Planting

A short update today. I have planted out some of my seeds: dobby's beetroot, giant improved flack (?) carrot, asparagus lettuce and clarke's beltony blue pea. These are all heritage seed varieties, which means they are no longer on the commercial seed register so the seeds have to be obtained by swapping or membership to the heritage seed library. I am very hopeful about all these lovely rare varieties of veg andfingres crossed I get at least one decent plant from each... but only time will tell.

I have also put a little path in around the pond to the compost bin and scattered some woodland wild flowers to attract bees and butterflies. Shady areas are so difficult to use for growing anything edible that they may as well be used for wildlife, and it is near the pond so it has definitely become the nature area.

When things have started to happen I will post up some photos, but today there will just be text.

trees and tadpoles: I am woman, hear me saw!

Yesterday was also the day of finally getting rid of the horrible overhanging conifer at the bottom of the garden, so the nature area can get some sunlight.
G has done a landscaping course and knows how to cut trees so she came round with her lovely bow saw and we got to work, with the lovely old neighbour's permission. I think he wanted us to chop the lot down but we would need safety gear for that which we didn't have. He did lend us a rope though, for one particularly tricky branch.

G hacking away!
I did get up on the garage roof too, but sadly no more photos were taken during the branch removal. 

...after the chop. 

We considered setting fire to this lovely pile but there is a slight risk of taking the out the fences, so a better option is to utilise the councils garden waste removal scheme and bag it up for collection, keeping the biggest bits of branch for a bonfire.

I am woman, hear me saw!!

trees and tadpoles: tadpoles

Yesterday, with the help of Kris and Wai we conducted a stealth mission to liberate some tadpoles from the science dept...

Admittedly a few of them were dead but its food for the others (I think). The living ones survived the cycle home, give them a bit of excitement in their young lives.

I let them acclimatise in the jar before releasing the into their new home.

 

Good Luck tadpoles - hope to see you again as frogs!

The garden

The weather has been amazing this past week so we have been hard at work in the garden, and it is now almost unrecognisable!

 this is what it looked like when I moved in.

The two laylandii on the left are now gone - Georgie chopped the trees down and Neil and I dug up the roots. I have extended the flower bed I am using old wine bottles to boarder the bed as most of the original wooden edging was rotten.

This currently looks like this

After raiding some recycling boxes last night we now have enough bottles to finish the bed. I saw this in a front garden nearby and thought it looked really cool so fingers crossed mine will too!

We pulled down the smaller of the two sheds last week (why anyone would need two is beyond me) we are now turning that space into a little nature area, which includes a pond! Much fun was had digging away but the actual creation of the pond was a little bit trial and error...

Neil and the hole. the pond (before)

 using some plastic sheeting we found as pond liner, note the hole...

 holding it down with gravel... cat fish

 looking good...

Unfortunately, this was as good as it looked. By Saturday morning there was merely a puddle left in the bottom ...

a swift visit to the garden centre to buy some real pond lining and now the pond looks like this

and I am happy to say that the water has stayed in there now for 3 days. Its a bit murky at the moment but that should settle. I bought some plants for my pond too..

fringed water-lilly , water mint, water forget-me-not, water avens, all English plants to attract lots of bees and butterflys.

You may be wondering what I did with all the soil we dug up, well in a corner of the garden there was a pile of old roof tiles that the previous owner forgot to skip - and as I'm very bad at throwing things away myself I thought I would recycle these tiles into a lovely raised bed.

I also used a couple of bits of the horrible york stone we ripped out of the front room when I moved in. This bed has now become the herb patch and is looking very pretty.

Back row: Sage, Rosemary, Clary Sage, Borage

Middle row: Bronze Fennel, 2 Florence Fennel, Curry Plant

Front row: County Cream Oregano, French Tarragon, Thyme (can't remember what variety) and Roman Camomile.

Rubbish to lush

So this is a place where i can put my projects... recycling rubbish I've hoarded into something useful, or decorative - but always lush!