What are we doing in the garden 2024

I'm confident that "Gardening By Proxy" qualifies in this thread

It has now been raining heavily for a week so the soil is finally sort of penetrable. The Child's volunteering session in a local NT garden was cancelled due to the heavy rain so I suggested she could make a start with our own new garden.

What a hard labour it was, I was nearly distracted from my work watching her through my home office window:


She made an absolutely brilliant start and found loads of worms, which obviously is good, and very little buried rubble or nasties.

The soil looks quite promising.

All of the green stuff needs to come up, the middle fence down, and the slabs galore out. Looking at the soil we might only need to dig in half a spade deep under the "grass" root bed to get something plantable.

Tomorrow after I have toiled through another hard day at work in my home office we'll dig a deep hole together to see what's in lower below.

This is getting terribly exiting now, finally getting our hands into the new garden.

 

You child slave labour exploiter, you!

 

Not a lot today due to persistant rain. Managed to take an annoying horizontal branch off my best Eucalyptus gunnii and potter on the terrasse under the roof, potting up some mail-order plants, but that was all There's so much to do!

 

@katecat58 wedding for us near Abergavenny too but there are dry days in prospect here so keeping fingers crossed for the wedding and dry weather for the garden

 

I feel exhausted reading all that you are doing. We have had so much rain there has been no possibility on getting out into the garden. Bindweed has taken over so much but maybe some wildlife likes it!!!!!

 

I only did a couple of things outside yesterday once it cleared up, and fortunately I was able to be in a bit that was out of the wind as it was some more concreting. Started altering curtains instead.
Managed a better night's sleep, and we have a clear day in prospect, so hopefully will get out there today for a while. Might make a start on redoing the lid on my storage box. Intended doing a hill, but the niggling hip problem means driving is difficult for any distance. Sigh....

Always useful when you have an 'assistant' @Selleri.
What are her going rates? Biscuits? Cake? Cash? Beer/wine? All of them?

 

@Robert Bowen my daughter isn't getting married until November so I'm expecting cold, wet and windy for that. She lives in Cardiff and the wedding is also in Cardiff but is coming home to get her hair done as she hasn't found a hairdresser she likes down there.

 

Today was the first chance I had to do anything in the garden this week without the threat of rain! I mowed both lawns, swept up more Sorbus berries and leaves and reduced some Heleniums, a Salvia and a Hosta to the ground as they were looking miserable. I moved a couple of containers around and ditched a dahlia that I had grown in a container but it had never really got going this year. I then cleaned the windows at the back of the house but only the ones with a view of the garden .

 

A bit of Autumn tidying of potting bench etc and then took down the poly greenhouse. Pleased with my foxglove sowings but I’ll keep them in pots for now and plant out next year. Think they will flower the year after though (that’s what happened last time anyway. I thought the initial summer sowing would count as Year 1 - but no).

 

Replanted the plants I dug up last week to get them out of the way of the tree surgeons, dug over the hole where the tree was and stacked the logs neatly, so the rain wouldn't sit on the cut ends.
Then planted a paeony and out weeds.

 

The Child who has been labouring in my new garden would like to thank everyone for their well wishes and to stress that her labouring activities are entirely voluntary and not by any means forced, not mentally nor physically. (She didn't actually say that but as a Mother, I know how to interpret my child's feelings accurately )

Anyways, The Child was rewarded with a steaming bowl of soup, she makes an excellent Minestrone!

And regarding the garden, I did a preliminary dig around the mid-fence posts and discovered they are indeed set in concrete. The concrete foot is about 15cm below the soil so the posts have a rotten segment that will hopefully be easy to saw through to get the fence out of the way.

Sadly, as my pond will go abouts there I will eventually have to get the concrete feet dug out. The Child might get a new spade for Christmas. I bet she'll be as thrilled as she was with her birthday present


Spent just over the £50 at JParkers to get the freebie Tete a tetes.

 

A great birthday prezzie @Selleri. I can just about beat that - last year my younger daughter had a very flat tyre, and we discovered she had no spare wheel, which we hadn't realised when buying the car. She got a spare wheel for her birthday.
Pity about the post concrete. Could you work around them for the pond at all? Even one or two?

I did the last little stretch of concreting yesterday, and potted on a few small plants, plus a bit of painting, including the inside of the shed door. Potted some more crocus [and ordered more daffs later] after drilling holes in various pots for that first. Prepped part of the storage box, but I don't think the weather will play ball well enough today for doing that. Sat quite often with a cuppa - getting a wee bit better at that...
Should have cut the grass, but really couldn't be bothered. Might do that today if it stays dry enough. Failing that, some more shed stuff, and crocus planting.

 

No rain so out in the garden this morning. Harvested the last dwarf french beans and the very small collection of late sown broad beans. Picked the sweet pea pods for seeds for next year. Cut back one of the lavenders that has grown madly and all over the path. Found some more figs and will make some preserve with them as not totally ripe. Harvested baby sweet corn and some moolis. Then we tackled a very old apple tree (in situ when we moved in 1978 so no idea the variety). Managed a whole bucket of some excellent fruit. Then into the orchard and picked up the fallen apples from one tree. One day they were still on the tree and then all the apples were on the ground. The Spartans are still on the tree and hopefully will stay for some while yet and they are great keepers.

 

Well ... with all this activity going on day and night (quite literally), I feel a bit of a wimp revealing my progress today. Cut back my herbaceous clematis, Cassandra. It is lovely, but it does sprawl and forms such a dense canopy very little will grow underneath it. That's my bin pretty much full, which is always satisfying.