What did you do in your garden today?

[Black_Thumb]

I think I mentioned that the plans to the chicken coop I'm building are absolutely atrocious. I've had to re-engineer them on the fly. Well today, after more redesigning, I was able to get the inside doors to the roosting area built and mounted. I also mowed the lawn, toured some caverns nearby, and went hiking in the woods behind my house. Tomorrow I will do the trimming in the back. Here are a couple of photos of the coop with the inside doors mounted.

I also ordered the remaining supplies I'll need to complete the job. I hadn't planned on it costing me $1,000, but it's only money, right? Unfortunately, the supplies won't be here until Monday, April 10th. So, I'll go pick up some more siding on Monday, finish the siding portions, build the roof, and then wait for the rest of the items I need.

My wife turned the soil over in one of our raised beds. We still haven't put anything in the ground yet because we are still getting freezing temps overnight. I meant to plant some tomato plants indoors last week, but I got sidetracked with many other projects I've got going on.

 

[lifegardener]

Starting seedling indoors:
Tomatoes
Peppers
Flowers
Herbs

 

[Sean Regan]

Got quite as bit done today.

Tied up a lot of clematis. There's a couple on the side of the garage that definitely haven't survived, I may replace them.. But I may not, as there's five others, along its side.

Got the "weather side" and the front of the tea-house, rubbed down and painted. Those aren't "pin joints," there's a big screw under a 1" piece of dowl hammered in on top of them, to give that effect.

Over its lifetime it must have had a more than a dozen coats. But I like it to be a bit shiny, the rain drips of it more easily.


I did the same with the pergola over the French windows, well, just the posts and the front beam.

It was a pain as I had to remove the bird/squirrel feeders, clean up behind them, rub the post down, paint it and when it had dried put them back again.

"Make sure you put them back in the same place as the squirrel likes to sit on that branch and lean in to the feeder for some food!"

"Yes dear."

I also put a new bead of silicone round where the posts enter the concrete feet.

We're going to have a bumper show of wisteria blooms as usual.

There must be about three hundred on this pergola.

Same here along the fence.

Not so many on the pergola next to the garage at the moment, but it's always slow. . It'll need a bit of a sort out once the blooms have set. At the moment, I've a strong wire around the branches that I want to "cascade." Once I've taken that off, I can spread them out as the bends will have"set."

I may give the balustrade a rub down and a coat of paint tomorrow, when I come home from golf.

 

[Black_Thumb]

Added some root food (for lack of a better description) to my raspberry plants, and to a couple of trees we planted last year. I also pulled a few dandelions that have reared their ugly heads, along with a whole bunch of wild violets.

I installed some dusk-to-dawn floodlights on the back corner of my house, too! My son had my long extension ladder, so I had to wait until he brought it back in order for me to reach up the 20 feet to the corner of the house. Now I have one less light switch to turn on at night. The outside lights all around my house are now all automatic when it gets dark out.

 

[Sean Regan]

When I came home from golf this afternoon, I had a quick coffee and got straight on with repainting the balustrade between the garage and the rose patio" (formally our koi pool).

Job done!

If the rondels don't all look quite symmetrical, it's because they aren't, each is slightly different as I cut them out more or less freehand with a jigsaw.

This balustrade has always been a pain. I made the original in 1986, as my wife said that without it, she would be too frightened to go down to the bottom of the garden as with her MS, if she fell in the pool the water would cover her head. A week after I made it, I came home from work to find her standing on the rockery on the other side of the pool tying stuff up to the party fence!

This is the original pergola and balustrade in 1986.
That's our eighteen year-old daughter. It was a few weeks before she started nurse's training at Great Ormond Street.

The problem has always been the decorative panels I made. They were plywood and no matter how often I painted them, the laminations on one or more have separated and they've rotted. Cutting with a jigsaw causes them to vibrate so the laminations start to come unstuck, though you don't notice..
A stronger pergola, down the line, to take the weight of the increasingly heavy wisteria we had at the time and about three lots of these panels which all started to rot, I called it a day two years ago and made these rondels out of hardwood.
I hade to make new frames for them and I couldn't get hardwood wide enough to fill the frames, so I had to do a bit of, "fettling," there's a short piece of dowel top and bottom of each rondel. No one notices.

 

[Black_Thumb]

I cut the lumber for my chicken coop roof today. I will need to perform some woodworking trickery to get them installed, though. I need to use about four ratchet straps to pull the top edges (front to back) of the coop just a tad closer together in order to get my ceiling joists in place correctly. After that, I have the roofing panels ready to go as well. I still need other materials that are on order, but I can make a little bit of progress. I won't put the roof on until after I finish everything beneath it, even though the structure would easily support the roof as is. I just want unfettered access to all parts in order to make a few changes before putting the lid on it, so to speak.

By the end of next week, I should be all done and ready to buy some chickens!! We are excited!

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Just remember to turn them off before you turn the water back on

I haven't actually urned it back on o test the repair yet, there's confidant for you! Actually we had a bit of frost over the last two nights and as there is no insulation on the repair I thought I would wait. It is also a pain because the tap is at the bottom back of the (Very full) cupboard under the sink.

 

[Sean Regan]

I cut the lumber for my chicken coop roof today. I will need to perform some woodworking trickery to get them installed, though. I need to use about four ratchet straps to pull the top edges (front to back) of the coop just a tad closer together in order to get my ceiling joists in place correctly. After that, I have the roofing panels ready to go as well. I still need other materials that are on order, but I can make a little bit of progress. I won't put the roof on until after I finish everything beneath it, even though the structure would easily support the roof as is. I just want unfettered access to all parts in order to make a few changes before putting the lid on it, so to speak.

By the end of next week, I should be all done and ready to buy some chickens!! We are excited!

