Robins and chafer grubs

So as I said I was most entertained by the friendly Robin the other day when I was turning over the ground and digging off the turf. I now curse myself that I was merrily killing all the chafer grubs which were coming out of the soil, because today I threw them live on to the path, and the lovely Robin came and took them all for his babies. He came to and fro constantly, it became quite demanding in the end when I found a patch of turf without them and I was really trying to find some for him.

So the moral of the story is, it is not just badgers and foxes and magpies and rooks which eat chafer grubs - a lot of birds would eat them if only they had the big enough tools to get at them! There must be some very fat Robins in a nest somewhere nearby.

More paint and here comes the manure

So today we went shopping in the morning and bought some wood to make battens to fix up the trellis on the newly-painted garage, and also more paint to finish off the garage and pond, and the fence.

This afternoon came the much anticipated delivery of 60 or so bags in total of manure, compost and bark. Hopefully that will be the lot, at least for the forseeable future. Now (once it has been distributed) we should have everywhere as enriched and mulched as it is going to be!

Painted the pond!

Today I did more of the painting of the garage and I am very pleased to say I also painted the pond in Dulux Weathershield. The pond was a straight-sided concrete monstrosity which a friend of mine described as looking like a sewerage outlet, and now it is still a straight-sided concrete structure but with nice cream-colored walls and top instead of grey concrete.

It reminds me of the old seaside Lido pools somehow, and being more or less next to the garage which is now also painted in this creamy color, I think there is a general seaside look going on here. The goldfish were very interested in what I was doing all the time, coming up to the surface for food. May I hasten to say that I did not do anything with the paint that I would expect to endanger the fish. Generally we are very pleased with the result. The bad news is that now we need more paint in order to do a second coat and also paint the back of the garage, which is a thankless task as nobody really looks at it anyway, except when coming back from somewhere in the garden, which when I think about it is all the time. Therefore painting the back of the garage will be a very purposeful thing to do!

Silver Birch

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago:

I am worried about our Silver Birch tree which is on the right of the garden fairly close to the house, very pretty from the conservatory. Well it was pretty. We had it tree surgeoned in early winter, just raising the canopy and a good tidy up. The problem is that it has been topped in the past, and apparently it is unwise to chop the top off a silver birch, because they do tend to rot and dont' take to this sort of treatment. So our tree surgeons didn't do any of that.

However its branches are looking really black at the moment, it is carrying sooty-looking black catkins, and lots of twigs seem to drop off it on windy days like today, then it bleeds where they fell off. Part of me hopes it is OK (think of the cost of having it all taken out, and what do you do with the stump?) but part of me would like to have more scope in that area, perhaps for a pond, or for another tree like an Amelanchier which I have always wanted but never had room for. Yes, I know they are suitable in a small garden, and our garden is not exactly small, but it already has so many trees!

Mind you, I have been keeping my eyes peeled as we have been out and about, and I have seen a number of Silver Birches which look just as manky as ours, so that is I suppose encouraging. Either there is a mass die-off of Silver Birches this spring, or they always look black and horrible like something out of a horror film, just before they break dormancy? Seems a rum do to me, a tree looking so blackened and forbidding in Spring, I would have thought it would look hopeful and covered in little green shoots and catkins, but perhaps that shows what I know (or don't know) about trees.

Anyway the upshot of all that is that at last, seemingly all at once, my silver birch's catkins have turned green and at last today 27 April, it looks like spring has arrived for the silver birch. Hopefully it will get leaves next. And indeed, most of the silver birches I have seen around have been looking almost as bad as ours for the last few weeks.

Struggling with the strimmer

My poor husband had a terrible struggle today with the McCullough grass strimmer that we bought at the end of the last season. He has awful trouble getting the darn thing to start, it doesn't seem to strim very well, then it stops, and it is a dreadful job getting it started again. It's a shame because he has finally given the lawn it's much needed first cut (thank the lord) but the strimming needed around the edges is now incomplete.

He ordered a new strimmer online, let's hope it is easier for him to use than this one. We have tried with our new beds to eliminate the need for a strimmer, by doing level lawn edging, but there are still a lot of small walls, containers on grass, and various other edges that benefit very much from the use of a strimmer.

Robin following me around

Today when I was in the garden it was amazing (or perhaps obvious!) that as soon as I turned my back on the turned ground, the birds, especially blackbirds and robins, were there. I came back to my work, to find the classic scene of a friendly robin sitting on the handles of my wheelbarrow. Aaaah, how sweet is that?

