What did you do in your garden today?

[Sean Regan]

Golf in the morning, but attacked the front garden after lunch.
Cleared all the dying bluebell foliage, then pruned the azalea "hedge."
Each year I take around six inches off the length that hangs over our curtilage wall onto the pavement.
Don't want any injury claims from pedestrians.
It's into it's growing period now so there'll be plenty of blooms again next year as usual.
Then cut the grass and gave everything a thorough watering.
Afterwards I dead-headed the first rhodo in the back garden and it's still only May!
More watering.

Gave the new door in the fence it's final coat of paint.

I substituted an eye for a screw in the middle hinge, the cable hanging from a hook on the top of the fence is to secure the door open when I'm in and out of the garden. The door stop on the ground stops it swinging open too far.
The drive acts like a wind tunnel and this like the old door used to slam shut just as I'm about to pass through it with both hands full.

Tomorrow I need to get into the rockery before we end up with more grass than phlox.
More bluebell foliage to clear.

 

[Sean Regan]

Pretty much up to date, rockery Phlox has been weeded and the last of the bluebell foliage is in the bin which is pretty much full. Grass cut an a bit of other weeding done.

Today I got at the white wisteria. It wants to grow laterally and I want it to grow at right-angles to the garage, so a bit of forcing and more wiring was requires to fill in a couple of gaps on the pergola. It's very virulent but quite submissive when young.

The canopy will soon fill in.

This comes under, "just looking for something to do."


I'd had a problem with the low voltage 30w Blagdon spotlight on the side fence that used to shine on the waterfall, which is now part of the rockery.
I say a problem, it had actually stopped working. I traced the fault to somewhere in the cable that passes from the garage, under the path, through the former pool collar, and up under the base of the waterfall to the base of the fence. Power was going in, but not coming out the other end (after 34 years) I could have tried to pull the cable through the trunking and replace it. But I decided, the spotlight where it was was no longer necessary, so I moved it to the pergola on the garage and rewired it. It's now trained on the fountain. This spotlight, like the one behind the pagoda comes with four different filters, red, green, orange, blue, or you can leave it as white. I've opted for blue this time. It'll come on when I turn the fountain on from the four switches behind the lounge curtains, which control the lights in the garden.

 

[Sean Regan]

I dead-headed these two rhodos this afternoon. It was a bit of a pain as there must have been about 100 blooms between them;

I always prune our three quinces on the side fence at this time of the year, I must have taken about a foot off the top of many branches on this one. I like to keep them as a band along the top of the fence. Low branches would overpower the azaleas and rhodos, if they grow too tall they cut out a lot of the sun from other plants in this border.

Tomorrow, I'm going to tackle these two tree azaleas. They've lost the "ball shape" I like, so it'll be a case of a little bit of pruning and a bit of wiring.

I'm pleased with this rhodo, it's a fast grower, we've only had it a couple of years and it is giving the big tortoise shell one a bit of competion for space.


The several giant lilies are also starting to make their presence known, there's about eight along this part of the fence.

I was impressed with the service from the bin men today. Today was not a "green bin" day, or any bin for that matter.
On the way to golf at 9.00am, as I turned out of our road onto the main road, I noticed they were emptying the green bins a few people had put out. I stopped and asked one of the men if they were going to do our road, as my green bin was full and I wasn't going to put it out until next week, the normal day. The guy said they were. So I said I'd go round the block and put my bin out, as it was up the top of the drive in front of the garage door. He said it didn't matter, give him our house number and he'd see it got emptied. When I came back from golf It was back up in front of the garage door and had been emptied.

 

[Meadowlark]

I'm going to have to find a couple of those tree azaleas...very nice.

 

[ChelswannabeGT]

Today I harvested some spinach replacing that bed with peppers!

 

[Sean Regan]

Didn't do much in the garden today, dead-headed some roses and watered the patio pots, they get very warm at this time of the year.

I mist-sprayed the acers and the sambucus around 2.00pm. There is a tiny bit of scorching on the big acer, but not really noticeable. There'd be a lot more if I didn't cool them down.

I like to have a wander round at dusk on warm evenings, (beer in hand). It's quite a pleasant experience. I turned on the lights, but not the two sets of mult-coloured fairy lights on the two pergodas. It's a bit over the top at this time of the year. They're just for Christmas. The nine solar lights too, are quite bright, as they are getting a really good charge during the day with all the sunshine.