There's a great deal of satisfaction when something starts coming together. Especially when you are doing it by yourself. It's good that you are making a solid job of it. You don't need to have to be making even small repairs a few years down the line.

 

[Sean Regan]

I haven't actually urned it back on o test the repair yet, there's confidant for you! Actually we had a bit of frost over the last two nights and as there is no insulation on the repair I thought I would wait. It is also a pain because the tap is at the bottom back of the (Very full) cupboard under the sink.

When we bought this house in 1972 there was an outside tap under the kitchen window. Like yours, the stop cock is in the corner of the kitchen. It is actually behind the tall cupboard that houses the oven.
To get to it I have to open the bottom drawer and put my hand through a round hole cut in the back panel of the unit!
Fortunately, I connected a short bar to where the outside tap is connected. There are three taps on this bar. One for the supply to the water heater, basin tap in the garage and the tap and hose reel on the side of the shed. One for the tap over the kitchen' soutside drain and the hose reel above it on the side of the house and one for my leaky hose system.
The supply to the garage is via an alkathene pipe and the leaky hose system is fed by a conventional hose, so no chance of those freezing. The tap on the side of the shed is fed by a combination of speed-fit and ordinary plastic hose pipe from inside the garage. There's also speed-fit pipe supplying my two pop-up lawn sprinklers.
The only place I can get a burst (and I did) is in the garage, despite the fact that those copper pipes have insulation.

It was my own fault as for years, I never gave it another thought as the room I built where the basin and water heater are situated, was the filter room for the koi pool, so it was always warm enough for nothing to freeze.

 

[Sean Regan]

I've finished my painting.
Today I did the soffits of the tea-house and the ferules on the corners of the roof. The "decoration" is half golf balls.
I also painted the trim around the roof skylight. This required getting up there by ladder with all the painting paraphernalia and walking round the rood. (I built it like a battleship). Fortunately, my wife couldn't see me.

This skylight, (that isn't one, I covered it with felt a year after I built it as it got too hot in there, in summer) just sits on the top like the lid of a box, it's only gravity keeping it in place.

In hot weather, I lift it up and put the "vent" under the front edge. This is made of two halves of a recycled dishwasher cutlery basket and a block of wood. There are two vents in the bottom of the back wall which I uncover. The arrangement is "vermin proof."

It gets very hot in there. On very hot days I open a door as I don't want the capacitors in my jukeboxes "cooking."

I put that fan in when we had the fox cubs under the floor, as if I'd left a door open they'd be in.
There's an access panel to the roof void on the opposite side to the fan. There's five ceiling spotlights, in there and the cables for the lanterns and the spotlight behind the pagoda pass through there from their transformers on the ceiling next to the side wall.

I gave the shed a bit of a "tart up." It was looking a bit scruffy.

This now forty-seven years old. We still call it "the rabbit shed" as I built it for our eight year-old daughter's rabbits. It hasn't seen a rabbit in more than forty years.

The problem with roofing ply of this era is that the outer skin if exposed to the elements gets very hard and starts to present a few thin cracks and can let water in. So every time I paint it, there's a few more cracks I can see white wood behind. I need to force the paint into them as best as I can. But there's still no rot.

Anyway it's done.

The supply to my second hose reel looks a bit ugly. I would have used speed-fit pipe, but I bought the reel in the middle of Covid and the plumbers merchants were closed. So I used garden hose and fixings I already had in the garage. I can't be bothered to change it now.

It's not patchy, it's the sun reflecting off the shiny bits.

 

[Black_Thumb]

Today I pulled three full bags of wild violets, and only a few dandelions. I normally wouldn't do that because I'm going to put down some chemicals to kill all that crap, but I was out in the yard seeing what I need to do to fix my broken mailbox and decided to pull some violets. The good part is that their roots are very shallow and pull out easily. The bad part is that they multiply like rabbits, and my yard is chock full of the stupid things. They are pretty, but they are so darn invasive. I think I'll be ordering my boom arm liquid chemical dispenser tomorrow, and then I'll be attacking them with a vengeance. LOL

My lumber delivery was late this afternoon, so I didn't get to do any work on the chicken coop. I'll dive in tomorrow. It's supposed to be upwards of 90 degrees tomorrow, so it'll be a hot one. Time to break out the shorts!!

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Time to break out the shorts!!

Don't you sunburn those little white winter legs.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

working on some horrid yellow blooming weeds. low growing. spraying weed killing on the drifts in the lawn. and some pulling out of them in the bed areas. nuts. Also take lots of pics of all the different daffs blooming, to put together for You tube again.

 

[Sean Regan]

Didn't do anything in the garden today, it was raining on and off, but I was daft enough to play golf.

Ordered a couple of David Austin roses on-line, to replace two dodgy looking roses on the rose patio. One might be dead, the other might survive, I'll find them a place down the bottom of the garden to give them a chance.
David Austin roses are getting quite expensive now, £22.50 for bare root. £30 for potted. I ordered two potted, but the card that came through the door last week gave me a 15% discount.

If anyone wants to order any on line, the15% discount code is BOSCOBEL.

 

[Black_Thumb]

Rain is in the forecast for the next four days, so I broke out JD (my name for my tractor) and mowed the lawn. I had water in one hand, steering wheel in the other hand, and the dandelion puller in the third hand...oh, wait. That didn't work out so well. Good thing I have a glove compartment for the dandelion puller. I pulled a dozen or so today. They are growing mostly on the fence line adjacent to my neighbor's property. I'm going to blame it on them. He won't mind. LOL He's a great friend.

After mowing, I am too tired to work on the coop, so I came in to nurse on another gallon of water and relax a bit in my rocker/recliner and share with you good people what I've been up to.