Rose of Sharon 😕 

As you can see, I also moved the brazen mermaid bird bath (she was already in the garden when we bought the house) into the bed; one of these days I will get round to giving her a verdigris-type finish.....don't hold your breath, though, 'cos I've been saying that for the last seven years 😄

The peonies have been beautiful again this year.  I have no idea what variety these lovely red ones are as they were already in (different parts of) the garden when we moved in.  I planted a white-flowered one two or three years back which has been very slow to do anything, but this year it has a number of buds so I'm hoping for a good display in due course.

I'm way behind with greenhouse photos; these were taken a couple of weeks back.  As I mentioned in my last "proper" post I was contemplating tying the tomatoes to canes to help straighten them somewhat, which I have now done.  I'll try to remember to take some up-to-date photos to show you their progress.

The sweet pepper plug plants, Peppers from Heaven Orange, arrived looking a little sad.  They were pretty dry so I soaked them for a while, then put them into larger pots.  They looked like this for a few days but I'm happy to report that they have since perked up considerably ~ photos to follow in due course 😉

In the end, 15 of the 16 sunflower seeds germinated which I found immensely pleasing.  They are, of course, a fair bit larger by now 😄

Ta-daa!  I now have the perfect little spot for sheltering some of my plants that are not-so-keen on the cold and wet Orkney winter weather.  I can also use the shelf above the little grow houses to store the garden décor that might otherwise be damaged by being blown all over the place!  I'm so pleased with what Adrian has done with the old arbour seat, it's made such good use of something that was just going to waste.  I'm thinking of swapping the large tubs and chair display around at some point ~ I'll break the good news to poor 'ole Adrian in due course 😏

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 😏

And there it was...

all gone!

The wind and rain disposed of the snow, thankfully.  Snowy scenes are very lovely to look at ~ rather less lovely to try to get out and about in!  And now that I'm in my 60s, I'm much more conscious that a fall could do more damage than it might have done a few years ago 😳

I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks back that there were still a handful of flowers to be seen in the garden.  Before the snow arrived the patio roses were putting out some new buds, and Eustacia Vye had two that were opening.  All the unopened buds seem to have come through the snow unscathed but the two above are looking a tad brown on the edges of the petals.  I deliberately chose repeat flowering roses, and I'm really pleased to see them living up to their descriptions of flowering into early winter 😊

With the snow all washed away, I had no excuse for not getting out to the craft room yesterday 😄 I just took a handful of photos to share, as it really doesn't look like I've done anything much out there at all ~ despite working for a few hours both in the morning and after lunch!

I mentioned previously that I'd bought some vinyl cloths to cover the old work bench and the new work tables.  The cloth on the old work bench is in a grey linen effect, and makes a nice surface for the dolls' houses to sit on as it sort of resembles concrete.  I think I will buy some more pieces to lay beneath the houses that will be displayed on the other cabinets.  It'll probably be better to get the cloths bought sooner rather than later so that they match the piece I've already got.  Wow, look at me ~ thinking ahead for once 😉   

It was a tad chilly in the craft room, so I wheeled out my trusty little oil-filled heater.  I haven't used it very much since I've had it so I had to have a good look at the instructions again 😏 It's very efficient and soon warms the room very nicely indeed.  It isn't in the most convenient position here, though, so I think I will shuffle things around when I've got more space cleared.

The two new work tables are now covered with vinyl cloths in a rustic brown oak plank effect.  You'd think it would be a simple job to just chuck some cloths over the bloody things, but there was a fair bit of tugging and shuffling involved to get said cloths laying how I wanted them 😒 The cloth to the right is all tucked up, by the way, as I decided to leave my Dremel scroll saw permanently clamped to the table.  I may scoot it along more towards the middle of the table, though, as it's rather close to my working area.

