Gardening
We've done a lot of gardening recently. Both the bank holiday weekend and last weekend have been spend trying to weed the area that I want to turn over to growing things we can eat. We've done this several times before and then neglected it, so it's weeded over again :-( Bacchus is not fond of gardening and on Sunday, was looking particularly mournful while he turned over the soil. Apparently he doesn't enjoy gardening because of the sense that you are fighting a loosing battle, and everything you are doing will need to be done again. He was even wondering when we'll be able to afford a gardener! Personally I don't think the garden is big enough to need a gardener much of the time, but it might be nice to pay someone to do all the boring jobs and get the garden into a state where we can care for it easily. It's also quite low on the list of priorities at the moment to say the least. At least this time, thanks to my mother coming to stay in a few weeks, I will be able to get lots of mulch delivered, (Oh the joy of having someone in the house to take in deliveries! I have a whole separate rant at the moment about the postal system and the delivery, or rather NOT, of parcels...). The mulch will hopefully mean that the mammoth task of weeding that patch, is a job that doesn't need to be done again, or at least not to the same scale...
Having now mostly cleared that bit, it's a lot easier to actually see what has been planted there. It would appear all of my rasps have survived, despite me thinking one had died off, That means I should have 3 golden and 11 ordinary red ones, so I'm hoping for a decent crop this year. My 2 currant bushes are doing very well and have lots of flowers on them and my tiny Kentish cob is still there. It's only about 6" high and so had been swamped by the weeds, making me wonder if it had died/been accidentally trodden on... But it's still there and looks very healthy :-) The Morello Cherry has done amazingly well after being planted out (last year?), it was absolutely covered in blossom. I had wondered if it was going to flower, but I'll just have to remember for next year, it flowers after the other cherry trees around the area. It's still only about 2' high, but if all the fruit sets, I might get somewhere in the region of 100 cherries! That is of course if I can keep the birds off them, last year the little sods ate the flesh off the cherries, very neatly leaving the stones attached to the stalks. I need to sort out some netting for it ASAP. I also need to put some net over my strawberries, last year they were polished off by a combination of bird and slugs :-( To try and prevent this I have dug up one of the plants and a couple of its runners and potted them. With a ring of copper around the pot and a net over, hopefully we might get to try some strawberries ourselves this year. Not that I'm actually even all that fond of strawberries, I don't dislike them, but they are often disappointing and bland in a way raspberries never seem to be. I'm hoping that my home grown ones will be different, certainly the little 'wild' strawberries I grew as a child were nicer than the huge over-sized Spanish ones you can buy all year round.
I also finally planted out my loganberry. It's been in a pot for the last 3 or maybe even 4 years, and while it survived, it was clearly never very happy and hardly fruited at all. It was a cutting from a plant that my parents had in the Lakes, which in turn was a cutting from the plant we had in N'cle, originally planted about 25 years ago. It's looking much more comfortable and healthy already, which I'm not really surprised about, considering how pot bound it was when I planted it. There was definitely more root than soil! Sadly my blueberries didn't survive the winter, this was probably due to them not being planted out. I ordered them when they were on special offer, then had to wait for MIL & FIL to bring me some ericaceous compost for them and then the weather turned & I didn't get round to planting them out. Fortunately they are on offer again and now I have a £5 off voucher to use too, so hopefully they can be procured and planted out somewhere before MIL & FIL visit again. Bacchus is worried that they will be annoyed if we haven't used the compost by the time they next come as apparently it was very inconvenient for them to get it for us, though clearly no where near as inconvenient as it would have been for us to get it without a car! The main problem is I can't quite decide where I'm going to plant them. I was wondering about just transplanting them to bigger pots, but then that requires me to water them during dry spells and therefore they're very likely to die again... I think I need to dig out a patch of the garden and replace the soil with the ericaceous compost. I could then move my cranberry plant to the same area. It's not looking very vigorous where it is and I think that's because it's currently swamped by bluebells and not happy with the soil type. The bluebells are a bit of a nuisance where they are, they do look very pretty, but I really want to turn that patch into a herb garden, so I think I might have to dig them out and replant them elsewhere, further up the garden, possibly in the grass. There's also a rose bush, honeysuckle and lots of evening primrose in the same raised bed, I'd quite like to move them all too as they're all rather nice & I don't want to just get rid of them, though the evening primrose self-seeds itself everywhere! I could probably collect the seeds, press them & sell my own oil the number we get.
I'm rather hoping Mum might want to do some gardening when she's here, otherwise I'm not really sure what else she'll do during the day. Bacchus will be in Germany for the start of her visit and then in Brighton for a Stag weekend. I'm *really* not looking forward to him getting back from that on the Sunday, those of you who've seen him with a hangover, will know why... I don't think Mum will be at all impressed at him in that state! I'm hoping to get one day off with her, but it'll be a bit difficult as it's month end. Hopefully the cats will keep her entertained while I'm out. I have visions of her being appalled at their antics and following them round removing them from all the surfaces she thinks they shouldn't be on :-) I'm just kind of hoping she doesn't notice the scratches on the dining table that used to be hers, it's strange but I'm suddenly feeling the need to go all domestic and put a table cloth on it ;-D I expect she'll want to clean while she's here too, particulalry if it's raining,which in turn gives me another dilemma. Do I stress myself trying to get the place 'Mum clean' before she comes, (quite when I don't know as I'll be away the weekend before) and still have her clean, because my version of clean is nowhere as exacting as hers? Or do I make the minimum effort, thus making her think we live in squalor (as well as a building site) and really give her some dirt to get her teeth into, so to speak. I know she likes cleaning things when you can really see the difference, so maybe the second option is the best all round.
