WHAT JOBS ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY 2018

i thought you was joking when you said you was getting them no wonder there telling you to stop Many thanks but im with them, get sat down you silly billy

Its snowing here

 

All About Butterfly-Friendly Milkweed Plants

I don't think we have them in uk but not tote sure

 

Alkanet and foxgloves are even more similar, I always hope they are growing by the road but it's just the weed!

 

@luciusmaximus Plant World Seeds: Buy Flower Seeds and Vegetable Seeds Online in Devon UK sell them - I've always been tempted by them too-but we are so high up and seldom get the length of warm sunny days so I think they would be better for a garden in a warmer UK location to try - PW seeds are a great company so naturally if in doubt anyone can easily phone them for advice - I still might ring and ask for advice on my areas suitability- would be a real plus if only for one sunny Summer growing

 

Just finished spraying the wet and forget. Bitterly cold out!

Also been repairing my great grandad's memorial stand for his stone vase. Scrubbed it and sprayed wet and forget on it. Made a new foot for one of the corners so it wont be wonky any more (my grandma said it had been wonky since the 50's at least so I thought I'd do something about it!).

I've also bought a memorial marble engraved with his details as there wasn't anything with his name on. This will lay flat in the surface and I'm planning to put a few mini daffs in and around it so they come up each year. He had a tough life and served in the Tank Corps in WW1. He was gassed and later developed what we think these days was MS. He died aged just 40.

I thought making his grave a little nicer was the least I could do for him.


RIP Great Grandad Brand

 

I've got the worst one, tidying the shed and the garage.

Any job I do these days means that I can leave both in a mess when I've finished doing something and go back the following day to tidy up.
Round the house, I'm a very tidy person. "My job" is to load and empty the dish washer and clean the kitchen after my wife has prepared and cooked any meal. It take twice as long as does hers.

 

Sowed a few more seed and potted up some ranunculus tubers , try and fit what I want in the propagators now. Brought some pelargoniums into the house from the GH see if they start growing, think I've lost them though. I don't know why I didn't bring them inside before winter

Its been raining most of the day and still got laying snow on the lawn, to wet to do anything outside.

That a lot of top soil wiseowl, do you not think you got to much ? on the subject I could do with some top soil myself

 

I put this up yesterday, but had to go back and seal the edges of the plywood with silicone today when for five minutes it wasn't raining. The biggest part of the "project" was to find a bit of plywood, some scraps of roofing felt and a few short felt nails. My vintage hand-tacking gun had decided to stop working. It only took minutes to make.

I was tired of the wood pigeons monopolising this bird feeder. I don't want to encourage wood pigeons because the make a hell of a mess. They sit on the tray for minutes if you've not noticed them and my wife was forever throwing magazines at the French windows to scare them off. I put it up for the small birds. The small birds have another feeder in a patio pot under a rose, that the pigeons are too big to access, but that gets used first by the blackbirds.
Usually it takes some time for birds to respond to something new, but the blue tits and robins were in and out of there from about an hour after I'd finished putting it up.
The pigeons can't get in there now.

 

I did some tidying in the garden, cutting down the dead stuff and weeding. Great to see so much happening out there despite the wet weather we've been having. We had a large willow tree pollarded and our wildlife hedge reduced in size during late autumn and it looks really strange at the bottom of the garden. Lots more light and space to plant.

My apricot tree, which came into the conservatory for the winter is doing well and I was thrilled to see blossom buds on it. It's in a large pot so I could protect it from the worst of weather by moving it indoors. It will go outside again when the days lengthen.

I bought 12 pots of double snowdrops and 6 new hellebores from our local auction last week and they are waiting for the ground to dry up a little before I plant them out.

I want to spring clean my greenhouse but have to be in the right mood - not my favourite garden job I'm itching to get on with planting my flower seeds but with disappointing results from early sowings in the past, I'm leaving it later this year.