The two little white (bedside!) cabinets fit perfectly beneath the table, with some space left on top of them for storing other things.  I've had them for a number of years and the drawers are very handy for storing smaller items, although I was thinking yesterday that it might be a good idea to label said drawers with their contents 😄 

This was another "little" job that took absolutely ages to accomplish.  All these odds and ends had been just stuffed haphazardly into a cardboard box previously.  I've decided that if I'm going to make my craft room a comfortable space to work in, then I first need to get to grips with sorting and tidying everything in there.  It's very frustrating trying to find things that I'm sure I have but just can't find.  Anyhoo, all the pieces in this crate are now taped like-with-like, and the oddments are all together in a separate pot within the crate.  I also placed another plastic box in the crate as well to keep the lengths of wood better corralled.  It actually started life as a shoe box but the front flap broke ~ I simply flipped it on it's end and it became perfect for the job 😊  (Further up the page you can see a second repurposed shoe box, again due to the front flap breaking, which I'm using for dolls' house wallpaper beneath the old work bench.)

This would actually be a more convenient place for the heater, so I may see if there is enough floor space to squeeze the crate beside the left-hand work table.

The contents of these two crates had been in one very much larger crate.  I'd just used it as a dumping ground for odds and ends of wood ~ or so I thought.  Once I'd decided that it would be more workable to have a couple of smaller crates rather than the big one, I obviously started to empty it out.  Yes, there were indeed the odds and ends that I thought were in there.....along with quite a supply of dolls' house windows, doors, and stairs 😮  I was very annoyed with myself, as I bought a load for Augusta Lodge that I wouldn't have needed to had I been keeping everything tidy 😒  Oh well, I suppose they will be made use of at some point with other kit-bashing projects 😏 

Hopefully I'll continue to make progress in the craft room this week, and have more to show for my efforts!  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the beautiful sight that greeted me when I opened the bedroom curtains this morning 😍

Soon be bedtime...

image from Clipart Library

 for the garden at least.  Work in the craft room has been temporarily put on hold, as I have been anxious to finish off as much as possible in the garden whilst I can still get out there without freezing my fingers off 😉  I think I have now just about reached the point where the garden will have to be left to its own devices for a few months, but I do still have a few photos to share with you!  

Last month I told you that I had moved some ferns into this raised bed near the bathroom extension.  I have since moved a somewhat sad-looking butterfly bush and two more ferns into the bed, along with a lamium.  They had all been in the path border that will eventually be grassed over.  I really must get that little bird bath scrubbed out 😳

The old wheelbarrow had spent the summer in the kitchen courtyard, filled with argyranthemum Grandaisy Pink Halo.  They have been moved into the greenhouse for the winter, so I was able to get some winter/spring bedding planted in their place.  The barrow is now filled with primula Scentsation Rhubard and Custard.  I also moved it round to the front garden, to sit on the stone chippings near the fern bed.

The little plugs had been languishing in the plant tray they had been grown in and were starting to look a little sad, so I was eager to get the poor little buggers planted out!  They soon perked up and one has even started to flower 😊 

I was very happy to finally get the rest of the strawberries moved, as it was a job that I really didn't want to leave half done.  I spread bark chippings on and around the pots as a tidy finishing touch.

I still have about a dozen or so plants left, which I haven't quite decided what to do with.  I may move them out the back, as ground cover in the beds over in the more "utility" side of the garden.  That's a job that I will probably leave until spring to do, as I won't be needing this bed until I'm ready to plant next year's potato tubers. 

The raised bed in the new patio area is also finished.  Adrian dug out the plants from the path border for me, and I sat on my trusty garden stool whilst I put them in their new home.  The soil was less soggy than it had been towards the top, but was still pretty claggy when I had to dig further down to make larger holes for the plants with bigger roots.

Adrian also dug out clumps of the London Pride (I think that's what it is, anyway!) that edges the path border, which I planted in the tubs with the roses and buddleja.

The path border is now looking pretty bare.  I'll dig out the rest of the London Pride in the spring and move it elsewhere.  No doubt there will still be remnants of the dreaded dwarf elder lurking which we'll have to dig out, but hopefully we will get it seeded next year and looking tidy out there!

