What Jobs Are We Doing In The Garden Today 2019

Verdun is right, cindy......to a degree. My Clematis Armandii is a good 30' away, wending it's way through the Acer Brilliantissismum, from the Arbour where I sometimes sit "contemplating the world" as I watch what is going on in the
garden. and on a warm day the Scent from the C. Armandii will drift across to me and the scent can be sweet and heavy........wonderful!!!!
Regarding support, yes, like all Clematis it will initially need support. But if it's happy where it's planted then, being a fast grower, it will shoot away and find it's own support. It's an evergreen Clematis with long dark green leaves but don't been alarmed if/when some leaves start to turn brown........all evergreen plants occasionally do that and it's nothing to worry about and you merely remove them. It can get quite large if you let it, as I have done, but it can be easily kept under control by pruning. It's very hardy and, breaks the rules by flowering more than once when established and not just in late Winter and Spring as it says in the book......and mine is flowering again right now, so should give you years and years of pleasure and will make you smile when you catch the warm sweet scent some feet away......so I hope you will enjoy it.

 

Hi Sheal, well, when my Desktop died I took it to the local Computer Repair Shop, which is only half a mile away, and the Owner (Mark) has been a long suffering friend of mine for years and has solved every problem I have had computer wise. When he tried to extract the data of the images from the library on the Hard Drive he found that the file w.photos.ex. was completely corrupted and after going down every software route we couldn't get the data.....

 

Well, after postponing the wade in the pond to clean it out for the past two days I managed to don the Chest Waders and slip, rather than fall into the pond.
The pond was dug in '93 and is roughly 12' x 25' and, fully topped up, has a depth of around 3ft and a half, but in a hot, dry, period is 3'ft. When I dug the pond, with the help of my Son-in-Law, I built a integrated "dry" wall into the pond, before filling the pond with water, on the liner in the pond, of bricks about 5' from the North Bank running the 22' of the length of the pond. Then I filled the gap between the dry brick wall and the North bank of the pond with some of the soil from digging it out so that, on filling the pond, the water seeped between the gaps of the bricks and fed the soil creating a Bog Garden of 5' x 22'. It was an idea suggested on a Gardeners World program that the late great Geof Hamilton suggested when building a Wild Life pond and so, (being he was a Gardening Hero of mine) that's what I did.
Anyway, after slipping into the pond I could see the banks and the Bog Garden needed a bit of TLC . It's amazing how wading slowly around the pond gets so therapeutic so quickly. I could feel the coolness of the water and the shade, while the scents of the Jasmine Hedge flowers and other plants on the banks and the Bog Garden filled my nostrils and I would have been quite happy to stay there all day
But since I couldn't do that I started clearing the banks of all the dead stems, leaves and other debris using a fishing landing net to catch the floating leaves and other rubbish. I know this sounds stupid but I was chuckling and quietly laughing to myself because I was surrounded by Frogs of all sizes who were sitting on the banks, the Bog Garden and the submerged plant baskets on the shelves of the pond watching me. Talk about Fearless, Friendly Frogs!!! As I waded around netting the rubbish off the surface of the pond the frogs just calmly sat there without any fear. I had my hands within a couple of inches of some of them who were sitting on the thick stems and leaves of the American Skunk Cabbage while I scooped a lot of the floating rubbish with my hands.......I don't know if they thought I was a Big Frog but they accepted my presence and wading around in the pond without any alarm and stayed calmly watching even though I was clearing the rubbish right by them They accepted my being around that several of them were croaking away quite happily as I also become aware that there were other noises coming from the undergrowth of the banks and Bog Garden even though I could see what was making them.
I spent a very pleasant hour and a half in the water wading around and ended up with a large garden sack full of pond debris, which ended up in the compost heap, and reluctantly got out of the pond a lot easier than I thought I would. So a good job done and the pond looks a lot better for it.

 

To be honest, Sheal, when I was in the cool of the shade and water, wading in the pond, seeing all the Frogs around me, smelling the Jasmine, and shielded from everything by the Hedge it was a really different world!!..........marvellous what a garden does for you.