May 30 2011, Garden no 8

 

Garden 2011 no 8
A family Weekend.

The saga of the fence goes on. Most of that enormous pile of branches and roots was taken away to the tip by a friends partner in his van. In between rain and wind my eldest daughter found time, with the help of her partner, a friend, a digger and a jeep, to remove the remaining roots of the hedge in preparation for completing the fence. Those roots were massive and turned out to be incredibly deep. Trying to get any thing done in the garden at the moment is difficult, I can’t remember the last time we had a whole day with no rain or wind or both. Sometimes the weather is really nice, but never for the whole day.
I have had a very busy weekend. On Friday I had most of my family here, my eldest daughter and grandson dug a patch in the turf ready for my vegetable plot.
Once the turf was lifted and the land roughly dug over they burned the last of the rubbish from the hedge in an old bin burner.
I had asked for some of the wood to be left because I wanted wood ash to dig into the vegetable patch. A pile of the dug out turf is now drying out and hopefully rotting down and will eventually become a small decorative corner garden.
Once this work was finished I went with my middle daughter to spend the weekend at her house.
She is not a gardener; she doesn’t like gardening, hates getting ‘dirty’, she calls all plants ‘weeds’ and thinks any thing that you can’t paint or trim is ‘messy’. Yes….. I know what you are thinking………….how on earth did I have a daughter like that, but I did. 
She has recently moved and the first thing I noticed about her new house was the abundance of bluebells growing all around her front garden.
She told me they were ‘messy’, that she was going to get the whole lot dug over and grass seed put down so that her front garden looked ‘tidy’  and all she would have to do would be mow the lawn. I asked her not to do any thing until I had the chance to lift as many bulbs and plants as I could, which is what I have spent the weekend doing. I dug and dug and dug.
Whoever had the garden before was obviously a keen gardener; the ground was well dug and soft. I managed to dig my way around all the borders over the weekend and salvaged THREE huge bags of assorted plants and bulbs, mostly but not exclusively bluebells. My eldest and I shared the goodies, we will be lucky to find space for all those plants but we will do our best.
And that brings me back to the fence. We came back here today ( Monday) with the intention of getting the fence finished, but just as our helper was about to put the water into the cement mix, a black cloud appeared from no where and the rain came down in bucket loads…………….and I still have no finished fence. I suppose I was lucky it rained BEFORE he added the water to the mix, at least the cement and sand mix should stay dry until next time

Tags: garden, plants, vegetables

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delete reply acousticeagle wrote on Jun 2, '11 wow, you did get busy.

delete reply forelithe wrote on May 31, '11 A garden is a work of passion.

delete reply esoterika713 wrote on May 31, '11 Yes, that would have been not a good mix. Water and cement. My sister tried to make our own containers for flowers with a mixture of cement,peat moss, and perlite. We only had shovels and we weren't quite strong enough to mix it properly so they aren't perfect but I still have one but it sheds bits because it wasn't mixed properly. But, the mint likes it. That is what I have growing in it at the moment. :) Your garden sounds marvelous and it will be great once the fence gets built. What a lucky score getting those blue bells. They remind me a bit of grape hyacinths.

delete reply brendainmad wrote on May 31, '11 Believe it or not, we've had the same weather. At present the sky is black. How I'd love to have a nice garden, just grass is boring!

edit delete reply forgetmenot525 wrote on May 31, '11 djdx said I thought bluebells were a protected species. so did I, but apparently that doesn't apply if they are in your garden, it only applies if they are growing wild. At least thats they way I think it works

delete reply bennett1 wrote on May 31, '11 And I think bluebells spread on their own. Lovely for you.

delete reply reneenay wrote on May 31, '11 Looks like you got a lot accomplished & the bluebells are so pretty

delete reply djdx wrote on May 31, '11 So nice to have help with this project. I'm glad you were able to save the plants from your daughter's garden. I thought bluebells were a protected species.

delete reply mitchylr wrote on May 31, '11 Quite a productive weekend, all told. Shame about not getting the fence done, but rain on a Bank Holiday Monday is something of an inevitability.

delete reply veryfrank wrote on May 30, '11 Pleased for you that there is progress with the fence. Bluebells are always such a nice addition.

edit delete reply forgetmenot525 wrote on May 30, '11 greenwytch said 'free' plants! YAY! congrats on the good progress, thanks to help from the whole clan. ; D Hi Deb......'YAY indeed..................... look at the bag in that last picture, I filled three bags like that, they were so full the bulbs were spilling over the top. It was a good weekend thanks. I couldn't manage to dig up turf, it was very hard which is why my daughter helped. But digging the plants up from those borders was OK because someone had maintained the garden and the ground was nice and soft. Think we all had a good weekend, it was a combined effort.

delete reply greenwytch wrote on May 30, '11 'free' plants! YAY! congrats on the good progress, thanks to help from the whole clan. ; D

delete reply nemo4sun wrote on May 30, '11 what a lot you got done once again we seem to be having the same weather patterns :)