By the end of last week the greenhouse was starting to fill up with the tender perennials.....next time I'll show you how much is crammed in there now 😄

Being sensible

image from Freepik

Although it's not my natural state of being I have been pretty sensible following on from the very annoying leg mishap of last Saturday 😏 I had a hair appointment on Monday and although we caught the bus down, we actually walked home.  We had only just missed a bus so rather than hang around for an hour, I felt that I could walk home if I took it very slowly ~ which I did.  I suspect that this very slow walk actually helped, along with the Ibuprofen and periods of resting the leg over the last few days.  I've also been able to get out in the garden for a couple of hours or so at a time, albeit with me sitting down to work and Adrian doing the digging!

I mentioned previously that I was moving the strawberries.  Although I managed to get half the bed done fairly well, I managed to get myself into a right old pickle with the rest of it *sigh*  Luckily for me, Adrian came to the rescue and volunteered to do it for me ~ I think he could see how frustrated with my efforts I was becoming!  As you can see, I've only got half the strawberries actually moved into their new accommodation thus far but I'm hoping to finish the bed over the next few days.  It's a job that I can do sitting down so that's an added bonus at the moment 😉

Before "leg-gate", Adrian had finished the newly-extended raised bed in the new patio area.  We started to move the plants from the path border that ~ fingers crossed ~ we will be grassing over next year.  He dug them out for me and I then planted them in their new home.  The soil in this bed was still pretty wet which made it a not-very-pleasant exercise, to be honest.  Still, needs must, and at least we made a start on the job even if our gardening gloves and tools ended up covered with sticky mud in the process!

 

I've also made a start on bringing in my tender perennials.  These argyranthemum Grandaisy Pink Halo were planted in an old wheelbarrow which I had in the kitchen courtyard over the summer.  They grew very well and I'm hoping that they will survive the winter in the greenhouse, ready to be put back in the garden next year.  They are very pretty plants, and flower for months.  I think they are extremely good value for money.

Ta-daaa!  I actually remembered to take an up-to-date photo of Miss Schlumbergera ~ I hope you are duly impressed with my memory 😄  I would have liked to have knelt down to take a slightly better photo but decided not to risk having to get back up again, so just bent my knees as much as I dared!  You can still see how pretty she is looking, though, despite my lack of photographic skills 😊

A self-inflicted lazy weekend

image from Freepik

If only I had been doing something sporty ~ alas I was only changing our bed 😯

Saturday started off well and I was planning to carry on with what I had been doing during the earlier part of last week, i.e. working in the garden in the morning, and continue tackling the mess in my craft room after lunch.  I decided to be a bit sensible, though, and have a somewhat "slower" weekend as we'd both been working hard during the week.  We almost always Komp with my Dad either Saturday or Sunday, depending really on which day suits him best.  This weekend it was to be on Saturday, so I thought I'd strip off our bed and get the bedding in the washing machine whilst I showered, breakfasted, etc.  We then chatted with Dad and as time was marching on somewhat by the time we'd finished, I decided to remake our bed and only do an hour or so in the garden.  So far, so good 😏

I got the fresh bedding on the bed and was just straightening up Adrian's pillow ~ leaning across from my side of the bed ~ when I felt, almost "heard" actually, a popping sensation in the back of my right leg!  Omg, my lovelies, pain shot through said leg and I had to sit down very quickly as I felt decidedly odd😧 I just sat there for a few minutes sort of rocking myself back and forth in an effort to calm down ~ it sounds mad, I know, but it did work!  I gingerly felt my leg and nothing seemed out of place, as it were.  I was worried that perhaps I'd managed to somehow tear a muscle but on reflection I think I must have just given something a good "pull", as I'm sure I would have been in much more (and continuing) pain if I'd done anything more serious.

So as you can imagine no work has been done either in the garden or craft room these past couple of days.  I'm a tad annoyed with myself, to be honest, as I had been on such a roll all week 😒 My weekend has instead been spent alternating between resting my leg with a soothing heating pad and gently walking around the house, coupled with taking plenty of paracetamols.  The leg is still pretty sore, and feels as if the back of my knee/top of calf/lower thigh are bruised.  Who knew that doing something as simple, and everyday, as leaning across a bed could cause such discomfort!

I have resigned myself to doing less than I had planned this week.  I do have a hair appointment later this morning so will be doing more walking today.  I am going to be sensible, though, and get the bus so that I am not walking all the way from our house down to the shops, and will also use my walking stick for a little added support.

