A well earned rest, kind of??

Having dug, smashed, scraped, humped and dumped in our garden. We took a break and flew off to Lemnos, one if the Greek islands for a week of sun, sea and splashing about. 

Lemnos beach.

It wasn't so much of a relaxing break, I don't think that is possible with a 2yr old in tow. While Holly and Lottie loved the swimming pool everything went pear shaped when we got to the beach. Lottie went mental!! She screamed at the sand and bawled at the sea which really surprised me as she loves the beach in Wales. So we abandoned the beach and stayed by the pool. 

Lottie, much happier at the pool, the splash behind her is Holly disappearing.

While the babes were in kids club Bjorn and I escaped and saw a bit of the island, which was beautiful. I was glad to see that there were many plants in this mederteranian climate that would grow in Britain as I'm planning a Greek garden for my friend. So I had lots of inspiration from the frothy pink tamarix trees to the fragrant pittosporum tobira. 

Tamarix tree

Nerium Oleander, very beautiful, but highly toxic

On our return I was, I mean the girls were excited to see that some of the tadpoles were getting their land legs I'm not sure how their going to fair once they want to leave the pond as it is in a desert of soil. 

Its a different frog from before, honestly!

So back to the grind. Six bulk bags of hardcore and two bulk bags of pea shingle were delivered taking up half of the driveway.  Bjorn and I managed to get 3 bags laid in one night then it to me two days to do two bags!!! Well my arms are beginning to look toned again and my shorts a little looser around the waist so I can't complain. 

there are 6 bags behind these ones too!

Bjorn then proceeded to dig out the two drainage channels/trenches at the edge of the patio. I did at one point ask Bjorn if he needed a canary, the trench was getting so deep. These trenches are going to be filled with the pea shingle to help any rainwater draining off the patio into the ground rather than sitting in the borders/ lawn and making a soggy mess. 
To Bjorns relief he had to go to Ireland for work the next day but by 9am I had a sheepish phone call asking when I was meeting him for lunch, I immediately knew that he'd forgotten his passport and this was a flimsy excuse for me to take it to him. 

I don't think I'd go back to my office if I worked here.

masterplan for Stockely Park

I didn't mind as I got a free lunch and got to see the great landscaping at Stockley Park again.   Designed by Roger  Griffith landscape architects in the mid 80s it was the UKs premier business park. The site combines great buildings with some beautifully landscaped walks, lakes, eating areas and places to relax in. 

Now its not really gardening but Greenham Common seems to be saving my running training, I've actually got up to 1 hour running! (only about another hour and a half to conquer) I used to hate running and now I look forward to my runs up on the common.  I've seen orchids, ponies and now tiny butterflies. (Any excuse to stop and take a photo).

Small Blue butterfly, love chalkland

I did contemplate seeing if I could ride one home!

Back at the allotment my weeding had got under control and though its not really up, running and productive. I have got some veg at last.  My onion stalks have all collapsed but the onions are still getting big and tasty. The salad has done remarkably well considering it was hidden in a massive patch of weeds. I was too late getting to my red currants which I'm sure the birds enjoyed.  I'll have to net them next year. 

my first onion! and some salad

The Small Blue wasn't the only butterfly I spotted this week.  We went to Holly's new school fete and both girls had their faces butterflied. Not sure what species these were? 

off to the Butterfly Ball

To stand in the path of progress!

Having finished off filling one skip and starting another Bjorn took pity on me and finished off filling the second skip in half the time it took me to fill a quarter if the skip. 

I got through half of this in a day, Bjorn did the second half in about 2 hrs.

