What jobs are we doing in the Garden today 2015

A story first.......last night I was out on the patio with the telescope as the skies were absolutely clear. At just gone midnight I could hear a cat meowing somewhere and knowing that one of my cats [Jenny] was still out somewhere in the garden [when she should have been in the House] I guessed it was her. I finally tracked the meowing down to the flat roof of my garage which meant dragging a ladder out of the garage, climbing up onto the roof and then trying to catch a cat that didn't seem all that keen to come down, all this in the dark We both got down the ladder safely and Jenny was put in the House while I carried on star gazing.
Now most people on GC know that my garden fences are built to keep my cats in [8' high with an extra 2' to 3' of Chicken Wire above it, and other cats out, so that they can roam free in the garden and not get run over or just disappear as some cats, unfortunately, do. So this left me with the question "How did Jenny get out onto the garage roof?" This morning, leaving both cats in the House, I did a patrol of the garden fences and discovered that my neighbour's conifers that he has at the bottom of his garden had pushed the Chicken Wire on my fence down and that was where Jenny had got out. So my job in the garden was to use my Hedge cutters to prune the 12' high conifers back over the fence. I had to get the ladders out to rest between the Shrubs and the fence so that I could climb up and carry out close up pruning with a pair of secateurs and a handsaw. It's not the best of jobs being up on a wobbly ladder, with bits of conifer falling on your head and branches of Shrubs below trying to poke you in other places, the Sun feeling really hot and the air humid Once the pruning was done it was a case of fixing a fresh roll of Chicken Wire back up again......easier said than done when you're up a wobbly ladder. Once that was done I had to repeat the job on places in the fence where I thought it might need it. When it was all done, I was wet with sweat, covered in bits of conifer, twigs, etc which had also managed to get inside my clothing. A shower was needed to recover!! I have said this before about my cat, Jenny, she's like the Raptor in Jurassic Park which kept testing the fences. I've managed to keep her safely in the garden for just over 5 years but obviously she just doesn't give up Now I have to wait to see if there's not another place I missed that Jenny [the Raptor Cat].might use to go for a late night wander.

 

It's been a fairly busy week in the garden. We've cut down all the wild area (finished flowering and seeding) and scythed and mowed it. Mowed all the rest of the lawns, dug and weeded a lot of the veg plot, cut back perennials and shrubs that have finished flowering (lots more to go). Put what we can on the compost heaps, the nasties in the wheelie bins (filled four of them) and the rest on the bonfire heap which is now 7ft high and a diameter of 6ft. The field behind has just been harvested but I can't have a bonfire yet as everything is tinder dry.

As well as all that it has been 'fix the greenhouse' week. I'm pleased we didn't have rain for that but it has been difficult in the sweltering sunshine. Our main worry was that the glass would break on removal or replacement (5ft x 2.5ft panes) or the greenhouse would collapse.

After forty years the wood that was retaining the roof glass had started to go rotten I don't think the word 'started' was really the correct one!



The clips that are supposed to hold the glass in place kept falling out and the panes of glass were sliding out of their grooves.


The timber batons that held the clips needed replacing and were only held in place at each end by the joint in the timber. Each baton was approx. 5ft long and didn't touch, and wasn't fixed to, any other part of the timber beneath it.





The plan was to remove two panes of glass (necessary because each baton supported two panes), cut the baton to length, cut the joint, insert it into place, replace the glass and fix new retaining clips.

Do things ever work out as planned? Like hell they do!!!

It turned out that the timber wasn't fixed just by the joints but had steel studs through them and not screws. These made it impossible insert the new batons into the gap where we had broken the batons out. We had to break them (easy, as they were rotten) as there was no way to get the studs out. The breaking out didn't work perfectly on all the joints






The centre bar between the two panes didn't have studs.


The first two panes removed. You might just be able to see that the whole greenhouse has warped over the years.

 

As we weren't going to be able fix it with joints we decided to just butt on to the roof struts and screw the baton down to the wood below. This saved us a lot of time because we didn't have to make the joints .

When I refer to 'we' in all this I really mean my friend Eddie. I'm useless at DIY and he was doing all the work. I was just the 'boy' and did what I was told.

Because of the warping we had to insert further slats to make it level enough for us not to stress the glass when we put screwed the clips on.






So we now have gaps, need tidying up, but it can't be helped.


Finished job.







Gutters now need fixing as they got a bit knocked around

The other side of the roof will need doing at some time but access is a bit harder as that side is a full of roses and shrubs that have been there for the forty years.