As I said earlier, though, it is very annoying 😒 

Anyhoo, enough of my tales of woe!

I'm not sure if I mentioned that our Christmas decorations had been languishing in the store room, untouched, for quite some time?  I kept telling myself that I really must sort through them as we haven't really decorated the house for Christmas much at all since we moved here.  I finally got a "push" when the activities organiser (I can't remember her proper title!) at Hamnavoe House (the residential elderly care home here in Stromness) put out a call asking if folk had any decorations they could donate.  Adrian brought the crates in from the store room for me a couple of weeks back and I went through them.

I was pretty ruthless and managed to gather a fairly large crate of things to donate, plus a couple of larger items that wouldn't fit in said crate.  As we have family coming up this year for Christmas I will be making a concerted effort to decorate the house, and may well decide that some of the things I kept this time can actually go after all😉  

And finally, I thought you might like to see how the schlumbergera is doing.  This photo was taken a couple of weeks back and I'm really pleased that the promise of flowers it was showing then haven't disappointed ~ I'll try to remember to take an up-to-date photo to share in my next post 😊 

Still chomping at that elephant!

image from Clipart Library

Despite last week's radio silence from yours truly, we were still plugging away at the work to be done in the garden ~ it's never-bloody-ending 😳 

Adrian has made great progress in our new little patio area in the front garden, and as you can see the raised bed on the left has now been extended.  Incredibly it has eaten all of the soil mountain, plus half a dozen bags of not-quite-fully-composted compost that had to be emptied out from our bins when we topped up all the stone chippings earlier in the year.  The soil from the mountain was extremely wet and claggy, which made the job much more difficult and tiring.

As always, I'm behind with photos.  The bed on the right is now completely empty, and Adrian has also since used some of the soil from it to top up the "new" bed.  Now that we can see the potential space we've decided to completely dismantle the bed on the right, to make the seating area larger.  It will be nice to be able to position the garden furniture against the tall walls, making the seating area more sheltered and cosy.

We'll be left with more soil again, of course, but we've already been dipping into it to top-up other parts of the garden, so I don't think it will be hanging around for long!  The leftover wooden boards won't go to waste, either, as Adrian wants to use them to top off the edging of the borders over in the ornamental garden.  

Back in August I told you about the trials and tribulations of this year's strawberry crop.  I mentioned that I was intending to move them to a new location, and plant them in a different way.  This, my lovelies, is the idea I had to hopefully make the bed easier to manage.  The pots are quite large, certainly big enough to set the strawberry supports I got from Marshalls in.   I managed to get half the new bed done but it wasn't as easy as I had hoped it would be, as the soil was pretty wet and heavy 😒  As usual it took far longer than I had anticipated just to get half the bed done but luckily for me Adrian volunteered to tackle the other half, which he finished today, although I haven't taken photos yet.

I've been working round the other kitchen garden beds over the last week or so, keeping the weeds at bay before it becomes too unpleasant to work out there.  As you can see, I made a start on the other half of the new strawberry bed.  I made of a mess of it, to be honest, as I somehow managed to dig too far down in the soil when I was putting in the pots 😳 That's probably why Adrian took pity on me and volunteered to do it 😄

What's that saying?  "One year's seeds, seven years weeds"?  The asparagus bed was developing yet another fine crop of the buggers, but thankfully it didn't take long to pull the blighters out.

Looks a tad odd, I know, but there's method in my madness 😉 I treated myself to a selection of tulips and narcissus from J. Parkers to grow as cut flowers.  I planted them in pond plant baskets to make them easier to remove once they have finished flowering.  I'll then tuck them away, still in the baskets, in a suitable spot in the back garden until I replant them again next autumn.  I may well plant at least some of them into the borders, though, and buy some different varieties to grow for the spring of 2026.  Of course, it sounds good in theory ~ we'll just have to wait and see what it pans out like in practice!

And to finish off, I dug up the last of this year's potato crop this morning.  Whilst they have been very tasty, the potatoes definitely haven't grown as large this year.  Hopefully next year's crop will be better 😊