The Beaky Blog continues

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Well hello guys and gals,

I havnt been blogging for a bit – too busy with loads of stuff.
The Garden is now looking awful as me and the other half have been deciding to restructure some areas and move plants (not all moves have been sucessful!) The chicken garden is now a building site – with the chickens and Beaky (the duckling who is now growing his/her adult feathers and is almost ready to introduce to our adult ducks) shoved unceremoniously to one side.

The reason for this is that dear hubby has decided to build a new elevated section of decking to stand out over a steep area of the stream bank that was too tricky to do anything with. So the whole of the chicken garden area is changing as this will be the approach to the new deck area. Ultimately there will be a gate into a small orchard area, with bark chips and slate pathway to walk through onto the elevated deck which will have a pergola shade above it. Underneath the new deck there will be a small garden store for kids bikes etc (which currently have no home). So its all systems go as I have been asked by the horticultural society if we will open the garden again this year for the village open gardens day (August Bank Holiday) – its their 20th year.

So we really do have a lot to do.
The viburnum hedge has lost all this seasons growth due to leaf mining caterpillars, 3 of my planting beds need complete overhauls and the top patio has empty hanging baskets!!!!

Oh I do like a challenge.

My ‘kind’ neighbour has weed sprayed all the stream banks on his side of the stream- they look delightful bright golden brown and crispy – a joy to see.
The Ash tree across the far side of his meadow has had an unfortunate accident in the gust wind this week and half of it has collapsed – I really dont know how long it is going to take him to clear it as he never uses his meadow and it isnt in his line of sight from their house

The tree was lovely and it is home to a family of little owls – fortunately they seem to have survived the tree splitting as I saw them last evening.

The veg garden is doing well – harvesting chard, salad stuff (leuttice, radish,spring onions) kohl rabi, mange touts and masses of alpine strawberries. My first bag of early potatoes were a bit of disappointment, but did just give enough for a hungry family of four and they were delicious.

Greenfly are rampant -not too many big caterpillers (yet) Im paying the kids 5p per caterpiller found and removed. So the summer moves on!

I will let you know how Beaky takes to being introduced to the big ducks this weekend – I hope it goes ok.

• 19 Jun, 2009
• 6 likes

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