Veg patch reshuffle - Phase 2 (greenhouse) and 3 (compost heaps)!

So much to catch up on, we have been working flat out whenever the weather has allowed.  I'll update one project at a time, I think or this will be a mammoth diary entry!

The weekend after digging and pouring the concrete footings for the new site of the greenhouse in the hottest driest April ever - of course the poor Engineer had to build his breeze block base in slightly different conditions.  Typical.

There was a moment's panic from me when I saw how high the low wall was - and he had also planned to use the old metal base frame which the greenhouse used to sit on the flagstones on, which added another 8 inches in height! I had to demonstrate that I might need ropes and crampons to get in and out of the door, and so we reached a happy compromise and scrapped the frame base, bolting the greenhouse frame down on timber battening instead.  I'll still need a step for true comfort but when that will happen heaven only knows...

So for now, and as tomatoes were desperate to go in, I just have weed membrane down on the inside. After this season we will decide what to put down on the floor.

The dedication of the Engineer! He climbed halfway up the tree to get a good overview shot of the veg patch to include the newly positioned shed and greenhouse...bless...

Greenhouse done, Phase 3 of the great reshuffle was begun - with some urging from me as I am sick and tired of the 'temporary' compost heap (which is now of course right in the way of the door of the greenhouse!) and squatting on the spot which needs fairly urgently to be my dahlia and sweet pea beds.

So the Engineer zoomed off with unusual speed and collected a load of enormous pallets from our friend whose business ships huge bits of kit around on pallets and is always happy for us to take them away - hurray, free wood!

The tarp which was covering the ground where the new compost heaps were to be sited was lifted and look who we found...

I did look it up - but now I can't remember whether this was the male or female slow worm - but whichever it was, the other one beat a hasty retreat into the hedge, while this one brazened it out for a good 10 minutes, obviously hoping we would put the cover back and let him/her get back to whatever they were doing under there in the warm and dark! Quite shocking, and in the middle of the day, too....

Once the resident wildlife was safely out of the way of hammers and stakes, it didn't take long at all really before these 3 beauties were up and ready for operational duties.

I am admittedly rather too excited about this than is probably good for me.  But it has felt a bit like the season has been moving on too quickly and I haven't been fully functional in the workhorse department of the garden.  And in a garden this size, that is no laughing matter.

I can now proceed with confidence, (and warp speed) to catch up with Spring before Summer suddenly appears!

In other news...

Under doctor's orders still for my recovering neck injury, I have been taking a daily constitutional first thing after delivering the children to school.  This has tended to vary between 15 and 30 minutes, (depending on the weather!) and I try to alter my route slightly each day so that I don't get bored.  Actually, I am starting to quite enjoy these little warm-ups to my day, and I have started to take my camera along with me to capture any particularly pretty sights I find.

Yesterday's walk provided many delights and here are a few of my favourites:

This stunning hawthorn tree in the front garden of this house just stopped me in my tracks - it's like a ship in full sail. I would really love to remember this image, to remind me to plant a hawthorn and leave it to grow into a proper tree, not just a (very lovely) addition to the chorus line of the hedge.

 The promise that Spring is very definitely merging into early Summer is captured best of all by the frothy mass of the cow parsley currently lining every lane around here.  Thatched cottage in the background, glorious blue morning sky...what more do I need?

This cute and curious little cellar door intrigues me every time I walk past it.  I love the bergenias clustered at the foot of the wall, and the healthiest climbing hydrangea I have ever seen.  But it is also attached to a house that looks like it has been miraculously deposited here from a French village - very pretty, very chic and very French. I was too shy to blatantly take a photo of someone else's house...what if they saw me?  But perhaps on another walk I'll be braver and then I will add the photo on here.

Onward to the Bank Holiday, then.  Better start praying for a continuation of this amazing weather... x

The great reshuffle continues...

First there was the levitating shed...then I got excited thinking that I might be getting proper compost heaps soon! But no, the Engineer had apparently decided that he wanted to press on with the re-siting of the greenhouse before compost heaps...sob.