They are obviously attracted by all the worms and things which are unearthed by my digging. If only they ate chafer grubs, but apparently (and unsurprisingly) it's the bigger creatures that find those a delicacy, like magpies, crows and even badgers and foxes.

Digging, turf-stripping and trellis!

Today I stripped a load more turf off what is to be the scented bed by the gazebo. It's a bit scary the number of chafer grubs I am finding in the turf. It was hard work but I took it steady.

Meanwhile hubby was erecting trellis. I think we will end up the trellis centre of the universe. He was also painting the wood on the garage and also the wood that is to support the trellis which is going to span the driveway and front gate. What's the point of that you may ask? Well it's all to do with getting water to the greenhouse which is at the other end of the garden. Confused? don't blame you!

Did the weeds

Yes, today I tackled most of the weeds. I did our garden, and also went next door to the empty plot and sprayed the Ground Elder. It was sad round there. I tried to think of it as a wild garden which has been taken over by nature and good for wildlife and all that, but it is becoming so wild and tangled and untamed that you have to hack your way through the brambles. When the old couple who lived there were so keen on the garden, it makes you sad to think how bad it has become. I tackled the area which abutts our garden, but to manage the whole thing would be a mammoth task. I hope the new owner is up to the job, as the house needs so much work as well. There is a paddock at the back and there are a lot of rabbit pellets there and rabbit holes. I am surprised we have managed to be without trouble from pesky mammals so far, but maybe our fencing is better than I thought. There's always the driveway though, which of course you can't put rabbit fencing under or you wouldn't get in yourself.

I am now worried about those nasty Chafer Grubs because apparently Badgers and Foxes like to rip up your lawn to get at them. Oh, bloomin' marvellous. The things I was worried about (rabbits and moles) have so far failed to materialize, but now I seem to have a whole new set of exotic pests to worry about. Yes, I know I should feel honoured to have foxes or badgers messing about in my garden, and yes it would be fun to watch them once or twice, but thanks a lot I would rather do without them, especially as we have an old dog and I don't want her to be fighting with them, as I don't think she would come off all that well.

I hope I am doing what I always do which is worrying about something which will never happen. Please let it be so.

Today I tackle the Ground Elder

I hope that will be the case. They say it is to be a grey and murky morning followed by a reasonably sunny afternoon. I need a run of about 12 hours without rain to use the Glyphosate on the Ground Elder.

I realise it will not go with just one application and I intend to go back and do some more in a couple of weeks. It's a tragedy really. The couple who used to live next door were avid gardeners by all accounts, but they have both died and the house has been on the market for some time. Since we moved in last September their plot has got worse and worse, and although there are upsides like the Barn Owl we saw swooping over their rough grass, it is quite horrible to see a nice garden going to ruin, including the Ground Elder now creeping under our hedge.

They say it is now Sale Agreed, to a lady with a horse for the back paddock, so I hope that is true and she doesn't have any horrible noisy kids and we get along - and that she has the time or resources to get the garden sorted out better than it is now!

More planting, digging and ants nests!

Well today we started digging up turf to make our scented bed, by the newly-built gazebo. Lovely words those, newly-built, alongside gazebo, after watching it sitting there clogging up the garage looking like firewood for so long.

We both find digging quite hard, and distributing the turf is quite difficult. Mind you we realised there are some quite sort of gash spaces in the front garden, so I tossed a lot of turves out there. Maybe I should throw any unwanted ones in the decaying next door garden (the one with the ground elder creeping under our hedge), but as I understand someone has now bought the old place, that might not be kind. Yes I know it should make lovely loamy soil if stacked upside-down but I am running out of places to stack it in a formal way.

We found a load of red ants when we dug out the turf, along with some nasty-looking chafer grubs. I murdered the chafer grubs and poured (a lot) of boiling water on the ants nests. I hate killing anything but you can't be dealing with red ants because they bite so much. There is still loads of lawn left for them to colonise, and I suspect they already did because we were very frequently visited by a Green Woodpecker last autumn.

Planting in the garden

Well, I did a bit of weeding and a bit of planting yesterday. I planted some pretty crocosmia, the orange one. We have quite a lot of Crocosmia Lucifer in the garden and I have a bit of a problem with it - it is such a spectacular red, which is great, but I think you have to be so careful with reds that they don't clash hideously with pinks. It will be ok in the exotic bed, I hope, because that should be an explosion of color anyway, so more or less anything goes there.

