A stroll around the "grounds" ~ part one

Monday and Tuesday this week were lazy days, really, as was Sunday.  I got caught up with all the laundry though ~ who knew just two people could create so much washing between them LOL ~ as well as paperwork and emails, so I was kept out of mischief!  

Yesterday was lovely ~ sunny and warm with a wide expanse of blue sky as you can see from the photo above.  I decided to make my first job having a stroll around the front and back gardens ~ you know, just to depress myself with how much work is waiting to be done out there 😉  As it was such a nice day, I thought I'd take some photos to bore you with share with you.  I took rather a lot, I'm afraid, so I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that I'll post those I took in the back garden another day 😄

It's amazing how much the plants have grown since I shared the photos I'd taken a few weeks back.  I'm so pleased with this bed as all the plants that were moved seem to have settled down very nicely into their new home.  The rather lovely purple plant in flower at the moment is symphytum x uplandicum Moorland Heather.  It's so nice to get such a close view of the plant now that it's in this raised bed. 

The London Pride in the wooden tubs are sending out their delicate pink flower stems ~ they are such a pretty plant.  The roses and buddleja have lots of new growth too.

The only piece of lawn that we have now is over on the ornamental side of the front garden.  As you can see, we don't go in for a "bowling green" style lawn 😏  Still, the dandelions and daisies are good for the bees and other insects and although Adrian mowed the lawn today, they will soon be back to mock us!  Just look at that sodding dwarf elder still coming through 😠  The border will definitely have to lie fallow for this year at least whilst we try to eradicate the bloody stuff.

All the ornamental borders on this side of the garden need to be tackled this year, otherwise it's just going to get harder to tidy them up.  The lenten roses are still flowering.  They are growing very well in this spot, so I guess they are happy here.

The peonies just keep on getting bigger, with more buds, each year.  I've probably mentioned before that they were already in the garden when we moved in.  I just dug them up and moved them to where I wanted them to be.  I've read that they don't really like to be moved but these guys didn't seem to mind! 

The two clumps of poppies in the front wall border get larger each year, too.  They are such delicate-looking little flowers but are obviously tougher than they look 😄  I see the border is full of that horrible sticky weed again, so I shall have to remember to wear long sleeves when I tackle it.

I'm hoping that we get time to tackle the "wild" area this year.  The little nature pool is under all that growth somewhere, believe it or not!  It's going be rather a big job, I fear sigh  I want to make the pool larger, so I think that virtually everything will have to be dug out 😖  Probably best not to think too  much about that at the moment, eh 😉  

I was pleased to see that the kitchen garden beds haven't sprouted as many weeds as I feared they would whilst we've been away.  This bed is the worst of the four "working" beds, and I don't think it will take too long to clear it out, thankfully.

The strawberries are looking good, with some flowers starting to appear now.  I think I may transplant some of the narcissus bulbs I grew for cutting into that gap in the middle of the two sections of pots.

The celery plants that survived are looking rather good.  I still have no idea, to be honest, what I'm doing with them but.....

beneath that canopy of luscious green leaves appear to be stalks.  Whether or not they turn out to be edible remains to be seen 🤷

The extra Jazzy potato tubers that I planted in these two pots are sending up shoots already!  I've since covered them with a nice thick layer of old compost.

The pansies, Matrix Mix Coastal Sunrise, are looking very pretty although they need a spot of deadheading methinks.

The rhubarb plants are all looking good.  Despite its slow start, Timperly Early on the right has now overtaken Fulton's Strawberry Surprise in the middle!  I pulled some stalks from Goliath along with a couple from the Timperly Early yesterday, which we are going to have in a crumble 😋

And here we are, back where we started looking out across the harbour.  I heard Hamnavoe coming in so thought I'd try to take a photo of her ~ shame about the telegraph pole but I'm still pleased that I managed to get a half-decent picture 😊

What a difference...

a pair of young women wielding various "tools of destruction" can make in a morning😄

You may recall my sad lament regarding how vigorously the fuchsia beside the tiny little nature pool had grown.  Like the rest of the garden it had become totally overgrown over the last 18 months or so, but I have to admit that it wasn't an easy shrub to keep under control at the best of times.  So Adrian and I asked Beverly and Lyndi if they could help us do something with it.  They are both quite keen on a spot of demolition and were kind enough to come over last weekend to sort it out ~ and all we had to do was feed and water the pair of 'em😉

Ta-daa!  What a huge difference removing it has made!  There is obviously a lot of work yet to be done, but we won't be tackling it until next year as we are still plugging away at the rest of the garden.  I expect we will end up deconstructing the area and starting again, certainly in the vicinity of the pool at any rate.  I am considering taking out the plants on the right-hand side and extending the size of the pool to make a tiny marshy area.