Hmm...so at the peak of dryness after the driest warmest 3 weeks of spring ever, he chose to start hand digging out the trench for the new concrete wall foundations. Not my idea but hey - I wasn't the one doing it.

So pretty much all spare time last weekend he spent stripping turf, digging and then creating a wooden frame for the concrete, until at last it looked like this:

Admittedly, it doesn't look like it will be moving far, but this sideways shift will free up the rest of a much more usable compost bay and 'yard' type space between it and the shed.  Furthermore, as he is raising it onto a layer of breeze blocks before bolting the frame base down, I will also be gaining much needed headroom inside (as the current situation was set up for grandma, who is at least a foot smaller than me) and so the Engineer and I will no longer run the daily risk of bashing our head on the glass.  Coldframes are planned too (I am far too excited about this) but these will have to be constructed once the whole greenhouse has moved as space is a bit tight at the moment, as you can see.

Of course, the working week then took priority, and I took the time to move my precious babies in pots to a less risky location, as well as sorting out the loan of a cement mixer so that all this stuff didn't have to be mixed on a board...

...and bless him, just after lunchtime yesterday the concrete base was complete!

Today (while I take over child ferrying duties to rugby and taekwondo) he plans to press on with the bit he finds the scariest - laying the breeze blocks (and more to the point, getting them level....).  I thought it safest to leave him to it.

Reminds me of when I was a child, and my dad could no longer put off and avoid getting on with whatever DIY or garden construction job my mum had been waiting for months (sometimes years!) for him to do.  We definitely made ourselves scarce for the duration!!! Purple clouds of previously unheard of Anglo Saxon would be heard, and a general aura of bad temper.  Trouble was, he was actually very good at building stone walls and laying patios etc as he was very thorough and quite perfectionistic once he actually got going! Stopping him was another matter.  But he didn't enjoy it at all.  And they didn't have the money to pay someone else to do what he was capable of doing himself. It remains a family joke to this day that for some reason every house we moved to had a garden on a slope of some kind, which ultimately mum would demand was nicely terraced and patio'd so she had pretty retaining walls to plant up and maintain easily.  He said it was his purgatory on earth...

Meanwhile, as the Engineer was busily pouring concrete foundations he was also supposed to be supervising the children (as I had a Beekeeping Association Apiary visit afternoon), and when I got home he showed me these reassuring shots:

Is this what we call 'daddy supervision'??? Turns my spine to ice.  She knows that when I'm home she's not allowed above that first branch over the trampoline.

Fortunately Leo had opted for a less extreme entertainment:

...punctuated apparently with more frenetic bouts of Lego construction which resulted in the lounge carpet truly looking as if we'd been burgled by the time I got home.

But the first borage flowers are out! A legitimate call to crack open the first Pimms of the season if ever there was one xxx

It's soooo dry!

Lots of mini-chores have been keeping me in the house, and there seems to have been so much decision-making and research regarding the future building work taking up most of my time this week.  To be honest, I feel like I have barely set foot outside or really done anything productive for days.  Not a good feeling.

It hasn't helped that we haven't had a drop of rain for at least 3 weeks now.  In April this feels a very bad thing (I wouldn't mind it raining at night!) as of course all those little green shoots are appearing and desperate to romp away.  So far (touch wood) anything that was already fairly well established (ie, was planted in the autumn or earlier) seems to be fine.  I suppose their roots are down far enough to sustain them through this dry period. The Hesperis matronalis (sweet rocket) is a good example - it is looking so robust it's almost shameful:

Hesperis soaring away with flowerbuds looking almost ready to burst, among the developing mounds of geraniums and lavender (Hmm - I notice that I still haven't got round to relocating that poor little hydrangea yet)

Hesperis on the other side of the path, with the pale pink fuchsia which I chickened out of pruning in March - it doesn't seem to have any fresh growth emerging from its base and I'm worried I will kill it)

But the newly sown and planted stuff is starting to turn brown! Eeeek! I have practically exhausted my water butt supplies - if it doesn't really rain soon, I'm going to have to resort to a thorough drenching with the hose...