I also planted some small Knifofia which we brought with us from the previous house, I adore Knifofia, they are so undemanding and so startling in their flowers. I also planted a Euphorbia which I hope will not turn into a thug so I have to start digging at it, because my friend found that and he had a devil of a job digging it out. Also the dark red colored Cordyline, which was very heavy to move, I decided to change its position slightly. Not the easiest job to take on and I needed my husband to help me to physically shift it, but it is now seen against a green background instead of against the copper beech hedge, and now it stands out so much better and its natural contrasting beauty can be better appreciated.

Weeding and Ground Elder

Oh joy, my latest challenge is Ground Elder which is creeping under the hedge adjoining the property. The next door house is neglected and a total mess, as the owners died, and it is up for sale and has been for some time. I phoned the estate agent to say somebody should be doing something about the garden, but she says it is now sale agreed so there should be a new owner in about six weeks time. Hmmm, in the meantime it is up to me to try to slow the march of Ground Elder on to my property by going next door and applying some Glyphosate as soon as the weather is dry enough. We had a look and the Ground Elder problem, along with all the rest of the weeds, is quite a big one. All I can do is do my best to keep it back from our property and hope that I don't kill anything else desirable along with it.

Capillary matting in the greenhouse

Today's drama was all about the capillary matting in the greenhouse. It just doesn't seem to be behaving as it should. My husband set up troughs of water to feed the matting but it did not progress along the matting, suggesting that the expected capillary action was not taking place. He then discovered that the trough must be within 3 inches in level from the rest of the matting and ours was too high, so he had to go to the DIY shop to get something he could use as brackets to attach the trough to the end of the bench so it was in position.

The bad news is that there are four of these to do, but wisely he decided just to do the one and see what happens overnight. If the first one doesn't work properly then he will know that further adaptations must take place before he embarks on setting up the other three.

At least most of the pots and trays are now sitting on damp matting and where they are not, they are being watered from above using a fine rose watering can. Things are much wetter than they were in the conservatory so I hope that doesn't prove too detrimental to them. If they are soaking by tomorrow I will have to remove them from the matting for a while and let them dry out just a bit.

We don't currently have a tap water supply to the greenhouse so it is a right fag to-ing and fro-ing to the house for a can of water, which is about 100 feet away. We intend to run a hose from the outdoor tap by the house, which should serve a tap in the greenhouse, and split off for some timer-operated soaker hose along the way to serve the exotic bed.

Greenhouse finished

At long last, well, apart from the plumbing to the water butts, and the setting up of the old staging and the capillary matting and - importantly - the plants, we can now start from tomorrow using the greenhouse for our seedlings and plants!

Of course they say it is to rain tomorrow as it has this afternoon, quite heavily - well, it's good for the rest of the garden. It won't be much fun traipsing up and down on a wet lawn though taking all the plants up there. Still, can't have everything.

We finished the doors off this morning and built some staging and levelled it up. I was rather fed up (this greenhouse job has gone on for four and a half days now, not to mention the days earlier in the spring when we erected it and primered it, that was at least an additional three days) so we went - guess where? to the garden centre to cheer ourselves up. We needed to buy the capillary matting anyhow for the greenhouse, and we got some lawn food at a pretty reasonable price. And - oh yes, a lot of plants.

Ray persuaded me to buy a couple of Tellima Grandiflora, which I now rather regret, having looked their pics up on the 'net. I couldn't think of a more weedy-looking plant. What a dull thing. I will plant it in the deep shade which will be cast by the gazebo, or perhaps on the other side of that where there is much shade cast by a leylandii hedge, and currenly comfrey grows.

Fully glazed greenhouse

Oh yes, we are feeling very proud of ourselves indeed, we finally have a fully glazed beautifully green-painted greenhouse (well, what color would you paint it?). We toiled away today - it's amazing how long this job can take. It took me a while to get the sliding doors glazed, and my husband had the devil's own job doing the automatic louvres, which weren't riveted properly apparently, and had he not a cornucopia of tools in his armory, the job wouldn't have been done, especially as it's Easter Sunday and the DIY stores are bizarrely shut (as he found out when he drove six miles to one of them).

Anyway, tomorrow we have to do the automatic vents, finish off the sliders etc on the doors, paint the surrounding wood, level and sort the floor, make a ramp up to the entrance, and set up the staging, then it will be ready to move all the plants in which have been clogging up the conservatory so we could hardly move for about two months! That'll harden 'em off!

Oh, and the plumbing - I forgot that's got to be done so the water butts can collect the rainwater off the roof. I am desperate to get some weeding and planting done, but the greenhouse is a huge job and when it is finally finished that will be a huge weight off our shoulders.

