Monday, May 07, 2007

Gardening

Thought I'd show what I've been up to in the garden. I moved in (July last year) too late to plant anything summery so had to make to with some containers of things pilfered from Mum's garden. This is what the garden looked like on the day I completed on the purchase (June) last year.

And this is what it looked like last weekend!


All that stuff about gravel being low maintenance is total cobblers. OK, so you don't have to mow it every week. But weeds grow through it (this is with a plastic membrane thing underneath, which is meant to stop the weeds). The weeds grow along under the gravel and have roots that reach for far enough. And they grow like nothing I've ever seen so it looks **** if it doesn't get weeded every week. I had the raised bed in the corner put in in January (me, lift a railway sleeper or two? I think not, have you seen the size of my muscles?!), along with a new side gate as the old one was rotten.

The outhouse still needs sorting out. This is it emptied (it's usually full of my bike, assorted garden tools, various boxes, my veg box delivery and other random things). When the house was built (sometime between 1902 and 1909) it was the loo as the house wouldn't have had a bathroom. Fear not, I do have a bathroom now (one was put into one of the bedrooms upstairs) but my Mum grew up in a house without a bathroom and only an outside loo so we're not that far off those days. I need to get a shelf put up in there, but I'm not very good at drilling holes in walls so am going to wait until I find someone who can help.

These are potato plants, which have done what the instructions on the BBC gardening website (excellent for the completely clueless) said they would. One of the tubs is a birthday present for my brother, who has got a similar "low maintenance" garden and therefore can't grow much.

The neighbour at the bottom of my garden gave me some leftover cabbage and sprout plants. I'm not convinced they'll grow in tubs, but we'll see what happens. These tubs have a water reservoir thing in the bottom. I'm not sure how my garden's going to cope over the summer if the weird hot weather continues and I'm away most of each week so won't be able to water.


And I had LOTS of fun getting through the gravel and plastic (how come the weeds get through it but I have trouble?!) to plant three miniature fruit trees. This is the pear tree, with a lilac in a pot behind it. I added the log roll (after going all over the place to find an FSC certified one, they have them at Homebase in case anyone else wants one) to keep the gravel (grrr) at bay and then added bark chippings on top of the soil to act as a mulch (does it sound like I know what I'm talking about?)



And I've planted some things in my mini greenhouse and look, something green has appeared! It might grow faster if I didn't keep going outside every half hour to look at it. Ah, the joys of working from home...

This is, er, a Thing, which I pilfered from Mum's last year. I like the way the leaves are starting to grow.

And my fuchsia (as pruned at the same time as lovelife) is going great guns now! I won't mention the lovelife... And the Azalea (pink thing to the right) is flowering rather early - hmm, global warming in action again?!

And Blueadt saw my last post about painting the fence and how Claire had yarn to match her fence (scroll down to bottom pic) - and sent me a skein to match mine! Thank you!! This is Rowanspun DK and it's very yummy and soft. It doesn't look like a very good match in this pic (well, on my monitor anyway) but it is!

Oh, and I have been knitting. This is my first attempt at lace, and I'm totally addicted!

16 comments:

Linda said...

Your gardening is good and the lace looks lovely. The colour of the yarn is nice.

Anonymous said...

Wow, you've been so busy! Great accomplishments! And lace is fun, isn't it?

Anne said...

Lots of pretty plants - should soon be lots of tasty plants. Pretty pretty yarn.

But no chickens :-p

Seahorse said...

Your garden looks 100 times better than it was when you moved in!

For watering when you're away - have you come across Water Wizards? They're a sort of spike with holes in that screws onto any generic plastic bottle, to release water gradually when stuck in the soil. I got some as a free gift from Thompson & Morgan but they're quite cheap anyway.

Lovely lace!

Sue said...

Gardening is always a good stress reducer I think. Maybe you could get a neighbour to water your plants when your away, and perhaps knit them something in return for doing it. I love the lace knitting too, and the matching skein for the fence paint is just a beautiful color too.

Cat Feathers said...

Ooh, looks great! I'm a year further on than you with our garden, so I have herb and veg patches established but am now hunting for overall design thoughts and some non-edible planting ideas.

What about trying a few herbs for some reasonably drought-tolerant colour if you're concerned about mid-week survival? Rosemary is a particularly good one. And it's great baked onto bread with a little olive oil and some parmesan-style cheese...

Dawn Holland said...

It looks like you are really getting organised, nuisance about the weeds coming up through the gravel.

Piglottie said...

The garden looks great, and you can tell you've done a lot of hard work. I love lace too - was just wondering what the pattern was as its looking lovely?

T said...

The garden is looking great! Well done on doing all that work.

Yes, I want to know what your lace is too.

Jamie said...

The garden is coming along nicely, you've done some good work there. It is a lot of work and mine is in desperate need of weeding.

I put some herbs in my yard to cover some bare spots, and they've done well with no maintainance. Although, some of them are threatening total yard domination. :)

Mary Anne said...

Your yard looks fab this year and you have become quite a knowledgeable gardener in a short time.

The lace knitting looks intriguing and I like the colour very much.

Rain said...

Wow, you've got it looking lovely.

Ooh lace, can't wait to see how it progresses.

Kat said...

The garden is looking lovely! I hope those are organic veggies you are growing!!!! The lace looks lovely too, I have still to try that out! I will see you tomorrow for KnitLincs, 2pm right?

acrylik said...

Your garden is looking absolutely lovely, well worth all the hard work you are putting in to it. Looking forward to seeing progress pics.

Your lace looks great - lovely colours.

dreamcatcher said...

The garden is looking good! Love the yarn that matches the fence :-D Your lace is coming along really nicely too!

dreamcatcher said...

Meant to add - we have potatoes growing out of the bottom of our compost bin! Not by design, they did it last year too - must be some we put in to compost when we first got the bin!