The daffodils are over now (so soon!) but they looked breathtaking all over the garden and even my wee half barrels full of accidental dig ups did better than I had expected:

but the tulips are early and looking amazing (considering they are last year's replants):

Ballerina tulips around the bird bath

The Ballerina tulips were the first up and out - but are still going strong several weeks in, though not as many have emerged as I remember replanting.

The Venetian tulips, also replanted from last year, gave me a few moments panic.  The Ballerinas were frolicking merry away, but all that was visible here were the promising buds of the darkest variety in the mix 'Havran':

They looked healthy though, so I resigned myself to the fact that the other two varieties hadn't come back the second year.

The Havran opened, looked lovely for a whole week or more by themselves, and then suddenly - whoosh! The others all appeared!

Venetian collection - 2nd year (Sarah Raven)

I think the stems may be a little shorter than they were last year, and the flowerheads a little smaller - though not a problem in a container raised up from ground level like this.  But they are certainly making a good show - for free!

I know the books always say some varieties do return better than others, and we had a cold, but less wet winter this year, which may have helped a lot.  But for me the possibility that I might enjoy more than 1 year's display mitigates greatly against the expense of buying tulips...well, that's my excuse, and now I have evidence to back it up.

The blue iris clump I unceremoniously shoe-horned into the front courtyard last year (at the wrong time - just before flowering so I only got one flower stem) has settled in beautifully and is looking extremely promising - but potentially very early again?

Blue iris with underplanted Allium 'Purple Sensation' just showing too

I 'recycled' my Allium 'Purple Sensation' from the container which also held the Venetian tulips last year (from which I learned the lesson not to plant alliums and tulips in the same tub together - the tulips were well over and looked awful, the alliums were in their prime but I was desperate to empty out the container to plant up the summer display!!) so I popped these around the iris as I thought they might enjoy the sunbaked dry heat which this area usually suffers. Fingers crossed, and we'll find out soon enough if it has worked.

Interestingly, having planted that iris at a totally inappropriate and unrecommended time of year - it looks like I might be about to do the same again this year.  Having weeded, dug and cleared the area here in the courtyard under the window, it's finally ready to plant (just waiting for some rain, as is every other job it seems..), and guess what I'll be tranferring here with the lavenders and mexican daisies? Yes, more irises! Don't do as I do, isn't that the saying? Hmmm.

Hostas are appearing rapidly despite the drought (and the rather worrying way they disappeared horribly in the late summer drought last year, making me think I'd killed them). Trouble is, with the much awaited rain will come the slugs and snails, won't they.

Variegated hosta on shadier side of courtyard.

 I took this photo of the Choisya ternata looking splendid in all its glory from an unusual position - inside the back of the border!  I wanted to remind myself how pretty it can look, as I plan to augment it's number to create a 'swathe' under the trees as a good ground cover and foil for some of the other plants I plan to move here.  But at the moment, from the other side standing on the lawn, it's quite hidden by the mass of something else in front and the slightly weedy and sick looking crimson camellia.

Choisya ternata in woodland border, looking delightful

Well, I'm off to rotate the chicken pasture before the ladies overdo it on my poor grass which is starting to feel the lack of rain too xx

Oh, the joys of a sunny week of school holidays!

As you can probably imagine, not much of note actually got achieved over the last week or so - other than the usual school holiday fine weather stuff - playing tennis and cricket in the garden (mostly umpiring emotional and dramatic falling outs: "Its not fair! He hits it too hard at me!", etc), the odd picnic, visiting friends similarly encumbered, all whilst desperately trying (and failing) and then giving up completely, at keeping the house clean, tidy and the ironing pile from toppling over and crushing innocent passers by...

So I will spare the further details.

Instead I have a nice selection of photos taken on our family picnic day trip to Stourhead, a National Trust property about an hour's drive from us into neighbouring Wiltshire.  It was ridiculously hot for April, and after a suitably sized picnic we just about managed to drag ourselves on the walk around the lake and gardens, but sadly no chance of a route march through the much more extensive estate that also belongs to this property - small person revolution would have occurred!