Hubby says he will then take charge of the plants and seedlings. Why he thinks he will do that just because they will be housed at the end of the garden in a special house, when he hasn't bothered with them when they have been under his nose in the conservatory, I don't know. Well, we'll see eh?

The Greenhouse is nearly done

Hooray! The greenhouse is now painted green! Yesterday we finally had a nice long fine day so we could do the paint job on the greenhouse. I must say the color turned out to be a bit of a surprise. It said Highland Green on the tin, and the picture showed a very dull green, which is what we wanted, as we wanted it to blend in as inoccuously as possible. However it is the very sort of minty fresh sage-like green of a Eucalyptus Gunnii. I am thinking of writing to Hammerite and suggesting they call the color Eucalyptus green instead. It was no fun though, it was horrid having to paint it. My advice would be, for all the money it entails (quite a lot, but still...) I would always go for the green powder coated option if it was in any way going to be in view of the main garden. Hang the expense, it has cost us a lot in plants which should be in there but are being over-mollycoddled now in the conservatory, mess in the conservatory, lack of use of the conservatory for anything else but as a greenhouse: my chair has had to be moved out so I can't even sit in it any more and watch the birds in the garden, or admire my handiwork with the plants. Also we have been without a proper dining room for weeks and weeks because the conservatory is also our formal dining room, so we haven't been able to invite anyone to dinner. Yup, get the right greenhouse in the first place and you'd be amazed the hassle and worry and inconvenience it could save.

Today we managed to glaze the roof. Boy that is a straightforward but horrible job, pushing all that black rubber seal stuff on, and then those awful glazing clips really hurt your hands! We are quite exhausted but ready to start round five tomorrow (round 1: construction, round 2: undercoat, round 3: painting, round 4: glazing roof, round 5: hopefully finishing glazing.) Then there will be round 6 when we finish the floor off, build the ramp into it, and put up all the staging and shelving. Round 7 I suppose is when we move all the plants and seedlings into it. How they say that this job can be done in a weekend I don't know. Maybe Easter weekend, by two experienced young-ish chaps who have done it gazillions of times before. Phew! Then there's the gazebo...

Weeding and feeding the vinca banks

So today there were those three banks of Vinca, surely nobody could forget my famous banks of Vinca, which I decided need some attention. I can't really use weedkiller inbetween my Vinca (I don't like to anyway, and if I do I will have to wait until I have a much more fine, still and dry day.

Today it didn't rain (yet) but it has been really windy. I ended up pulling up rosette-forming weeds with my trusty daisy grubber (a very useful tool) and I resorted to pulling up tufts of grass with my bare hands (couldn't really do it with the gloves on). It was a bit of a pain to be truthful. I think I might be a bit more liberal with the weedkilling option as soon as the weather is safe to do it. It's hard weeding between wanted plants though.

Well, it kept me quiet for a couple of hours while I sent hubby out shopping.

Getting the garden ready for spring

So today I got to do a good old potter around in the garden. Still not as much as I would like, but still, the weather was fair and I did OK. I pruned a white hydrangea, hopefully did it right according to guru Titchmarsh, and I thinned out our black bamboo so you can see the culms better and even a bit of light through them. I tried to apply poultry manure pellets selectively to some of the vinca in the front, in the hope of encouraging their growth at the expense of the surrounding weeds and grass, but it was quite hard, as you end up weeding and tearing out grass clods at the same time.

I did a bit of feeding and tidying and weeding. It feels nice to get down to some basic gardening for a change, something that is maintenance and not all making new things all the time, building and painting and constructing and planting. The weather at the Easter weekend might just be fair enough for painting the greenhouse - fingers well crossed!

It's Raining so we got rid of the garden rubbish

Well yes, it's been raining quite heavily today, and without that nasty wind, so it will be good for the garden really, saves me having to go around watering all my new plantings, especially the infamous Vinca on the banks, which is now starting its battle with the grass. It looks about evens for now, actually. We're thinking of inserting some poultry manure pellets around the individual Vinca to encourage them at the expense (how?) of the grass. A nice job for someone with nothing much to do on a Sunday!

We couldn't move in the garage (which still contains the not-yet-constructed gazebo) so we went to the dump and got rid of a huge sack of prunings and garden rubbish, along with gazillions of cardboard boxes we seem to amass all the time. A job well done. Then we got some more sand for the gazebo base and also some more wood for the new gate. What's the new gate all about? Well, when we discovered what an awful wind tunnel it is against our only south-facing wall, we made the trellis higher on the area around it. That has helped for now but a little, because it hasn't got anything growing on it yet. There is a hole above the low gate of about 4ft by 3 ft through which the wind whistles at a fair old pace. We have bought a new gate which is slatted but is full-length so we hope that should filter the wind out much better. When that area (the side garden, or the scented garden, as it eventually should become) is finished, we hope it will have a lovely sheltered bower feel about it.

