Pond You Like It

This week seems to be all about ponds.

Monday morning saw me working in a lovely garden where the plants are allowed to naturalise and seed themselves where they like it best and, considering it has a north facing aspect, has a rather lovely lawn which I've scarified and aerated over the last few weeks. The overall feel of the garden is a relaxed and slightly haphazard one - just the way I like them! The garden is the product of a perfect partnership - the plantswoman and her husband who "tidies up".

The unusual creation in the photo is the work of Mr Tidy Up following a morning spent digging up and dividing a mature formium (over 1.5m high and 2m wide). The unwanted pieces were potted up to donate to a local charitable concern but before they went to their new home they were arranged to simulate a pond. There was method to this particular piece of madness as the owners are thinking about installing an 'proper' pond and the gentleman of the house wanted to show his wife how it might look. I think it looks great and I'm particularly taken by the fish - although it does look as though it's trying to escape!

Right now I'm off to apply a liberal layer of sunblock before I trot off for a marathon of weeding, finishing the day with my second pond of the week. This time re-planting a pond at Wendel's the cat's house (no fish involved much to Wendel's disappointment I'm sure).

Enjoy the sun.

LxXx

Ooh, A Bit Of Summer Glamping - Lovely!

I am sooo excited as we've just booked our summer holiday - yay! We're fulfilling a little dream of mine and going glamping in the English countryside. Originally we were looking into another little ambition of mine, to visit the Scottish highlands but as we couldn't find anything that blew us away or that met both our criteria we really weren't making any headway.

However, when the Dandelion Hideaway came to my attention via the Dorset Cereals 'spin the bottle' competition I immediately fell in love with it. I love the vintage feel, the decor, the honesty shop, the concept and my especial favourite, the goats (I do love a nice goat). I also really like the fact that Obaston House Farm has been run by the Earp family for almost 100yrs. Luckily for me B 's also taken a shine to it so come June we'll be off to sunny Warwickshire to glamp our little hearts out.

Take a look for yourself - I dare you not to fall in love with it!

LxXx

From Snow To Sunblock

I feel a bit like the Karate Kid at the mo' - merino on, merino off, merino on. . . How naive I was to relax and get excited at the advent of an early spring! How foolish to think that all would be plain sailing from here on in! Ah well, such are the joys of gardening and of the British Weather having gone from surprisingly warm, to bugger me it's cold and back again. This week it's due to be a positively tropical 15 degrees. No wonder we Brits are obsessed with the weather as we literally never know what we'll get from one day to the next. Well at least the early spring bulbs haven't withered under the snow cover and the allotment did look lovely.

The snow came and went within days and this week I actually put factor 50 on my face for the first time - now this should have been purely wishful thinking on my part but

my Celtic skin refuses to be caught out and I was grateful for it for the 2hrs of sunshine on Monday, which felt almost like summer!

With the Met Office predicting sever drought in the south east this year (likening it to the summer of 1976 if you're old enough to remember that tarmac melting time) it looks as though we're in for a challenging year.

LxXx

Tip -Toe Time!

As you've probably all heard Daffodils are blooming all over the shop at the moment due to the ridiculously mild winter, but it's not only the Dafs that've woken up - all the other spring bulbs are following suit too. I've got Snowdrops (planted 2 years ago as bulbs and only just showing!?), Muscari and Crocus popping their heads out to see what's what, which makes it incredibly difficult knowing where to put my feet at the mo'.

Weeding has become a bit of a ballet in walking boots - my hand trowel is now my new best friend, although my back may beg to differ! For example, I spent the morning yesterday standing on tip-toe in a flower bed full of unwanted Wild Garlic (bulb and leaf pics above) trying to remove the garlic and not the spring bulbs - tricky!

The Wild Garlic was originally introduced into the garden as a companion plant to deal with the black fly but it's an invasive little bugger that's spread throughout the back garden and is now happily entrenched in the front too. The only way to keep it under control is to dig out the bulbs and hope for the best. The owner of said gardens is rather fond of it provided it's kept under control and I really enjoy working surrounded by the subtle smell of garlic. It's one of those fragrances like Rosemary or Mint that have a nostalgic quality to them - well for me at least.