I'm trying to rein-in my butterfly mind, though, as it's going to be a number of months before we can make a start on this new project!  I was thinking about it in the shower the other day and obviously not concentrating on what I was picking up ~ I ended up washing with my "detoxifying" seaweed shampoo instead of  the "soothing and nourishing" coconut body wash😳

The deconstruction/reconstruction in the old fruit cage area is still progressing albeit a tad slowly this week as the weather is rather mixed.  Whilst Adrian was working on the bed at the front I got the two holly bushes dug out from the one at the back, and moved them to fill the gap in the hedge border.

Good news, by the way, on the hedge border front.  Our neighbours have started a massive clearing out exercise of their thorny/prickly shrubs, so hopefully I won't have to contend with them encroaching into our garden in the future 😊 

As well as the holly bushes I also dug out the two ferns that were in the same bed, along with two from the border that runs across the garden in front of the dining room.  Before I realised just how hard it would be to transplant, I had thought about moving the fuchsia into this bed.  Now that our neighbours are having this clear out in their garden and I don't have to try to "fight back" with my own big shrubs, I felt it would be much better to make this into a fern bed instead.  There really are four ferns in the bed, it's just that two are very small ~ probably because they were being rather smothered by weeds!  I have two more in the border alongside the path that runs from the front gate, and I'll hopefully get them moved into the bed soon.

I can't quite believe how long it took me to move these six plants ~ I was out there beavering away for about three bloody hours!  The couple that had been in the bed with the holly bushes were relatively easy to dig out, but it was hard going getting the other two out of that overgrown border 😒

And to finish off, here's a cute scene in the central raised bed in the back patio garden: a little slice of life imitating art 👏

Eating an elephant.....

image from Clipart Library

.....one bite at a time, as the saying goes.

I've been alluding to what a terrible state the ornamental borders are in but up to now, my lovelies, I have avoided both showing you the evidence and actually doing anything about them 😳

To be perfectly honest, it all just feels so terribly overwhelming at the moment and I've found it very difficult to make a decision about just where to make a start.

Believe it or not, there is actually a little nature pool beneath all the overgrown weeds and plants here.  The fuchsia was originally a small piece that reappeared in the front wall border after all the old hedging had been removed.  It needs to be cut back regularly really but it's got somewhat out of hand this last year or so!  Beverly and Lyndi are going to give me a helping hand with this area at some point, and I've decided that the fuchsia will have to have a drastic pruning so it can be dug out more easily.  I have a place where it could be moved to, over on the other side of the garden where we have some issues with our neighbour's shrubs and brambles encroaching on our garden.  I will leave the fuchsia pretty much to its own devices and let all the shrubs fight it out amongst themselves 😉

Once this area has been cleared, I'm considering making the pool a little larger.  I may also replace the fuchsia with a small tree, perhaps a rowan.

Something strange seems to have happened to this mahonia!  It's throwing out new growth top and bottom but there is a weird section of bare trunk that looks as if something has made a meal of the leaves.  I going to leave it be and see if it continues to grow okay.

If you thought the kitchen garden borders were in a sorry state, well, just look at the ornamental garden borders ~ I have days where I look at them and just want to weep as we worked so hard getting them all set out😞

Adrian got the border on the kitchen garden side cleared out a couple of weeks back, and you can see the marked contrast with the border on the other side of the path.

The weeds, of course, are bad enough in this border but the worst thing of all is the dwarf elder that I planted.  I certainly made a rod for our backs and I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever get the bloody stuff cleared out permanently😩

It's a shame, really, as it does have attractive leaves and pretty white flowers but it's just so incredibly rampant!

I don't know what the tall, rust-coloured, weeds are called but we get lots of them growing in the garden.  And as for the buttercups, well they also grow like they are trying to take over the bloody world 😒

The hedge border isn't really as bad as it might first appear.  Much of the growth in the various sections are in fact ground-covering plants that I put in, and they are doing a fairly good job as smothering and keeping the weeds at bay.  Just some general tidying-up required here I think, along with some trimming of the shrubs perhaps.

