Armchair Gardener.

Glad you are still making progress Dwyllis, and you will soon be able to get out again.

Happy to see you are getting about a bit quicker. It must be really frustrating. However don't over do things!
Just think of all those little plans you can make from the armchair! I'm sure you OH will be over the moon :))

Best wishes D for a speedy recovery. Sheila

That's great you're feeling a bit better, Dwyllis, a big op can knock the stuffing out of you, and you're probably still getting over the anaesthetic, it can make you feel ropey for a while too!
You've had a lot to deal with lately Dwyllis, but it's good for you to have a slow pootle around your garden, you'll feel better in so many ways!! Thinking of you!!

Hi Dwyllis ..

I hope you'll feel stronger every day, and soon be pain-free.
Good idea to do lots of arm chair gardening ;o) x

Glad your feeling so much better.

Hi Dwyllis
So pleased to hear you're on the mend. With the surgery behind you, you can only get better now...day by day. Take the pills though honey, you obviously still need them. What a lovely garden you are going to have. I always love the planning part. Maybe when you feel a bit better your OH will take you out to have alook at those beautiful delphiniums again. You need the inspiration- don't you????

Pleased you are making good progress Dwyllis, a bit at a time is the way forwards, very easy stages no matter how frustrating it is, armchair gardening is good for you...

Sincere thanks to all of you above. After not a great day pain-wise yesterday, I decided to go back onto my stronger pain relief last night, in order to get a better night of sleep (for my poor OH too). I will just have to take the anti-nausea pill along with it, for a couple of days, & that should see me ok to drop down to normal pain relief again. Mid-morning now, & am feeling better than yesterday. Having said that, I did get into the car late yesterday afternoon & pop into the supermarket for a few things for dinner (& ginger biscuits for me). I thought my OH would be pleased, but he was not a happy chappy & told me I was not to do that again unless he was with me. Bless him. Re the Dowdeswelle delphiniums, Poppylover ... sadly it is a closed nursery, as their main work is the propogation of new delphiniums, but they do open to the public on 23 & 24th December annually, so I will definitely be heading over to them on one of those days ... a lovely Christmas treat for me.

Oh it would be lovely to get perennials for Christmas! Glad you are on the mend. It's sometimes a rough go...but it all takes time. Don't over do...I know it's easier said than done. something you said about putting a pond where there is a naturally wet place in the garden rang bells with me and as I recall there is a caveat about that plan... a bit of looking on the internet will give you all the details. may not be a problem if you are putting in a natural pond (lined with clay) but if you are planning to use the butyl liners or any other type of container ground water can run into your pond and cause you water problems... as I said ...check it out, might save your OH some work in the long run.

Thanks for that info Lori. I will check it out. My OH is now having second thoughts about putting it in .... we would be using butyl liner & when he inquired about it at a nursery which specializes in water features, he found out it is quite expensive, & this pond would have to be large to take in the entire damp area. I would love to have a natural pond somewhere in the garden, but on looking at the area again, it is where I had planned to put in a central garden bed, so we might fill in the whole area, putting good drainage material at the bottom & topsoil at the top, to bring it up to the level of the rest of the garden. That might solve the problem & it it does still get a bet soggy, I can plant it up with things which don't mind have wet feet sometimes ... such as some of the irises & astilbes, which could be incorporated into that garden bed more easily than a rather large pond.

That's very sensible, Dwyllis. A smaller area with a butyl liner on higher ground is probably better. Maybe you could put in a false streambed that would serve as drainage during the wet time and a defining feature for your planting of bog plants or wet lovers. Do you have much stone on your property? (our hillside is pretty much nothing else! lol) When I dug the pond at the backdoor I only went down about three feet and had tons for rock to use to anchor the butyl liner and to arrange around the pond. hard work though.

Not much stone at all on our property, Lori. In the driveway side, we hit some sort of clay not too far down, but not in the rest of the property ... just shingly soil as we dig deeper. The soil looks good on the other side of the house, where we have put in that new fenceline bed. It looks reasonably good in the back area too. Three feet seems like a good depth for a pond. Do you have fish in that pond? And plantlife?