Garden 2012 no18.

Garden 2012 no 18

Oh my poor garden. Hospital says I can now ‘resume normal activities’ (while taking care) and the eye is healing nicely. Therefore; this weekend is going to be a gardening weekend. I’m still getting fresh spinach leaves every couple of days and they are good either steamed as part of a hot meal or fresh as part of a salad.

 My lettuce is almost gone, I’ve another two or three and then that’s it. I am still picking spinach leaves, the last of the nasturtium leaves and the last of the spring onions to make up a bowl of salad every couple of days and I have the last of the shallots drying out ready to be spiced and pickled.
I’m a bit upset about the lavender and the tansy. I usually make up bowls of potpourri for the house with these. Unfortunately this year they flowered and died of in the couple of weeks I’ve been unable to get out there. I’m quite cross with myself for leaving them, they were ready to be cut a few days before I went into hospital but I decided to leave them until that weekend. Now I wish I had harvested them when I had the chance. But at least these will flower again next year and there is no real harm done. The more lasting damage is likely to be around the edge of the garden in amongst the wild flowers and hedgerow. I’ve always been very careful about removing deep rooting invasive weeds as they appeared. Particularly the thistles, dandelions, and those big tall dock leaves, they all have roots that quickly go deep and are a real problem to get out. I’ve taken a walk around the edge of the garden and there they all are, happily growing, spreading and depriving my plants of space and nutrition. This weekend it will be a war on those weeds. Its not even that I have any particular grudge against these plants, they are all part of the natural habitat and, in their own way are quite attractive, its just that left unchecked the garden would be full of these and little else. 

Another regret is the way my herb collection has gone to seed and is past its best for harvesting. But I still have quite a lot of frozen herbs collected last year and if I cut the herbs back now they should all grow again next year and I’ll be able to collect them then. I bought Mace for the first time this year and didn't even get to save a little. It smelt wondefull, harvesting my first Mace will be something to look forward to next year.

The dainty little purple flower growing in the midst of chaos is…….actually I don’t know what it is. I think it was part of the mixed wild flower seeds I sprinkled there. As you can see.....the wind was getting up and the little flowers were waving wildly in the wind.

This yellow flower is another attractive but unknown addition to the garden. It has grown tall and flowered in the couple of weeks I’ve been away from the garden, and now I’m busy looking up pictures of yellow flowers and trying to identify it. 

This is something I am pleased with. I brought back a whole load of Mullen seeds from my last visit to my sister and this is where I sprinkled them. At this point I’m not sure if these new plants are self seeded Digitalis (foxglove) or, if some of the Mullen seeds have started to grow.  To my non-expert eye, Mullen and Foxglove look too similar to decide, but which ever it is, I’m happy with it.

Garden 2012 no 14 ( a little late)

I’ve just found a garden blog ( Garden 2012 no 14 ) that has never been posted, not on Multiply where it was intended, or on any of the other blogs I’ve started recently. This is one that was missed in the chaos that is/ was my surgery combined with the scramble to set up a new online base. This must have been one of the last things I wrote before we were told of Multiplies eminent demise.

Written on 31.07.2012

After my weekend away the first thing I did was to admire the garden. Every time I leave the house the first thing I do when I return is to check the pond. I’m not sure why I’ve developed this habit, or what I expect to see, but it’s always the first thing I do. 

This time I checked the pond and found far fewer tadpoles than I expected. Before I left for the weekend lots of them had legs, now I’m thinking a whole bunch of them grew more legs and felt brave enough to hop out of the pond and explore. Guess I won’t be seeing a lot of them until next year when they should return to spawn. 

Having stood over the pond, I then took a good look around the garden. Suddenly every thing is in bloom. My garden has been blooming for a while, but not like this. 

Despite the weather, summer is now officially in residence in my garden. In fact the rain seems to have encouraged every thing to grow more. 

There’s not a lot more to say really, I’ve been away for 4 days and I’ve lots to catch up with both indoors and out. But for now………..I just enjoy looking at my blooming garden. 

