Project Greenhouse

🐀"There's a rat in me greenhouse what am I gonna do?" 🐀

After repeated incursions, burrowing into one corner of the greenhouse, the filming of the ratty culprit, and its wily avoidance of any traps, we decided to deal with the issue by paving over the greenhouse - which would also make weeding a lot easier in future!
 

Martin started the work by levelling and compacting the ground. 

Paving slabs were duly ordered, and craned onto the drive - and Martin hauled them over to the greenhouse and started laying them in place.

A few hours later, and it's job done - leaving us with a lovely echoey space to fill with pots, etc.

Will post more when it is planted out with this year's tomato plants.

Hopefully that's fixed Mr 🐀 and we'll get a good crop of 🍅🍅🍅 in due course! 

Project Fruit Cage - Stage One

Back in 2009 we laid out the fruit cage, and planted it up with raspberry canes (among other things) - we had a few years of good crops, but the canes have got much weaker with time, and have become increasingly unproductive.

It doesn't help either that over the years the ground has become ever more weed-ridden (despite an annual weeding exercise) - to the point where we now had more violets than strawberries!

So it was time to dig it all out properly (starting the side where the old canes were situated) - and today we planted it up with 15 new Glen Ample canes, which should hopefully take good hold for harvesting next year.

Stage Two will involve a full weeding out of the other side of the cage (still in progress), feeding the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, and probably replanting throughout with strawberries.  Watch this space . . .

Project Meadow

The next 'project' we've been working on is revitalising the 'meadow' in  the front lawn.

Back in 2021, we scarified one side of the lawn, seeded it, and sat back in hope . . .  but I can't say it was much of a success.  We did get a few flowers, but mostly it turned to tufty thick grass.

So here is our second attempt - a lighter scarify (so as not to pull up the stuff that had 'taken'), more seeds, more earth to hold the seeds, and some more transplanting here and there. 

If it works, expect to see more pictures of a sea of flowers . . .

Project Bench

April has seen us looking at various jobs around the garden, and this is the first (hopefully of many) 'retirement projects' to get finished 😀

Back in 2010 we invested in a hardwood garden bench, which has done sterling service ever since, providing seating every summer in the suntrap out the back of the house.

Of late it has however been looking a little the worse for wear - while the 'greying' of the wood is attractive enough, it has gotten very patchy (especially where the wasps help themselves every year), with lots of splits and splinters.

In order to get another 10+ years out of it, we decided we'd better do some refurbishment - starting with a thorough sanding - which took it back to something close to how it looked when it first arrived with us.

It wasn't the easiest of jobs, but between the belt sander, Dremmel, and multi-tool sanding attachments, we got there in the end.

It was tempting to leave it as it was, but we decided that an oil treatment might help its long term survival.  So here we are, after a couple of good coats of teak oil.

Fingers crossed for many more happy years sitting on the bench in the sunshine!

Magnificent Magnolia

Home again after our celebratory weekend to a little bit of sunshine - letting us out into the garden, where the grass got cut, and some general garden tidying commenced.

The garden was looking lovely with daffodils and primroses in full bloom - and the magnolia at its very best!

Diamond Celebrations

This weekend saw a very special family celebration . . .

Doesn't seem that long since the Golden Wedding . . .

We had a lovely weekend with family, cake, cards (including one from the King!), flowers and lots of food! 

And great memories were made and revisited.

Happy Diamond 

Wedding

Mum and Dad!