Edit: I forgot to mention my hedge! It is all growing very nicely, I don't think even 1 plant out of the 25 has died! It's all budding or budded and the Hawthorn is certainly shaping up to be the very effective barrier it is claimed. At least that's what the multiple slashes on my arms say :-) Note to self, do not bother trying to cut the grass near a hawthorn hedge with clippers, just let it grow! I will need to thin it out and replant some of it futher up, but I'll do that once the plants are a little bigger.
Having now mostly cleared that bit, it's a lot easier to actually see what has been planted there. It would appear all of my rasps have survived, despite me thinking one had died off, That means I should have 3 golden and 11 ordinary red ones, so I'm hoping for a decent crop this year. My 2 currant bushes are doing very well and have lots of flowers on them and my tiny Kentish cob is still there. It's only about 6" high and so had been swamped by the weeds, making me wonder if it had died/been accidentally trodden on... But it's still there and looks very healthy :-) The Morello Cherry has done amazingly well after being planted out (last year?), it was absolutely covered in blossom. I had wondered if it was going to flower, but I'll just have to remember for next year, it flowers after the other cherry trees around the area. It's still only about 2' high, but if all the fruit sets, I might get somewhere in the region of 100 cherries! That is of course if I can keep the birds off them, last year the little sods ate the flesh off the cherries, very neatly leaving the stones attached to the stalks. I need to sort out some netting for it ASAP. I also need to put some net over my strawberries, last year they were polished off by a combination of bird and slugs :-( To try and prevent this I have dug up one of the plants and a couple of its runners and potted them. With a ring of copper around the pot and a net over, hopefully we might get to try some strawberries ourselves this year. Not that I'm actually even all that fond of strawberries, I don't dislike them, but they are often disappointing and bland in a way raspberries never seem to be. I'm hoping that my home grown ones will be different, certainly the little 'wild' strawberries I grew as a child were nicer than the huge over-sized Spanish ones you can buy all year round.
I also finally planted out my loganberry. It's been in a pot for the last 3 or maybe even 4 years, and while it survived, it was clearly never very happy and hardly fruited at all. It was a cutting from a plant that my parents had in the Lakes, which in turn was a cutting from the plant we had in N'cle, originally planted about 25 years ago. It's looking much more comfortable and healthy already, which I'm not really surprised about, considering how pot bound it was when I planted it. There was definitely more root than soil! Sadly my blueberries didn't survive the winter, this was probably due to them not being planted out. I ordered them when they were on special offer, then had to wait for MIL & FIL to bring me some ericaceous compost for them and then the weather turned & I didn't get round to planting them out. Fortunately they are on offer again and now I have a £5 off voucher to use too, so hopefully they can be procured and planted out somewhere before MIL & FIL visit again. Bacchus is worried that they will be annoyed if we haven't used the compost by the time they next come as apparently it was very inconvenient for them to get it for us, though clearly no where near as inconvenient as it would have been for us to get it without a car! The main problem is I can't quite decide where I'm going to plant them. I was wondering about just transplanting them to bigger pots, but then that requires me to water them during dry spells and therefore they're very likely to die again... I think I need to dig out a patch of the garden and replace the soil with the ericaceous compost. I could then move my cranberry plant to the same area. It's not looking very vigorous where it is and I think that's because it's currently swamped by bluebells and not happy with the soil type. The bluebells are a bit of a nuisance where they are, they do look very pretty, but I really want to turn that patch into a herb garden, so I think I might have to dig them out and replant them elsewhere, further up the garden, possibly in the grass. There's also a rose bush, honeysuckle and lots of evening primrose in the same raised bed, I'd quite like to move them all too as they're all rather nice & I don't want to just get rid of them, though the evening primrose self-seeds itself everywhere! I could probably collect the seeds, press them & sell my own oil the number we get.
I'm rather hoping Mum might want to do some gardening when she's here, otherwise I'm not really sure what else she'll do during the day. Bacchus will be in Germany for the start of her visit and then in Brighton for a Stag weekend. I'm *really* not looking forward to him getting back from that on the Sunday, those of you who've seen him with a hangover, will know why... I don't think Mum will be at all impressed at him in that state! I'm hoping to get one day off with her, but it'll be a bit difficult as it's month end. Hopefully the cats will keep her entertained while I'm out. I have visions of her being appalled at their antics and following them round removing them from all the surfaces she thinks they shouldn't be on :-) I'm just kind of hoping she doesn't notice the scratches on the dining table that used to be hers, it's strange but I'm suddenly feeling the need to go all domestic and put a table cloth on it ;-D I expect she'll want to clean while she's here too, particulalry if it's raining,which in turn gives me another dilemma. Do I stress myself trying to get the place 'Mum clean' before she comes, (quite when I don't know as I'll be away the weekend before) and still have her clean, because my version of clean is nowhere as exacting as hers? Or do I make the minimum effort, thus making her think we live in squalor (as well as a building site) and really give her some dirt to get her teeth into, so to speak. I know she likes cleaning things when you can really see the difference, so maybe the second option is the best all round.
Edit: I forgot to mention my hedge! It is all growing very nicely, I don't think even 1 plant out of the 25 has died! It's all budding or budded and the Hawthorn is certainly shaping up to be the very effective barrier it is claimed. At least that's what the multiple slashes on my arms say :-) Note to self, do not bother trying to cut the grass near a hawthorn hedge with clippers, just let it grow! I will need to thin it out and replant some of it futher up, but I'll do that once the plants are a little bigger.