Oct 2011, Garden no 15

GARDEN 2011 N0 15
Rain stopped play today

Rain stopped play today. It was windy when I went out, that would have been OK, but then it poured with rain, so here I am back indoors with out finishing off in the garden.
I opened up the shed, took every thing out and then the rain came down, I was soaked putting every thing away and once wet………….I thought I may as well take a couple more photos.
This is my new garden bench, it’s my old fish tank stand covered with a slab of reclaimed marble. What a lucky coincidence, my son-in-law had this slab of marble sitting in his shed, he doesn’t even know where it originally came from, and it’s a perfect fit. It’s a totally recycled/ reclaimed piece of garden furniture, its too heavy for any one to take away, it doesn’t need to be put away at the end of the day and it's multifunctional. I can sit here, watch the world go by and take a break, or I can use it as a work bench. In the winter when I’m not likely to be out enjoying the view, it can be used to stand pots on to keep them off the ground. As a bonus………….its a dam good looking  garden feature.
This is my new corner garden. Maybe you remember I heaped all the turf that was removed to create the vegetable patch into an unused corner of the garden and covered it with garden membrane and plastic for a few months. It didn’t take long for the grass to die off and the soil to settle. I dug it over, removed what was left of the grass roots and planted it up with new lavender and  heather. I added all the old lavender that was scattered around the garden in pots or odd corners. In the past I've lost lavender over the winter because its feet become too wet in the pots. This is a well drained site and I’m hoping the lavender  thrives here.
The new flower bed along the side is more established now, it should really come into its own next year. I have honeysuckle, jasmine, hydrangea, and a couple of other purple/ pink shrubs that I can’t remember the names of right now.
And it’s too wet to go out to the garden and check.
I wanted to do three things today, I wanted to prune back all the fruit canes, remove the grass and unwanted weeds from the ‘wild flower’ bed and bring in my geraniums to take cuttings and re-pot for over wintering indoors. I still have a good show of colour with the geraniums but if I leave them much longer I risk losing the whole lot to frost. Rain stopped play and I achieved none of that. The geraniums are still out there. They must be my priority now, they need to come indoors urgently.
The water in the pond is looking good, its clear, I can see the bottom and the duck weed is doing a good job of covering the surface. I'm quietly confident, as they say, of being able to put tadpoles back in again next year.
Lastly…………..can any one identify this for me please? I planted it from a packet of mixed herb seeds; it’s a good looking delicate, woody stemmed, aromatic plant. It stands about 8 inches tall and I recognise the smell, I just can’t quite identify exactly what it is.

Tags: garden, garden2011, plants, pond

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delete reply mitchylr wrote on Oct 17, '11 Excellent piece of recycling!! And it loooks good too!! I really like that corner garden :-))

delete reply bernardv wrote on Oct 17, '11 It looks lovely. I'm afraid I'm dreadful at gardening.

delete reply brendainmad wrote on Oct 17, '11 Have you tried looking online at a gardening site that has photos and descriptions of herbs?

delete reply kathyinozarks wrote on Oct 17, '11 Loved the garden tour--and I love that bench as well-yeh-love reuse for special items

delete reply greenwytch wrote on Oct 17, '11 LOVE LOVE LOVE the bench! and free is always a good thing, so well done! your new garden is looking very lovely. heather and lavender.....perfect! the border is looking great, everything looks quite healthy and happy. hopefully you will be able to tend to those geraniums. i just love them, too. the pond is looking really good and i sure do hope the frogs will come back and thrive for you. i honestly have no idea what that mystery plant is....it almost looks like a basil to me, but the leaves are quite different. pretty blossom....i will be curious to know if someone can identify it for you. happy Monday!

Oct 16, 2011, Garden no 14

I’ve not posted a garden update since July, before I went to France. I didn’t realise it was so long and much has happened since then. I’ve had a period when I was unable to work in the garden due to the arthritis, which put a holt to the gardening for a while. But that wasn’t the only problem. For a start, I faced total disaster when I came back from France in July. Something awful had happened to my pond. I left it with plants, tadpoles and baby frogs, when I came back the pond was putrid and almost dead. There were some dead baby frogs in the pond and I guess the others had managed to jump out and get away. I’ve no idea what caused this, it looked like pollution, and all I could think was that someone had tipped something noxious in the pond while I was away. The smell coming off the water was unimaginable. I had no choice but to empty it out and refill it. I took as many plants out I could out and rinsed them off under the tap before replacing them, some had already died and were slimy and smelly. I managed to get hold of a handful of duckweed, which I know spreads rapidly and has a purifying effect on the water. After a couple of weeks I could see a visible improvement in the pond plants, the water was clear and there was no smell. On the down side, the pond had improved sufficiently to be full of mosquito larvae, and as I had no frogs left I had to buy a couple of goldfish to keep the larvae under control. I’ve not seen the goldfish since I put them in but the larvae is under control so I’m guessing they are still in there somewhere. I didn’t want goldfish, I’m back with the same old problem I had last year of trying to find them and get them out before the freezing temperatures hit and they freeze to death. Even if they are lucky enough to survive the winter in the pond, they will have to be removed in the spring before I put new frog spawn in and try (yet again) to establish a wild life pond. All that happened at the end of July, and today is my first full day in the garden for ages, there is  no sign of the goldfish, but no larvae either, the water is clear, the plants are thriving, the birds are coming down to drink and bath and the pond is looking good.
The garden was a bit overgrown, but I made a good start on it today and if I can get out tomorrow I think I can really get back on top of things.
One of the first things I did was to paint my new gate and touch up all the blue doors. If you remember my garden gate was blown off its hinges in the storms a few months ago. The old wooden gate was beyond repair but my son-in-law very kindly welded, drilled and generally fixed an old iron gate, that had been laying about the garden for years, onto the wall and now……….its perfect. No amount of wind will blow this one away.
I have cut the grass, re-cut the grass and re-cut the grass again, it was so overgrown it needed a lot of work.
I weeded my vegetable garden and even managed to salvage quite a few of the carrots.

