What are we doing in the garden 2024

I thought i would share a photo which i took yesterday of an area i worked on and finished in early 2023. Its the area around our fishpond which had looked a bit neglected and sad and i had tried different things to enhance it but nothing seemed to fit the bill. So ,last year , i enlarged the area and then planted up , mainly with plants elsewhere in the garden that werent thriving. Last year they were settling in , this year they are very happy and the rudbeckia is starting to take over. What cannot be seen is just how many bees are gliding around.

 

We are lucky to currently be able to diy the monster hedge. When we first moved here two years ago it was a good 4 feet higher than now and we had to get someone in to sort it including removal of two of the trees. The cost was so shocking that, after checking that son would be happy to go up a big ladder, we invested in a Henchman tripod. After a couple of uses it has paid for itself already

 

Not much gardening going on (except picking cucumbers which seems to be daily at the moment). Yesterday I moved all the pots and hanging baskets away from the house walls so we can do the outside paintwork. There isn't a lot, just some wood trim and a bit of masonry, but it's all edges so fiddly work.

 

That does look a monster hedge @Bluejayway, but a good dense screen for you!

 

It's excellent privacy @Plantminded especially as the houses behind us are higher up. It's so deep that even with a telescopic hedgecutter, the back of it just can't be reached by us. Luckily the brambles seem to be slowing down the conifer growth

 

I weeded and swept my front area, I swept up a bucket of grass seed, took a cuppa break then began pruning my second apple tree. I have managed to prune about half of it, to just above my head height. The second half needs a step ladder and lot of caution! Both trees have made about 2ft of growth this last year.
I still have only one tomato set. Yum.

 

Other than a little tidying for 10 mins in the morning I’ve not been able to really get stuck into anything major. I really should make a list of projects to give me a little direction, the first of which should be to replace the bark path which went down about 5 years ago and has now become the most prolific growing medium in my garden!!

And here are some pictures.

 

Just a bit of tidying and lawn mowing this morning. We could really do with a bit of rain here everything is so dry. I've been watering through the hot weather but I find tap water, whilst keeping things alive, doesn't really green anything up.

 

Yes, @fairygirl . Confusion cos of French names but I do at least know the difference and their uses.

Very sunny and hot out there and i've had a busy morning elswehere but I shall still manage about 3 hours of re-potting and potting on in my "nursery" so that all my treasures are safely prepared for 8 days of what OH considers to be adequate watering. I'm off on a road trip across southern France with Possum next Tuesday.

 

@Obelix-Vendée I thought I'd sent you a message about your road trip but I can't find it. I'll send another.

I've finished weeding all the beds in the flower garden since we got back from the UK on 27th July. Did the shrub bed this morning. Have started the vegetable garden, it's a bit of a mess, tall thistles.

 

No gardening for me today due to :
1 Drenching drizzle coming and going
2 I am next to a farm and the farmer has been muck spreading . Imagine the worst smelly nappy you have experienced - thats what this is like , like walking into a wall and whats worse despite a brisk breeze the fragrance is stuck. Never mind from previous experience we wont notice it in a day or two !
On the plus side , off to Shrewsbury Flower Show tomorrow for the day.

 

Work involving dismantling something, or anything similar, is always tricky @Robert Bowen .
One of my favourite sayings, especially when I mention to my daughters that I need to do something of that sort, is - 'nothing's ever simple'.
Glad you're ok though. Splinters, bruises, cuts and scrapes are all par for the course for me, and always have been. I suppose I'm just used to it. The best one recently was pushing a fine screwdriver into the end of my finger. Long story....
It's healed up well though
I decided against demolishing my shed and replacing it, because I figured it would be a lot of work, and I'd need a spell of good weather for it, and for building a new one etc. It's still been a lot of work, but much cheaper, and saved emptying the entire thing as well, although I'll need to do a bit of that when I replace the inside of the back section.

Glad there isn't going to be a problem with your posts @Obelix-Vendée!

 

I have a magnifying glass and lamp on a stand for when I'm doing embroidery on winter evening in front of TV.

It comes in remarkably handy for digging out thorns and splinters and, to their delight, for the nurses who had to remove the series of staples and stitches after my knee operations. The leg can get so swollen they're hard to find..........

 

I didn't do anything outside today. It hardly stopped raining. I vacuumed my ceilings and beams to remove the many cobwebs which have appeared recently. I have never lived in such a spidery area before.

 

Might be hit and miss today with the weather for outside jobs, and the wind gusts are to be pretty severe, so I might have to just carry on with the smaller bits and pieces round by the shed where it's more sheltered, and get some other plants in the ground if the rain's not too heavy and persistent. Perhaps get that storage box moved round to the shed, if possible.
There's stuff needing done in the front garden, as I rarely go out much there, but it's more exposed, so I'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I have some seedlings of hawthorn etc, which have been grown on for adding to the boundary hedge, so they might go in if I can prep the site well enough.
If it's wet, I have plenty of paper that can be shredded for the compost bin.