Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Woolsery

RAS said:

And at the end of the day a couple of local foxes were making out a few plots down.

We had 2 !!!!!! pheasants sparring this morning, but no actual blows were struck. After a while the smaller one sidled off. The large pheasant is quite keen to round us up, but he's nothing compared with Dylan who was in residence earlier. He would dive in, attack your wellies and swear. Unfortunately, he also attacked moving vehicles, which was bound to end badly. He was found very dazed one morning and carted off to the Hen Welfare Trust, who nursed him back to health. I'm not sure where he went after that, but hopefully somewhere devoid of cars.

Damp here too.

Farway

After yesterday’s weather it’s back to warm sunshine today, and promise of same right over the weekend. It hammered down yesterday as well, very soggy in parts but hopefully will soon dry out enough to walk on

Lovely tree 2P, there’s one a couple of doors down from me, which had it not tipped down yesterday I would have posted on here this morning, maybe tomorrow, just dusting off the camera

If it dries enough I’ll finish off clearing the pruning of the buddleia into the garden waste bin, having just renewed the annual collection pass at £72, then they compost it and sell it back to you for more than bag of compost from Home Bargains etc. However there is a waiting list to get on the garden waste collection scheme so proves it’s popular

twopenny

Just cleaning pavers and gates this morning.
Plants to be relocated have been thought about. I did go to the garden centre to see if the tomato bags were in which I use for seeds and summer pots.
Tried to repaint my neighbours old fence but it would take a day so gave up. Cheap panels cost more in the long run with all the preserving I've noticed.
I may get one or see if poundland has theirs. They are easier to move and I'm having probs with the back/leg thingy.
Hoping it's going to be fine tomorrow for seed planting. The broad beans are coming on a treat so far.

Woolsery

Spent half of yesterday's decent weather removing the double sliding doors from the polytunnel. Eunice blew them out wards and took the wooden frame with them, but they stayed on their tracks. It doesn't look as if the frame itself is bent, but the whole thing is going to be re-built anyway. We're shifting it sideways and using the old foundation tubes that were on the north side as the new south side.....if that makes sense.That way we only need one set of new foundations and the land lowered by about 0.6m. It's digger work.

In the afternoon I cut down what I hope is the last willow trunk of the season. The trees are old and the top bits often die and shear off half way up, so at that point I take them down. I intend to plant new hybrid willows that will give firewood in 5 years now fuel prices make the investment in fencing etc worthwhile.

Spoiled for choice today...weeding? planting? stripping topsoil and relocating it? The world's my lobster.

Farway

Another bright & sunny morning and with weekend promise to be even better, at last!

Managed to get more of the buddleia pruning chopped & into he garden waste bin, now I’ve started on my neighbours one seeing as I had the loppers in my hand and she had recent operation so don’t want busted stitches. I’ll pile hers into my bin as well now I’ve renewed the licence for a year

Amazed this morning, below is a pic of the dahlia "Bishops Children" now germinated, amazed because only sown Tuesday 15th PM. In electric propagator but so are other seeds. Very viable seeds these, from Nicky’s Nursery if anyone wants to know.

I’ll move them from the propagator once they open up a bit more as I don’t want them “drawn”. I may have overdone the dahlias, at least fifteen but some cells are doubled up, guess what I'll be donating to the volunteer place alter this year.

RAS

Looking good Farway....

I must get stuff planted!

Still more involved in infrastructure; removing rotted woodchip from a large area to planting beds for example.  We've also been renovating the shed a bit at a time and yesterday we took apart the roof of the shed, replaced it with a smaller overlap so that the roofing felt extends beyond the walls, then we'll trim the surplus back to bend over and secure, leaving enough on the lower edge to run into the gutter. And dispense with the old tatty edges.

Given we  originally got it for a tenner from guys removing it from a garden, it owes us nothing and should last another few years. Everything apart from the nails and timber preservative is wombled.