Small person demonstrating the astounding girth of the sweet chestnut trees lining the carriage drive leading up to the 'big house'.  

Such pretty views across the enormous lakes were to be glimpsed from every where along our walk.  The trees seem late into leaf here too, as well as at home.

I made the Engineer take several close ups and wider angle shots of this lovely shrub - I think it is a Corylus? But the amazing thing was the scent - incredibly strongly scented of lemons as you walked by.  I want one!

Daisy chain fun had by all

The 'classic' view up the lake toward the bridge, taken from inside the grotto

The windows of the Gothic Cottage

A rare shot of me! Totally unawares of this unauthorised camera activity, reading the info sheet about the history of this former cottage-turned-folly

Lots of fun always to be had clambering about amid the undersides of the rhodos

The gem of the old walled productive garden - a pallet tower 'Bug Hotel'. So beautiful and so transferable to the equally higgeldy piggeldy garden environment of Windy Acre...

Hopefully, as the first back to school week rolls on and I manage to catch up with all my chores abandoned to the chaos of holidays, I will soon get back to 'normal' diary service! x

Easter Weekend fun

Well, what a blisteringly gorgeous weekend it turned out to be!  Especially after the way that March 'went out' like a lion...who would have thought I would have spent most of Easter Sunday and all of today outside, in a t-shirt (no jumper!!!), and that we would eat both lunch and tea outside for the first time this year.

Fabbydoos!

We started the Easter celebrations off with our Easter tree, made out of dogwood prunings this year so even the twigs add to the colour - and it will stay on the table as long as it looks good (regardless of how many times it pokes me in the eye as I sit down to eat...)

Things feel at last like they are gearing up for the garden too - I potted on my little tomato seedlings and moved them to a sunnier home on the lounge windowsill:

It has been a busy weekend all around, with egg hunts at friends' houses, swimming trips to burn off all the excess chocolate, dinner at grandma's (more chocolate...) as well as general lounging around and playing too many computer games (post-chocolote blood sugar dips...).

But thank the lord, with the amazing warm and sunny weather today, and no where to go but the garden, we all spent most of the day outside in one way or another, even if Evie did spend half of it snuggled on a cushion in the tree house reading a book and the other half mixing suspicious looking 'potions' from the contents of my flowerborders, playing Masterchef (and not cleaning up after herself, as usual).

Leo, incredibly, made himself useful to daddy, dragging all the recently pruned material to 'bonfire corner'. I've been abandoning lots around the garden over the last few weeks during snatched half hours of garden work - desperately trying to catch up on lost time since the middle of February caused by my neck injury and subsequent evil cold virus.  March not a good time at all not to be firing on all cylinders!

The Engineer had decided this evening would be ideal for a good bonfire to 'tidy up' and round the weekend off properly.  So I leapt at the opportunity to point the pair of them (as they were obviously in a suitably destructive mood) at the scary yellow Choisya ternata 'Sundance' that has had it's card marked since last summer - I don't like it (prefer the green choisya) and it really doesn't help that this one seems to be unhappy in it's position, with the leaves looking bleached out and pale lemon even this early in the year - and the sun hasn't got going yet.  Add to that the fact that when the purple maple above it leafs up the two together look hideous, and it's all that catches my eye every time I look out of the kitchen patio door...time for the big chop chop!

Choisya Sundance - before (don't be deceived by this distance shot - it really is in a shockingly stressed state and not pretty at all)

...After.  Hurray! Swing your tomahawks in celebration!  Now I can press on with salvaging what's useful and pretty in the rest of this corner, before weeding out thoroughly, rescuing the honeysuckle and climbing rose which were growing behind but have collapsed, and preparing to replant something more pleasing to the eye.

While the boys were happily ensconced destroying and dragging and preparing for the big fire, I turned my attention at last to creating the willow windbreak, ready for my bees (whenever they arrive) and the development of the 'wild garden' corner around where the bees will be sited.

More on this, along with some pics, hopefully over the next few days, as I progress with my willow weaving. Couldn't take a photo of the work so far, as by the time I had finished the sun was very low and in completely the wrong place to try and photograph, unfortunately. Watch this space (and pray the good weather continues).