So I went back to the drawing board, quite literally, and did a sketch of the proposed garden. For my birthday Bjorn and the girls had got me an drawing app and pen for the iPad so that I could get back into sketching my ideas.  At first it was a little strange getting the hang of all the brush strokes and pen sizes but I think I've got the hang of it now.  Bjorn tells me that it is the same app that David Hockney uses but I think I have quite a way to go to ever match him!

view of garden from side of house

Having visualised the garden afresh I got down to the cutting and hammering of stakes.  No we're not having a sudden plague of vampires, though the garden does look like Buffy's been on a the rampage.  Having dug out the foundations for the terraces and paths we needed to figure out the finished floor levels and ground levels to know how much soil to move around the garden. It would be no good having finished the terraces to then discover that the lawn was too high or too low. So we now have loads if little wooden stakes poking out of the ground right across the garden.   There is still quite a lot is soil to be moved but that will have to wait until we have built the raised border. 

Buffy had been very busy

I'd love to make this out of Coe-ten steel but my budget goes nowhere near that kind of cost. So soft wood sleepers it is. We have to have a raised border on one side as our road is on a slope and my neighbours garden is higher than ours. I dont particularly like sloping borders unles they ate part of a large landscape so raised border it is. We have two problems here. Firstly it is against my neighbours fence and to get a decent height we have to go higher than the bottom of her fence so that means creating a raised box (more wood = more cost). Secondly the bumble bee nest is slap bang in the middle!! So on some quiet evening  we have to pluck up the courage and carefully move it.  This I am not looking forward to. 

very gorgeous example of a cor-ten retaining wall

I am looking forward to ordering 15 bulk bags of MOT type 1. (For those not in the know, thats crushed limestone sub base.  If you lay paving stone on just sand and soil it will soon move and you get a wonky trip fest of a surface that is just asking for a compensation claim).  Once that is down the garden will really begin to take shape. 

Being a be prepared kinda gal, (don't laugh those who know me, I really am these days) and looking at my stony soil I realise that it is never going to do to lay turf on that. So out comes the soil sieve and I begin the twist and shake all over again. After six barrow loads of pebbles (thrown onto the terrace) I admit defeat and tell Bjorn that we need to order a couple if tonnes if premier quality top soil for the lawn.  Laying turf on stony soil is not going to achieve a flat surface and laying turf is all in the preparation. 

my fourth barrow load!!!

Having neglected my allotment and my running for a couple of weeks I dive into both head first.  The allotment had turned into a jungle of knee high weeds. So to the delight of a brazen blackbird couple I furiously pulled and dug till I was red faced and they were full if worms and bugs.  Not only did I discover a couple if young black currants that I had planted but also two whole rows of lettuce and spinach that I had given up on ever sprouting.   It's a good job that I did get to the allotment as there is a visit from the councillors next week and I really don't want a letter berating me on the state of my plot. 

mothers little helper

Now a while back in a moment of madness, having sworn after Paris 2008 that I would never do it again,    I signed up to do the Cardiff half marathon in October.  I've been slowly, very slowly, getting used to running again and had got up to doing 5km without walking or collapsing in a tearful heap. I hadn't run for a week and a half for various rubbish excuses "I'm tired, I have to wait in for the skip delivery, I've just eaten". So I finally went out again and had a terrible run across greenham common. I managed 15 minutes before expletives flew out of my mouth and my legs stopped.  Feeling very grumpy I looked around and I saw a magnificent sight, a common spotted orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii. It is quite common (though I've never seen one before) and it is definitely spotted.  It gets its name from the spotty leaves, green with big purple spots and has a spire of pink/white flowers.   That perked me up no end and I shuffled of back to finish my run. 

a great excuse to stop running!

The Bjorn Ultimatum

If only I had photoshop, that would read the Bjorn Ultimatum

Nothing like a bit if pressure to spur you on.  With Bjorn having hired the digger and jack hammer for Friday. He gave me the ultimatum of all the plants that I want to keep being moved to the front garden by Friday or they get squashed. 

the before picture

So I had a frantic week digging, potting, planting in the front, planting at the allotment, phoning around "does anyone want raspberries, strawberries, flowering currants...." And finally with the exception of a few strawberries the garden was clear.  

making space in the front garden for the plants from the back

It's a good job that I don't want the lawn in the front garden!