On the home front the allotment's looking rather bare but is all prepped for the coming growing season. Our garden has an air of anticipation - everything is ready and waiting. It should be a good year as I've spent a lot of time trying to improve the soil structure with home-made leaf mulch and compost and I'm armed and ready with a humungous bag of organic chicken manure for feeding. The water butts are full to overflowing, the soil nicely moist and during any dry period we'll be saving our shower water. All good in theory. . .

LxXx

Where Did The Rest of The Year Go?

Wow, Christmas and New Year are done already? Not sure how that happened! Anyhoo, I was very kindly reminded by my mate Dave last week (great B-day bash by the way matey) that I'd been very remiss as far as the old blogging was concerned and after protesting that I'd posted recently I realised that Dave (who, bless his heart still reads the blog regularly) is correct and I haven't posted since October. Apologies, but in my defence I've been extremely busy with the old gardening lark due to the return of the mild weather - my daffodils are starting to sprout which is a little extreme in December to say the least! Snow stopped play in November 2010 so I've had an extended working year this year and will be starting early in 2012 too if the weather holds!

On the home front we potted up a 'Rubinette' apple tree into a half barrel (the tree is grafted onto M27 root stock so is ideal for a pot in our front garden) and spent Boxing Day down on the allotment spreading steaming muck onto our beds ready for next years' planting - very satisfying despite some bugger having broken into our shed on Christmas Day!

It's been a bit of a strange end to the year - the gardening's been fab, but my dad was poorly and in hospital the week before Christmas (nothing life-threatening thankfully) so the run-up to Christmas was a bit stressful. On the upside I got another essay posted off for marking and we saw the year out healthy and happy. Today's plan is to go out for a lovely long walk across Wanstead Flats to work off the excess of chocolate and cake - excellent!

Hope you all have a healthy, wealthy and happy New Year!

Speak soon (I promise).

LxXx

Hoo-Bloomin'-Ra!

Firstly, apologies to those of you suffering from the effects of flooding. Secondly, yay and double yay - it's raining!!!
Despite a slightly wishy-washy summer it's been quite a dry old year in the South East. Low rainfall, high humidity and blustery winds have left some plants stressed and unhappy and I've seen a lot more powdery mildew than normal, which has affected all manner if plants from phlox to sturdy perennial sunflowers.
No rain means that empty water butts aren't replenished and that combined with our refusal to use a hosepipe on the garden at home has lead to the frenzied collection of shower and bath water. Grey water's fine for the garden and we use biodegradable shower gels etc (and when not covered in mud I'm relatively dirt free anyway), so I feel fairly happy with using the the leftovers from our daily ablutions. Unfortunately as we live on the 1st floor it means schlepping up and down stairs with 2 watering cans and a 10L container full of water most days.
So, when rain was forecast for this week I was firstly sceptical that it was indeed going to rain and then overjoyed that on Monday it actually did. Although I did wonder if that was it for the year. But no, today I got soaked through for the 1st time this year (yay again!) so now like a squirrel storing nuts I'm stocking up on porridge and soups ready for the winter.
Thank heavens the autumn is finally here and I can honestly say, hand on heart, that my idea of absolute bliss is a dry pair of trousers.
LxXx

A Good Day's Work

Today was a good day. Not only was the client happy but I got paid extra for doing a good job, which is very unusual (the extra pay obviously) and very welcome!

I met the owner of the Chinese garden over the fence when I was working on her neighbours plot. As usual I handed over a business card and thought nothing more of it until I got a phone call 3 months later. As you can see from the before and after photos there was a really lovely garden under all those weeds and I'm glad that I could really make a difference as the owner has a bad leg and can't get out to weed as often as she'd like. She also has 2 sons to look after who are totally uninterested in gardening so no help there either.

It's a real shame when people obviously invest a lot of money getting their gardens landscaped and then can't get out there and enjoy them. The owner said that she'd love to sit and read in her garden but the fact that it was in such a mess made her sad and disinclined to go outside, which is a real shame. Anyway, hopefully she can sit out there and enjoy some warm autumn days before winter sets in. Brrrrrr!

LxXx