Stinky Brew watered onto the veg beds, and I'm ready to crawl into my bed, rather concerned that I will be paying for this excess of garden activity tomorrow in my neck...oh well, that's what painkillers and physio exercises are for, I suppose x

Caution - first batch of Stinky Brew mixed and set to cook

It's April! It's Easter! The growing season is beginning at last - so it's time to feed the soil.

Of course, following Mr Dowding's recommendations and topping up my veg patch beds with compost gives the soil a good start, but this year I'm also keen to follow Georgie Newbury's suggestion to feed the soil throughout the growing season with Compost Tea in order to bulk up the beneficial bacteria and nutrients using ingredients which are completely free.

So here's my first bucket of mix, set to 'cook' for 48 hours, after which time hopefully it will be activated and bubbling:

My first try at a batch of Georgie's compost tea recipe

I used a handful of fresh chicken manure, a handful of fresh horse manure (not strictly necessary - the chicken poo alone would do, but I had just collected a fresh manure supply today so thought I might as well), a handful of my own homemade compost, and a handful of fresh nettle tips then topped up with water. I put it by the back kitchen door, as it needs to be stirred every couple of hours and there I will pass it regularly and not forget about it.  My only fear is that a child (or indeed husband) will randomly blunder into it and create a Stinky Incident of International Proportions...

Hopefully it won't be too stinky in use - as her advice is to make a batch and use it every 2 weeks through until the autumn.

Meanwhile, while my back was turned, the Engineer took a jig saw to the plywood cladding of the existing steel I-beam in the lounge:

...leaving me with this handy sized hole - somewhere to hide the Easter eggs, perhaps?

Apparently the Structural Engineer told him to do it.  That's what they all say...

But yes, he needed to find out the size of the I-beam hidden inside, so that he could calculate if we could get away with replacing it with a much smaller beam, and so spare Leo numerous head injuries in later years (as the Engineer only just clears it at 6 ft, and we expect Leo to be taller.  Really though, it is quite an oppressive presence in an already low ceilinged room - I hope to paint the black over with white in here eventually, but a smaller beam would work wonders too.

Now - do I keep the hole as a handy place to hide the TV remotes from the children? Or attempt to block it up with something again for the intervening months between now and whenever we eventually start building work?  Answers on a postcard, please.

Unfortunately the pleasant sunny Easter weekend that was forecast last week has materialised somewhat mirkier and mislier.  Quite warm though.

My bench planter display is coming along nicely, with the narcissi I salvaged from accidental digging up last year, flowering well, whilst the forget-me-nots are just starting to think about putting on some decent growth around the feet of the daffs.  Wallflower 'Vulcan' is moments from erupting, but I worry that my sage plant isn't recovering from it's funny turn last year, and not much regrowth is visible from the base.  I may have to grit my teeth, chop it all back and see what happens.  And then I might have to admit defeat and buy a new sage plant...

The bench planters in early April - looking promising, even if the weather isn't 

I wanted to capture this scene of the encroaching evening today.  The light was wonderful, and the disappearing sun illuminated Crooks Peak in the distance.  When things start getting a bit too much for me, I need to be reminded that I am very lucky to be in such a beautiful place.

April sunset over Crooks Peak

Another of the mystery camellias flowered today - and revealed itself without a doubt to be 'Jury's Yellow'. Quite lovely, a definite candidate for careful relocation to a pretty container in the courtyard garden by the front door, once it has finished flowering.

Camellia 'Jury's Yellow', by the oil tank

The Engineer took pity on the poor children who had spent the whole of their first week of school holidays essentially cooped up at home with me because of the awful poorlies we have had.  Evie has already begun to bounce back (much quicker than me, that's for certain!) and so he decided to take them on a shortish route march up Brean Down.

But it looks like the view from the top was worth it:

This view probably hasn't changed that much since our Bronze Age ancestors stood here and wondered at the beauty of the earth.

A whirlwind of a day - or should that be hurricane?

Well Windy Acre certainly has lived up to it's name over the last 24 hours!