The vents at the top of the tea-house look impressive, They're only used in the summer. All they are, are two halves of an old dishwasher cutlery basket, screwed to a bit of 3" X 2" which is jammed under the front edge of the skylight. It gets really hot in there during the day, despite having two vents in the bottom of the back wall.

There's also this extractor fan in the void in the centre of the ceiling. I put it in when we had the six fox cubs under the floor to provide some more ventilation as I used to, as I do now, leave a door open during the day, but I kept it closed it when they were in residence, as they'd have been in with their muddy paws. I don't like it getting to hot or cold in there, my jukeboxes prefer room temperature.

 

[Sean Regan]

Just had a tidy up after the wind, lots of leaves and catkins off next door's trees. Mowed both lawns. Tidied up the wisterias.

The grass is slowly recovering after the hot weather.

 

[zigs]

Finished putting the netting on one of the tunnels

 

[Sean Regan]

I was up on the roof of this shed I built 44 years ago.
I was using my Barnel telescopic pruner to tackle the branches of next door's tree.

I have to do it each year as it blocks out some of the light and if I left it, the branches would eventually rub on the roofing felt, as it has in the past when I left it too long. That was a photo from a couple of years ago, the felt was in poor condition and I'd previously patched it.

But I re-felted it last year with a quality non-tear felt.

It's of a very sturdy construction. How many store-bought sheds would you risk standing on the roof if as I do weigh 12st?
The roof is two sheets of roofing ply with another piece along the apex joining them. Even with the tatty felt it never leaked.

When I stripped off the old felt, the wood was in perfect condition after four decades

I build things to last
Same when my son and I re-felted the twenty -three year-old tea-house in 2010. The roof took his 14st (and a roller) and my 12st.

Again you can't beat quality roofing felt. Here ten years on, it still looks as good.

Everything these days seems made down to a price

I built this fence sixteen years ago round a door I bought from B&Q.

I had to replace and alter a new door this year as it was rotting away, the fence is still fine.

 

[Willowisp]

Everything's getting watered, and although I watered the potatoes this morning, the rest is getting watered the natural way. Workmen put in new concrete across the street. Hopefully it was quick drying. I did see a squirrel do some frightening acrobatics off my cover over the back porch, this morning. Unlike cats; squirrels do not land on their feet. But he did scamper off.

 

[Peace perfect peace]

Ive felt pain and all because ive a draughed on my back,
Has anyone else had this aching back problem?
Ive so much to do both in the garden and work shop and its what i really enjoy "But" all i can say is you know how much your body is worth when you can't do those thing you take for granted, Like trying to sleep /use the loo etc etc,
I swear the weeds we're laughing at me as i walked around the garden today.

 

[Willowisp]

Stayed inside, today. It's raining again

 

[Esther Knapicius]

just cut the back part lawn after I came home from work. took about 2 hours. now raining again.

 

[Logan]

Yesterday finished planting out all of the bedding plants snapdragons, calendula and a few tithonia. Planted up all of the containers with snapdragons, trailing geraniums, fuchsias and erigeron. Also 2 hanging baskets with fuchsias, trailing geraniums and erigeron.

 

[Sean Regan]

Too wet to do any gardening.

So for something to do, I compiled my 2021 financial budget.

Each year I use an Open Office rolling spread sheet, for monthly income and expenditure. A second one mirroring my credit card spend and a third control sheet, so I can see how the monthy figures match against my projections. I then never get any nasty suprises. I also build in a contingency figure. So when my wife says; "What I thought was...." This always results in some unforseen expenditure.
The pages are all linked so any alterations are carried through the year.
All things being equal (which they never are) I know on 1st of January each year, more or less, what will be my financial situation on 31st December.
The 2021 budget just gets filed away in my hard drive, but gets updated by the links to any alterations to the 2020 one. I've no need to look at it until the end of the year. I build in anticipated increases in things like utility bills etc.,
It's noticable that each year such things always increase significantly more than pension increases. It must be very hard for those who don't have a decent wage or pension.

It might seem a strange thing to do, but I like compiling budgets, as part of my job required this. Having set your financial budget for your store, then had it agreed, you were expected to achieve it, or no bonus. You couldn't alter it, as it was "set in stone."

Of course since I retired, if I find that I'm running over my domestic budget, I can just alter it!