Non-Gardener builds an Observatory, Garden Railway and even Dabbles with Plants!

But you'd still have the labour cost if you swept up the leaves and put them in the green waste bin. Might as well have something in return. Maybe your garden challenge for next year will be to get a couple of compost heaps/bins going - the result is so much better than bought soil improvers. I compost most of my garden waste - grass clippings, hedge clippings (privet), shredded shrub prunings, old stems from perennials, tomatoes, cucumbers etc, fruit & veg peelings from the kitchen, weeds (except for thick tap roots), fallen leaves and so on.

The labour-free alternative is to leave the leaves where they fall to rot down/be pulled into the soil by the worms.

 

Please don't be offended by this reply as it sounds a bit harsh. For those where gardening is their only interest and hobby, great, but for me, other interests are much higher up the priority scale. This was a one off experiment that will perhaps give me one bag of compost in two years time. For me, it doesn't make time and economic sense for a bag that will cost £8.00 when I need it.

There's not usually any labour involved. If I need to mow the grass, the leaves get sucked up with the grass, otherwise I just let the wind take them. There's not enough leaves to swamp the garden and I don't have the time and inclination to do it to make compost every year. Buying a bag when needed is more convenient, costs peanuts and doesn't clutter up the garden with bags and bins.

I can't see that happening either. It's bad enough that I've got two black bags behind the garage now, partially blocking the path. There's nowhere in the garden for a compost heap and nowhere I'd want to have bins either.

It might be a shock to all the gardening fans on here, but I'm still not a gardener and this isn't a hobby for me. It's a necessity to get the garden the way I want it, but it's not a passion. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed what I've done, but it's a means to an end.

 

What size were the bags if it took two of you an hour to fill them!
I can fill two bags of leaves in about ten minutes. An extra five minutes if I was shredding them with the mower.
Filling a compost bin or leaf cage is just as quick as putting it all in a bin, which is the alternative to using it in the garden. Bags of leaves need no attention either, other than the odd shake, and you end up with something that is superb for any plants.

Don't take this the wrong way but - the compost you make yourself will be better than most of the rubbish that's available to buy nowadays, unless you get a good quality peat based one, which we can still get here from the local mill.

 

The bags were only rubble sacks, but raking up leaves from half of a half acre plot is what took time.

 

Each to their own!

For myself I don't rake up leaves - the ones that fall on the grass mostly get picked up by the mower and go in the compost bin along with the clippings, and most of what falls on the borders gets left to the worms etc. I might pick some up if I'm in the border weeding. I do sweep the paths and drive when there are a lot of leaves on them and it's forecast rain because wet leaves get slippery, but it only takes maybe 10 minutes each time (paths and drive are concrete/slabs not gravel - I imagine it's not so easy to sweep leaves off gravel).

 

My apologies ArmyAirForce, pictures can be deceiving. The Choisya looks a lot closer than you have said and yes, with the ground raised it should be okay.

I've enjoyed reading your thread and at times wondered how you kept going with all the hard work and major changes you have made. It's looking good and I look forward to anything you add to this thread as time goes on.

 

I have to admit, I'm feeling pretty burned out. I have a few health problems including joint pain and insomnia, neither of which help matters. Some days, doing anything is a real struggle, while others, I'll pay for it a day or two later.

Last night, we ordered the new bedroom furniture, so I need to start that project to get the paper off the walls and the built in units removed, in order for the fitters to do a final survey and measure.

My daughter is out for the day and with it being garden bin week, Lynne and I are going to try and clear some more grass behind the wood. However it's overcast, damp and misty right now, which doesn't fill me with motivation.

 

@ArmyAirForce, remember the words of Christopher Lloyd, who said the best time to do any garden task is when you feel like it!

 

Crikey! I'd never get anything done!

 

3rd November 2024

We didn't manage to get out yesterday due to several other things that cropped up. However, mid morning today, we both went out to do more digging. We continued lifting the grass and moss and digging out roots at the back of the woodland.