Woolsery

Ah, 'Bishop's Children,' I remember them well! Not so scandalous as Cardinal's Kids, of course, but when I produced a particuarly interesting one, I was treated in a most un-Christian manner by a certain establishment in the east where many UK gardeners used to go and worship. Basically, they held onto it for 5 years or so with promises of eventual promotion to the masses and eternal life on the shelves of garden centres everywhere, but these were false prophesies. The real reason they had hold of my baby was to stop others from getting it. Indeed, they never released any dahlias before being gobbled up by an American conglomerate,which jolly well served them right. Soon I was receiving emails from people with weird names and full of  even weirder corp talk, so I marked them as spam and tried to forget...As you can see I failed.

But I digress..... It was another fine one yesterday, so after reorganising my food stocks in the panic room and setting up the propagator by the east facing window I headed down to the wild area where I had a lovely (not!) few hours raking the dead grass into dumpy bags ready for re-seeding with something less rampant. I don't know what the particularly horrible grass was, but it emanated from little bulbils about a centimetre long. I bumped it all off last autumn, so at present it's a field of sludge onto which I'll sow grass seed and plant various tough things like Buddleia, Joe Pye, Fleabane and Valerian so they can hopefully establish together and fight it out. I shall probably be elsewhere until the autumn cut, trying to figure out the rebirth of the polytunnel and make some headway in the 'pretty' gardens. Of all years, I feel this isn't going to be a good one to be in transition with the edible bits.

Farway

All set for a lovely sunny weekend, blue skies ahead

More seeds have popped up from the Tuesday sowing; the tomatoes are now showing and the cosmos, the only outstanding seeds to show are the Castor oil ones but given their size I’m expecting something like Little House of Horrors one morning as I come down stairs. I really do need to get the window sill & conservatory sorted ASAP to prevent them getting leggy

A sad tale there regarding Bishops Children Woolsery.  A frequent poster here before he was sent to the naughty step forever, Dave from way down West had similar tale of promises from a seed company that came to nowt.  In the unlikely event one of the Bishops babes is a stunner I’ll have to seek my fortune carefully

Loads of spring flowers in the road, violets & celandine on the verges, magnolia in a neighbour’s garden & ornamental cherry over the road, took the photos yesterday and here’s a collage

twopenny

Been out, not as long as I'd like, and untangled a clematis that's growing fast to try and cover the gap to the neighbours at least for the summer. There were actually buds on it!

Wired up the climbing rose that is producing leaves apace and planted the Jingle Bells winter flowering clematis that should be evergreen and cover the rose stems/fence for winter.

Wired up my template for a pretend gate in the corner and untangled a honeysuckle I didn't even know was there, to train over the top of the 'gate'.

Added another block under the steps to it so people didn't tip and hurt themselves. That does need redoing as they never go back quite the same as before.

Tidied up the bits and bobs that had to be left because of the eternal rain and fed everything with rose food or Blood fish and bone.

Poured some more 'grass improver' on the front lawn and the blackbirds are rewarding me for feeding them by scratching out the moss.

Trimmed the lawn edges - always makes everything look better

Phew, with other problems only giving me a short time that's not a bad result. If only it always was so!

Love the photos Farway. Very cheering.

Farway

Blue sky & sun again, bit breezy though looking at the branches outside

The tom & dahlia seedlings have been removed from the propagator and are getting used to the tough life on the window sill. The Black dragon coleus I have high hopes for, looks like a green shade on the compost, these were so dust like seeds I had no idea if they’d landed in the right spot or not, seems they may have

The weather seems set fair for the rest of the week so later today I’ll move the young Shasta daisies I have sheltering in the conservatory to the outside, only moved them inside because I grew from seed and they were getting ravaged by the wet at the end of last year

I have a wayward Thorn Free blackberry shoot near my back door, it was a self-rooted tip but I reckon it deserves a life of its own; I’ll attempt forming an arch with it.

Plus I spotted a self-sown gooseberry seedling which I’ll pot up and try to train upwards like a pillar; of course the eventual fruit may be green bullets but who knows, could be egg size golden nectar drops?