Finally some proper produce

We have not had bumper harvests this year. The potatos were nice, the plums lovely but I forgot to photograph them. Here is a recent bean and courgette selection. I think that Tamsin needs tostart some food posts in here - we had the beans last night using a Jamie Oliver recipe with anchovies as the secret ingredient. Yum.

I have had enough of yew

Worked very, very hard today. We have been charging around preparing to move to New Zealand and the garden has taken a little bit of a back seat. Today the weather was good, I was up early and I slogged from 9 am to 4:40 pm. A proper days work that ended up with seven large bags of choppings, clippings and prunings going to the garden waste bin at the local dump. Three (THREE) bags of this were shreddings from the shredder. We had to do this or they would not have fitted in the car.

Yesterday was mild by comparison; a toddle up the ladder and a prune back of the twisty trailing climbing fronds on the wisteria. Below is the result. I am quite happy with it but in reality I think it needs more wire to hang on to. I don't think we'll get that done before we go!

From The Surprised Gardeners

Looking through the gates you can see one of today's targets - the overgrown hedges.


First thing this morning was the front hedges, which we have not done for almost a year. Same job, but I am getting better and faster at it so it was all over in an hour or so.





I bagged up all the clippings with the 'help' of Harriet, which mostly involved racing up and down the pavement with brooms, me covertly sweeping when she wasn't looking. She is a trier though and I fear has my perfectionist tendencies since she would not be denied picking up the last pieces of tiny yew to put in the bag...



By now, Tamsin was working hard in the garden and I appeared bearing my hedge trimmer and attacked the four yew hedges, prickly rose (Alberic barbier) and the jasmine in the first level of the garden. I have now got four little branches growing in the corners waiting to be carved in to artistic shapes. I think we'll start with balls but it will be a long process.





Then on to the yew tree and the Ceanothus. This created loads and loads of debris that took a long time to deal with.



There was an interesting view from up on the wall and I took this picture of typical garden status on an average day. You can see the finished extension in the background.



By this time it as 4pm so off to the dump with E. in tow, discussing options for her birthday in a couple of weeks. Typing this at 5pm I am pretty bushed (ha ha). I have seen enough yew for another year, but I am very happy with the results. All I need to do now is mow the lawn with the flymo to suck up all the remaining debris.

THe Hedges again

(Writing retrospectively)
With all the focus on New Zealand and getting to the end of term, some serious hedge cutting needed doing. We could barely see the climbing frame from the rest of the garden and the neighbours were starting to get to the point where they wouldn't get much morning sunlight. I tackled the job with some relish. The quiet shredder is a real bonus but it was only after this job that I realised that it is better to snip and shred than do one massive swathing slice with the hedge trimmer and pick it all up afterwards. I also think that next time I will lay out a tarpaulin to catch all the trimmings since it is a pain to pick them up from the bark.

This photo is a few days later and it all looks very neat. This is taken with the new camera I have bought for the NZ trip. Canon EOS 500D - I am going to learn how to use a SLR for once.

This last picture was taken a few weeks later (13th August). It still looks pretty good but odd little bits are sneaking out of the rigid formation! Got to dig out one of those rhubarb or they will take over. NOT a job I am looking forward to. I may well just drill it and put in root out if I lose the will to live...

Extension Progress & more pot planting

The extension has windows we can look through in the bedroom and I managed to snap one before it got boarded up.


The triangular window is still missing. The joiner made it wrong once and is delaying the replacement. Our builder was incandescent on Friday about it when he went there after being fobbed off for a week and found it not in progress.


Also the bathtub is back in action - this time as herb garden after the old one was torn up for the extension (one of the duller photos in the World this one, but hey...) This includes Abigail's latest plant purchase and potting effort ;)

The Girls in action + a tap!

We are Victorian parents and the kids have little they can spend their pocket money on after banning tat (though even they have worked out that spending money on a bouncy ball that gets lost in 5 minutes is probably a bad idea) and sweets. Then last week they hit on the idea of buying flowers. This was not to be discouraged (brain washing starts here). They got in to it! Abigail planting pansies all over the garden then photographing them.





Actually I took this one. I love these tulips (parrot tulips?). Just one bulb migrated here from mum's garden with some daffodils and we now have about 8. They go really well with the blue thingy (forget-me-nots?)


Of course the really important thing was the completion of the new garden tap. This powers the cat scarer that power squirts half the garden on detection of a cat (or child!). I don't have a photo of that to hand but will add one later.

Pruning, washing, moving earth...

A nice sharp, bright day today. I intended to keep filling up the middle raised bed by digging earth from the back of the garden, but also chopping 5cm from all the lawn edges. MBH worked at pruning the beds either side of the steps. I did OK, but was distracted by keeping the children clear of MBH, minor jobs and remembering to squeeze the gates so that you couldn't see straight through them! I was still glum all day after putting my foot through the ceiling of the kitchen when doing the plumbing for the extension...

This is just annoying really, since we need to get plasterers in anyway, but still. What a muppet.

The beds before and after:





And the jasmine, which is just about giving over at the moment:

You can see the garlic coming up in the background, and the frame I put in today - this had sunflowers growing up it last year.


A shame we don't have htm-smell, because this is really fragrant at the moment.


I also put the kids to work - and they did a great job!

The Extension preparation

After probably two years of humming, harring, planning and preparing, we finally expect the builders at 8:00 tomorrow morning, with a JCB. We had to prepare the ground for them, saving and destroying various plants.


E. photographed me struggling with the frame with H. "helping".


Then we yanked out the pyracantha (nowhere for this one to go, so it gets the chop) and various herbs, that are now distributed around the garden.



Then I noticed the cable supplying the garden shed and thought that was best dug out rather than chopped by a JCB. And here we are, ready for the off.