By crikey, we have been seriously buffeted.  The wind really got up, as forecast, Monday evening, and since then (and still ongoing as I type heading towards midnight tonight (Tuesday 31st), the southwesterlies have raged non-stop.  Interestingly, the BBC weather website is only describing this as 'fairly windy', but there is some real power in it.  It's quite weird, not gusts as such, almost a constant wall of wind that is just rolling towards you. And it knocks your breath out of you (especially as you're desperately struggling to stop the kitchen door being snatched out of your hand at the same time!) March madness.

Meanwhile, in other news today:

I have started with the cold virus from hell. Fabulous. Just what I need when I have two children on holiday from school to entertain...

Evie has it too.  Bless her, I can barely understand her when she speaks, her throat is that swollen.  Her poor head aches and her tubes are obviously squeezing her too - she's managing about half an hour of activity, lightweight colouring in, bit of biscuit making, before looking pale and going for a quiet lie down and read for a bit.  She isn't often ill, and I don't think she really knows what to do with herself.  She thinks she can just carry on as normal and then seems really surprised when she feels so horrible suddenly.

I could have quite happily put us both to bed today and stayed there, were it not for the other one, who is now merrily recovering from bringing this lovely germ into the house last week, so up for the full monty of holiday entertainment but with the added fun of a 'not quite well yet' short fuse and erratic blood sugar levels. What fun!

But also...

...the builders came to knock the Snug Room chimney opening out...I had hinted that progress might be imminent in this quarter, but as it was just a tiny 2 hour job for them, I was suspecting I might get bumped along the queue in favour of more pressing work.  Bless this high wind! Stopped them going up ladders and carrying on with the roof they are working on - and my job is a nice inside one, not weather dependent... hurray hurray.

Remember how it was the other day:

Well, I took no time at all for them to take it back to the opening we were hoping for:

A discussion was then had regarding the old crazy paved hearth that I had hoped we would be able to relay, and made the Engineer label and store so lovingly.  The consensus reached was that it was best for it to go, and have a new hearth nice and flat and easy to lay.  So they proceeded to knock out what was left of the old hearth and we found this:

The old Baxi that used to be under the fire (the one before the one before the nasty inset woodburner), which the Engineer discovered the other end of the ventilation pipe under the floorboards directly in front of the hearth.

Then the sides were made good and the worst of the holes in the pointing filled in, in preparation for my exciting foray into lime hemp plaster - to be continued once school is back!

Of course, now we need to decide upon and source a new hearth.  But I suppose I half expected that to be the case.  I had a feeling that the Engineer wasn't keen on rebuilding the old jigsaw hearth.

Now I can get the chimney sweep to quote me for lining the chimney, filling it and fitting in our little old stove from the big inglenook, and the end of this long game of woodburner chess is potentially in sight.

Rather cheekily, while I had the possibility of additional brawn captive on the property (even though I was running a temperature and less than useless myself) I convinced the nice builder chaps to help us spin the shed around in the veg patch and move it across into it's new position.

The Engineer has been working away at the preparation for this over the last couple of weekends, when he's had a moment.  But there was no way we could have lifted it by ourselves - it needed a person on each corner minimum.

Here is the shed in it's old position - ok, but not brilliant as it makes the access to the compost heap (to the far left) very tight and almost impossible with a wheelbarrow.  Also, I wanted to have more room for several compost heaps side by side, and the shed is currently sat in the middle of the space.

Process underway - existing compost emptied and spread, structure removed and new flags for feet in place. The Engineer then had to excavate a bit to get posts underneath so we could lift and move it.

Here it is spun round in it's new position...like magic!

Now we can re-construct a whole series of compost heap enclosures side by side, and once the greenhouse is re-sited to it's new position (I like playing chess with large heavy things, can you tell?!) then we will have a sort of 'yard' area alongside the compost heaps where the greenhouse is now, where sacks of potting compost, etc and the wheelbarrows can be stored.

We're nibbling away at it, slowly.

Speaking of nibbling...

Anyone for a slightly rotund gingerbread man?

Oh, the joys of the Easter Holidays!