I then proceeded to clear out my hot compost bin and the two compost bins left by the previous owner. One of them had beautiful black compost the other, a plastic bin, was dried up and useless. I lifted the lid and gave it a shake to get all the rubbish out and as it tumbled to the ground a swarm of bees erupted from the debris. Well, I didn't wait to find out and could have passed Usain Bolt in the hundred metres. Once I'd laughed myself silly, safely back in the house with the door closed, I again ventured out to see what exactly was going on. There was still a flurry of activity at what I could now see was a bumble bee nest. Fear and fascination was holding me in this strange rocking dance as I tried to get a closer look then remembered they were rather pissed off. 

the dried up compost bin with the bees nest

Back on dear old google and I found a Newbury number to call.   The nice man informed me that a queen had probably gone in a few months ago and laid her eggs and started a colony of workers tending to the baby queens.  The young queens should emerge in a few months to find new places to hibernate over the winter and then the nest will be dead by October.   

Look carefully and you can see the bees nest just to the left of the white roots

Bombus hypnorum, I think, but I didn't want to get too close!

As the nest had been exposed to the elements I placed the bin lid over the nest and left it alone. So long as nobody pokes it or breathes on them (apparently that sends them nuts, they must think we all have dog breath or something) they should just go about their business of pollinating the flowers.  I then felt the need to identify my new neighbours and I think that they are Tree Bumble Bees as they had white tails and an orange thorax.  But I didn't want to get too close to see.

Moving the plants seems to have disturbed and brought out all the wildlife in the garden.  A frog jumped out of the good compost, I popped it in the pond and gave the tadpoles the fright of their lives; a smooth newt was hiding in the front garden next to the wall, popped that one in a pile of old bricks at the back of the greenhouse where I'd found one previously. 

my photos are getting very vague!  the compost hoping frog

this one's clearer! a smooth newt, it has a bright orange tummy
but I couldn't get it to roll over for the photo.

Then it was Friday. The digger arrived. Bjorn lost no time in getting stuck in. The back garden was soon flattened, along with the shed (and a few down pipes).  Thinking about how long it took us to level our old garden and dig out the trenches for the patio, which was weeks. This took a matter if days.  Lottie was convinced daddy was on a tractor, while Holly kept telling me that daddy had lifted the shed with just one finger.  I'm not sure that one was true but he sure is a superhero to me as I'm sure if I was in the digger I'd have knocked half the house down and burst a water pipe!

Bjorn the builder

By the end of Sunday evening there was still a lot of soil to move into the skip but the hard work of digging has been done. After that we will be on to stage two; dumping tonnes of MOT (crushed limestone) into the base of the patios and paths to stop any movement, putting in the retailing walls and steel edging.  

But first I'd better get my wellies back on and fill that skip. 

Back in the swing of things

Since breaking radio silence last week I seem to have been constantly in my garden, allotment or someone else's garden. 

My greenhouse is simply bursting with small shoots of hope and bigger seedlings ready to transfer to the allotment or larger pots. 

When I first got my allotment I resolved to dig it all by hand and not to spray and rotavate. But the path to hell is paved with good intentions and my resolve weakened in the face of half an allotment still undug.  (if couch grass was edible I would eat like a king.)

I saw a notice from a kind fellow allotmenteer offering to lead his rotavator, I buckled. But even more foolishly I didn't spray.  But like baldrick I had a cunning plan. 

The area that we rotorvated I cleared of big lumpy weeds and grass and then covered in weed suppressant. Next I  cut holes in the covering and planted my strawberry popcorn (in rectangles of 3x6 to aid pollination), sweet dumpling squash and Halloween pumpkins. These will benefit from the warmth the surpressant creates while the rest of the ground can sit dormant for a year or so. I'm hoping that the few slots of light in the surpressant won't activate too many weeds.  If this cunning plan doesn't work then I'll have to accept defeat and spray this area next Spring.