Again, this border isn't quite as bad as it looks, although the dwarf elder has made its way across and will have to be dealt with severely 😠

 Finally we have the soft fruit area, which we have decided needs a major overhaul.  I mentioned previously that the blackcurrants, whilst they have grown very well and are producing lots of fruit, said fruit is extremely sour.  It seems a shame to just dig them up and get rid of them, so they will be going into the little border near the bay tree in the back garden.  We don't put out bird feeders because we don't want to encourage rats and mice, but the birds are welcome to feast on the blackcurrants should they fancy a little fruity snack!

I may move the redcurrants to live with the three little cordon fruit trees in the back garden but I haven't decided yet.

We are aiming to rearrange these beds somewhat, with the whole area then being given over to ornamental plants.  This might be the first section that we tackle (not including the fuchsia/nature pool area, which is dependant on when the girls can come over), then as we work our way around the other ornamental borders we have somewhere to move plants to should any thinning-out be necessary.

I guess all I can do is keep telling myself "one bite at a time, Sharon, one bite at a time" 😳

A garden of two halves

The front garden is divided quite neatly through the middle by the path to the gate.  On the other side, of course, is the kitchen garden and pond; this side is destined to be purely ornamental.  The photo above, by the way, was taken on 12th May this year would you believe!  Thankfully the snow didn't last long but it was certainly a surprise to have snow in May.  

Quite frankly, my lovelies, the "ornamental garden" is a mess.  Granted, the border on the left of the photo did look rather pretty from a distance when all the wild flowers were in bloom but it's now looking rather sad and unloved.  I believe the white and shades-of-purple flowers on the left are sweet rocket.  They have self-seeded and smell lovely.  The bees and butterflies adore them; I was in the garden one sunny afternoon and the sound of the bees buzzing on the rocket was almost deafening!

The border on this side is particularly full of bluebells.  In fact both the ornamental and kitchen garden sides have masses of the bulbs, although I have culled those on the kitchen garden side quite considerably.  I think these may actually be Spanish bluebells rather than our native British variety.  There are lots of blue ones, but also a few white and lilac/pink plants too.  The yellow flowers on the left of the photo are ~ I kid you not ~ on a turnip that somehow self-seeded in the border!      

Actually, the turnip flowers were very pretty and the bees loved them.

I'm amazed that this peony managed to survive, given that it was hemmed in by a tree (which I think may be a white hornbeam) and the old hedge that we had removed.  Once the hedge was gone, the peony just popped up as if from nowhere and has grown considerably since last year.  It obviously likes this spot cuddled up to the garden wall 😊  

The tree had been rather badly cut back in the past which is why we had it cut down in the first place.  We didn't get around to doing anything with the stump and it is now regrowing ~ we have accidentally coppiced it!  We've decided to let it grow and see how it goes.  I'm hoping that the peony will still be happy once the tree is growing properly again.

The wall seems to give the peony some shelter from the wind.

The blooms are just so beautiful!

As well as "ordinary" daffodils we have masses of these narcissus that resemble the variety Pheasant's Eye.  Since they were already in the garden I have no idea if that is indeed the variety.  They flower in May and are scented.  I dug up loads of the bulbs that were in the kitchen garden border that runs along the path from the gate (I will be replanting some of these back into the border), and from this opposite border on the ornamental side.  I gave a carrier-bag full to a friend, have got about 50 or so of the bulbs ready for sending down to my Mum and have already planted many more clumps in the other three kitchen garden borders!  Once I get the ornamental borders sorted out, I'll be able to spread these narcissus about a bit more.  

I spotted this plant when Adrian was digging out the weeds over in what will eventually be our fruit cage.  I think it's a feverfew, the leaves certainly smell like it anyway.  It doesn't seem to mind that I moved it and has been full of pretty daisy flowers.

Lovely fluffy dandelion 😊

I have made a start on tidying up the ornamental borders.

I rescued this holly (along with three others) from the over-run border; it's so much happier now that it's got a bit of space to call it's own!

Iris sibirica are another of those plants that look delicate but are pretty tough.

This variety, Butter and Sugar, is very pretty.

I moved everything that had been in this bed ~ not that there was an awful lot, to be honest ~ out to the kitchen garden borders as I wanted to make an alpine bed. 

Instead of rocks, I made use of chunky pieces of tree trunk/branches to make planting pockets.  It needs a few more plants to fill it out but I'm really pleased with how it's looking already.  When I've finished planting I will top it off with some grit.

I found quite a few clumps of this little ground-hugging plant in the garden ~ I've been told that it is called procumbent pearlwort.  I thought it was a very sweet little plant, so dug up the clumps that I came across and planted it around one of those holly bushes I rescued.

And finally, a photo that I took earlier in the year of some fungi growing at the back of the pond 😊