My daughter has agreed to come back next week and enlarge the vegetable plot and today I managed to cut a small trench in the grass outlining the new boundary.
I also did some herb maintenance; I weeded and trimmed all the herbs growing in containers. I also harvested seeds to save ready for next year.
As soon as my fence was finished and painted earlier this year, I emptied a couple of packets of wild flower seeds around the inside of the fence, and this is the result.
Not bad considering the fence was only finished a couple of months ago. Some of these flowers don’t exactly look like ‘wild’ flowers, but they are pretty and colourful.

The biggest problem I have right now is finding space for all the compostable garden waste. I have mounds of grass cuttings, weeds, herb cuttings, turf dug out from the vegetable patch and used compost. Both of my compost bins are full to overflowing, one should actually be ready by the spring but the other one I’ve only just finished filling so it will longer. I refuse to throw this organic matter away and so for now it is piled into unused containers and covered, guess I’ll decide how to use it next year by which time it should have composted down a bit.
If the weather stays this nice tomorrow, and if I’m still feeling ok, I’m going to try to prune the fruit canes and generally finish of out there ready for the winter.

Tags: garden, garden2011, plants, pond

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delete reply mitchylr wrote on Oct 17, '11 Sorry about the pond disaster, but glad to hear it's doing well again now. The rst of it is looking pretty good now you've had a bit of time on it. I like those wildflowers.

edit delete reply forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 17, '11 brendainmad said I was thinking just the other day that you hadn't posted a garden update for a while. So sorry to hear about your pond. oh its looking good now, it's half nine here and I'm just going to grab a coffee and then get out there again, will take more photos this time...........loving being back outside again .

delete reply brendainmad wrote on Oct 17, '11 I was thinking just the other day that you hadn't posted a garden update for a while. So sorry to hear about your pond.

edit delete reply forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 17, '11 djdx said I took cuttings of anthemis and potted up some geraniums exactly what I am going to do this morning................bring my geraniums in and sort them out for the winter

delete reply djdx wrote on Oct 17, '11 Yesterday I was taking care of a couple of things that would suffer when frost hits as it has been getting a bit nippy in the mornings. I took cuttings of anthemis and potted up some geraniums and a plant I bought which I found out later is not truly hardy (a South African aster called felicia). So the greenhouse is rather full. I like your blue paint.

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delete reply poshpause wrote on Oct 17, '11 Goodness me! We could do with your gardening know-how in our garden. We're just beginners to the whole idea of gardening and it's rather a hit and miss affair with us! What a shame about your pond. Seems very odd for it to have just upped and died like that. It must have been an awful job to have sorted it out!

delete reply artprevails wrote on Oct 17, '11 I am wild about the blue fencing...it really sets off the lovely colors of your gardens and potted plants. I hope the pond works out.

delete reply greenwytch wrote on Oct 16, '11 The Force was with you. ; )

delete reply nemo4sun wrote on Oct 16, '11 that is good news :)

edit delete reply forgetmenot525 wrote on Oct 16, '11 thank you .............:-), its been good to get out there again after so long. I've had my daughter ill, I've not been up to gardening myself and the weather wasn't always good enough to get out. BUT... today it all came together, the weather was great, daughter(s) all ok and my achy joints not too bad. Had a really great day today.

delete reply nemo4sun wrote on Oct 16, '11 bummer about the pond but everything else looks real good i love the blue fence :)

delete reply greenwytch wrote on Oct 16, '11 Loretta, i am so very sorry about your pond and the froggies! : * ( the new gate is just beautiful. Kudos to SIL for a job well done. your 'wild'flower garden looks really pretty. glad you were able to harvest plenty of carrots. try to do some gentle stretches throughout the rest of your evening. the new garden is really coming together, i love it! thanks for the update. ; )