We didnt get all of it done so I'm now about 3/4 of the way through the allotment I've covered the rest in surpressant and will hand dig as an when.

strawberry popcorn and sweet dumpling squashes planted through the weed suppressent

My greatest joy at the allotment is the tiny purple sprouts bursting into frothy fronds of asparagus!  I've been waiting and waiting bursting with anticipation and also fear that they wouldn't arrive. I had just about given up hope until  the first one popped out like a tiny garden eel (I must confess to doing a little dance there and then at the allotment). I now have 9out of the 10 that I planted poking their little heads out if the ground.  And I hope I can keep them alive and beetle free til next year. 

garden eel

purple asparagus

My dear friend Sally, who I worked with over 15 years ago, moved to the US then found her way back to of all places Newbury, has just moved into a new house.  Her naked garden was soon calling me. So we planned a hot vibrant design with lots of plants for wildlife. 

The builders had done their usual trick of dumping all of the crappy earth (you could throw pots with the stuff) in the garden so Sally spent a hot bank holiday digging out the clay ready for the fancy designer (me) to come round when all the hard work had been done to plant. 

there were actually double the amount of bags going off to make clay pots!

I had even convinced her to paint her fence dark grey.  A bit of a scary colour at first thought but it really sets of the colours of the plants.  

Despite the threat of rain it was a lovely day spent planting and nattering. We got a little twisted while putting up the wire for the climbers but we managed to get the trachylospermum jasminoides tied in (using strips of old grey tights, gentler on the plants and cheap!) without to much bother before both of us had to dash off to pick up kids, take kids to swimming, gymnastics.

now we sit back and watch them grow

This flurry of activity seems to have spurred Bjorn and me on to get going with our garden.  While I had a glorious weekend with the girls in Wales at the beach with Ra Ra, Bjorn filled a whole 8 yard skip with concrete from the patio and garden. 

my weekend

I am now in the process of moving all my plants from the back garden to the front before the arrival of the mini digger!  I'm just hoping that Bjorn will let me have a go!

Bjorns weekend

Reluctant Writers and Hard Winters

You know when someone sends you an email, leaves a phone message or text and you don't reply immediately. A few days go by, a week, a month!  Before you know it you want to reply but it's been so long you don't know what to say!!

That's how I feel with this blog.

The reasons for not writing are numerous. Builders, sleepless babies,

It's not that I've not been doing anything, there's been so much I don't know quite where to start.

So I'll make this post a quick run down of the past 8 months (I've even had to look back on my last post to see where I left off).
So I was last seen pruning my red currants in the garden.  I chucked loads of compost from my hot composter around their bases in the spring and they are now covered in little green flowers.

There are so many red currants on the bushes that the branches are bowing.

Due to the dates of my kitchen build being changed, Grrrrr, I missed my course on winter pruning fruit trees. But I couldn't wait another year to go back so I read some of my copious gardening books, scoured the Internet, sharpened my tools and took a deep breath. By the time I had finished most of my apple trees were on the floor. My dear supportive husband came home took one look and said. "You've killed them".

Hard pruned Brambly apple tree to get it back to looking slightly like an espaliered tree.
 It was already tilting!

there was great relief when the apple tree began to bloom!

It was a long cold wintery wait til finally small green buds began bursting out all over the now much smaller trees.  (And yes I couldn't  help feeling smug when I pointed this out to Bjorn).

While he was convinced of my killing ability, Bjorn did put up my greenhouse on one of the coldest days of the year. So now that too is bursting with little green shoots in trays.  Some waiting for a place in my garden others of on a short journey to my allotment.

I haven't talked about my allotment for a while. (I haven't talked about anything for a long while, I hear you say).  I managed to plant onions, garlic and purple asparagus in the autumn.  But as you all know the winter has been, well how can I put it politely... Lets say I wouldn'teven put it in my composter.   Freezing, wet, and windy.   So there was not much action going on over at Wash Common.

Until finally there was a break in the weather, luckily my plot had not been under water for the cold season so I got to transplant one of my red currants and my summer raspberries. I also planted autumn raspberries, white and black currants.