Planting, rain and frost

Well, that about sums up the last 18 hours or so. Yesterday I enlisted the husband who worked until his back told him not to, and frankly so did I. We planted several shrubs of various current sizes, including a Trachycarpus Fortuneii, a Choisya Ternata "Sundance", a Kerria Japonica, a Buddleja Globosa, and a variegated Eleagnus which was quite big and had been living in a whisky barrel and being blown all over the place for at least a couple of years.

It used to have the support of a trellis and was in wet and windy St Annes on Sea, and was well battered by the almost constant winds. East Anglia where it now resides has its share of wind too, although it is not so far as frequent as that on the North West Coast. The Eleagnus, now having to try to stay upright all by itself (well, with the aid of a stick!) has been leaning precariously on windy days. Now it has a new permanent home with a little support from a chicken wire fence, so we hope it will do well there. It looks nice and comprises part of the background "barrier" we have inserted between ourselves and the neighbours with kids at the back.

Soon as we had finished working in the garden and come in, next thing it was raining really heavily most of yesterday evening. We were quite shocked (but why I don't know) to find that this morning there is a very white frost. All this is great (not) for our newly planted shrubs. At least they have all been living outside for a good while, albeit in tubs of some sort. Well, they've seen just about all the weather that can be thrown at them in their brief time in the open ground, so lets see - I think they will be okay.

Gardening back

I was talking to a gardening friend last night and she said she had found a wonderful device with an air pocket in it which rests against your back, and prevents you getting a sore back from gardening. She says it sounds silly but she wouldn't be without it. Very interesting because I think weariness in the back is what makes it difficult for me sometimes to go on as long as I would like doing planting work and that sort of thing.

She is going to bring it to me on Monday (possibly) and show one to me. Very interesting.

More and more plants

Sometimes I wonder why I have bought or brought (from our previous garden) so many plants! Planting is not my favourite pastime in the garden. I don't mind weeding so much, especially on this light soil, and tending and pruning is ok, but all that kneeling down and digging holes and pushing mulch around is a pain. I know you're thinking I should have done the planting before the mulch, but spreading mulch around a load of young emerging plants also has its own problems. all those heavy sacks, I got my gardener friend (well, a friend I pay for!) to come and spread them around, it's one of those jobs that really does my back in.

With my work becoming more demanding I am having difficulty in finding enough time to get this garden going. I suppose I am not alone in this, spring is a very beautiful but trying time for the gardener on a big plot, especially one who has taken on far too many projects at once.

Slowly but surely the gardener isn't getting much done!

Well, I got a few hardy geraniums in the ground and I planted some bellis and aubretia in the walled gravel garden (just a small drystone wall with alpines and bulbs currently planted in it). It looks pretty.

Oh the frustration of it - today every single weather forecast has said it will be dry, and we thought here we go, time to get that greenhouse painted! But already there have been a few spots of rain. A few spots could be all it takes to destroy our work with Hammerite. I'm thinking the weather might be reliable enough to paint the pebbledashed garage (a more tasteful cream color, we think!) or at least to get the extra trellis up on the gazebo garden side. We have been so busy with our other work that it is so difficult to get it all done. I did a bit of weeding last night though. It wasn't so bad, but the season hasn't really got into a swing yet I suppose. So far I don't mind weeding but I suppose I might end up eating my words (but not my weeds I hope!)

More plant shopping

Today we had a hard morning at work and then my husband announced he was stir-crazy and wanted to go out. The weather was looking very unpromising for work in the garden so I agreed. We went to a large - you guessed it - garden centre near Yarmouth and bought quite a lot of bits and pieces, including a Kerria, a Blueberry and a Daphne. The main reason for the trip was to get some John Innes compost in which to plant up my Morning Glories, which have come up in the heated propogator like rockets! Well, that wasn't the reason why we had to go all the way to Yarmouth, which was about 25 miles, but we fancied a change from our usual haunts.

It got me away from it all for a bit, but I do find shopping very tiring too. My next job is to rip out some self-seeded hollyhocks from my beds which unfortunately are suffering from rust. Apparently many people don't grow them any more because of this, but I have noticed that they seem very popular here in gardens on the North Norfolk coast.