Some of the earth at this location is almost solid yellow clay. Seriously, I could throw a pot with it. It is quite wet and sticky, making it difficult to get roots out without taking big lumps of clay with it. The plan was to get rid of the worst of the growth in time for the garden bin collection this week. Two bins worth. I think that's probably it for this year, other than perhaps one last tidy up for the last garden collection on the 21st.

In the early Spring, hopefully if things dry out a bit, the plan is to chuck a load of sand into the area, dig it in well and then sieve it all to help break up the clay and remove the remaining roots. That should also help the drainage which should suit the Thyme.



The Thyme itself, which I've been growing across this year is doing well. I read that it tends to grow faster in its second year, so hopefully these plants will take hold and spread quickly in the Spring. I did an inventory this morning and have 270 plants to spread around the former grassed area. The Thyme near the kitchen, along the Yew hedge, is probably in the worst possible position for it. It is mostly shaded and gets little direct sun, yet it is doing quite well. The back of the woodland gets more sun than that, so these plants should do okay at that location.

 

The thyme near your kitchen may lack sun but the soil should be dry enough for it as the Yew will drain it.

 

I'm hoping the Laurel will do the same for it by the wood. Most will have some sun, but right along the Laurel hedge will be shaded, but dry.

 

5th ~ 14th November 2024

Work in the garden did indeed stop after the 3rd. I wasn't motivated to dive straight into the decorating, so did some tinkering in the workshop. I modified a heated resin curing box, to have a lid with perforations in it. This allowed a seed tray to sit on top and be warmed. It cost me nothing but a little MDF and time. Inside the plastic lid, the seed tray temperature lifted from the 12C degrees of the workshop, to 20C.

I also modified my airbrush spray booth to have a bubblewrap front flap and with the heat from its own light and the transformer for the seed tray heater, the whole spray booth can be raised to around 18 to 20 degrees. The workshop is generally unheated and can get down to 3 degrees over the winter. With these, I should be able to get some seeds started early in the year, when it would otherwise be too cold in there.



On the 5th, I began stripping the lining paper off the master bedroom wall, so see what hidden horrors awaited me with the plastered walls. Three years earlier, we ended up stripping my daughter's bedroom back to the first coat plaster, fitting a new ceiling and having the whole lot re-plastered.

 

Work on the first wall of the bedroom, showed the original wall had been skimmed again, with surface cracking in both. At some point, someone applied the lining paper to hide the cracking. Being an extension to the original house, I imagine that much of the cracking was from settling of the foundations.

Quite a lot of the skim coat of plaster was very thin, less than 1mm in places and quite a lot was loose, or came away with the paper. By the 8th, I began to chisel away the loose plaster, finding a nice shade of lilac paint on the original wall plaster! That was until I got to about 6 inches from the ceiling, where the lilac painted plaster ended and the layer below the skim changed to something that looked odd. As with my daughter's room three years ago, I instantly suspected Asbestos; so all work halted.

On Friday the 8th, a test kit was ordered online, so that we could send off a sample. From the 9th to the 11th, it was Remembrance weekend, so I was out on each of the three days, visiting local war memorials with my three vehicles.



Over the three days of the memorial tours, I'd driven around 56 miles, taking in fourteen war memorials and five mining memorials. So many names remembered in such a small area of just one county in England.

We Will Remember Them.





The asbestos sample kit arrived on the 10th, so on the afternoon of the 11th, after I got home and got the Jeep away, I put on my PPE and cut out a sample from the wall. It was bagged up and popped in the post box the same day.



Today, the 14th, I got a text message back, with an attached PDF file. No asbestos found - relief! That could have put a serious dint in the bedroom budget. So everything is back on track now.

 

18th November 2024

It was a frosty morning when I looked out this morning. Good job I brought my potted roses indoors yesterday. First thing, I went out to rake up leaves and clear the Hawthorn path. My neighbour brought his tractor down the other day and cropped all the hedges, so I needed to clear up the chippings from the path and blow other bits out of the railway ballast and observatory slates. The seventeen day old Moon hangs in the upper right of the image.



The sleepers and rails were all frosted over, so the trains were delayed again!