This is turning into a list so I shall digress. The pond at the back of my allotment has a leak in the liner and has been dry all winter, even with all the rain. The problem is, no one told the frogs!  They laid masses of spawn in there, destined to dry up and stink.  So I commenced operation tadpole!

one dried up leaking pond, watch this space for how I'm going to restore it.

We have an old butler sink in the garden that I had ear marked for a dipping pond ages ago but never got around to it.   I'd been uming and ahing as to how to seal up the plug hole so I finally went and asked the experts at the pond shop. The simple solution was to get a piece of butile and some goldseal glue and glue the butile over the plug hole. Then I covered the bottom with pea gravel and with some old broken bricks creating steps up one side of the basin. Voila! A small and simple pond. Zooming back to the allotment I scooped up some frogspawn from the middle of the blob (so that it wasn't crispy and dry) and plopped it into the new pond with some oxygenating pond plants. And waited. And waited. And waited through two snow storms and multiple frosts where i was breaking the ice off the top. In fact i waited so long that I thought that it was dead and was starting to make up stories in my head as to how to explain the lack of tadpoles to Holly and Lottie. The one day the eggy goo had disappears and there were these tiny little tadpoles!  I don't know who was more excited me or the girls!

 

Holly calls them "Tampoles"
Lottie thinks we have Turtles in the garden.

 
Any way now they are massive and there are loads of them!  My slugs are not going to know what hit them!

fever, Olympic and pruning

smoking hot! Monarda Gardenview Scarlet

If you want to stay fresh go back to school.  Others called continuous professional development, I call it dusting of the cobwebs and re-energising.   I've just spent a most glorious morning at Wisley Gardens on the Summer pruning of fruit bushes and trees course.  Though the day didn't start too well. 

I dropped the girls off at nursery and drove away with a skip in my step. Half way to Basingstoke I realised that I had left my purse in Holly's bag!  It had my ticket and RHS membership card in it so I couldn't even get into the gardens without it. So I high tailed it back to nursery, snuck in so that neither of the girls saw me and zoomed off again. Luckily I'd given myself 2 hours to get there and nipped into a parks space just in time to join the group by the gooseberries. 

Cordoned red currants, something to aspire to!

It was the hottest day in July and I had no hat, but really didn't care.   Now my garden is still a mess, I know and accept that, but these gardens fill me with awe and put me to shame, they are beautiful.  

The gardener who was leading the course was lovely, Becky Bevan, she made it all sound so simple (and it mostly is, with some complicated bits just to confuse). We started at gooseberries and red currants (these are pruned in the same way) then on to black currants followed by hybrids such as Logan berries.  We moved on to trained apples and pears, a particular interest to me since I have 3 overgrown espalier apples trees in my garden.   We finished with trained  stone fruit trees; cherries, apricots, plums. These are the most complicated to prune, but still Becky explained it with clarity and patience. 

stepped apple trees, great for small places

At the end I wanted to zoom back to start pruning my red currants, but was waylaid by the stunning riot of colour in the long herbaceous borders. I was so glad that I had my note book with me and was frantically scribbling down planting combinations while wishing my garden was SO much bigger that I could fit it all in.

Giant Echinops, (the blue globes) towering over the other plants

Phlox Blue Paradise, beautiful plants and great fragrance

Agapanthus Midnight Blue, such a rich clour

Hunger finally dragged me home and after a quick bit to eat I sharpened my secuaters and dived in to the currants.  A couple if hours later I'd cut out about half of the branches of the bushes and it looked so my lighter! 

wild red currant bushes

after pruning, so much lighter!

While pruning I'd also found some branches that had naturally layered themselves. This is when low branched get covered with soil and send out roots creating a new plant.

I dug these up with a few rogue raspberry canes and took them over to Holly and Lottie's nursery for their little garden.   holly was delighted that mommy was at nursery for the afternoon, especially as she was practicing for sports day. 

do they do the obstacle course in the olympics 

I am very proud to end this blog with a non gardening note. On the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony Holly won the obstacle race at nursery.