Garden maintenance getting away!

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It’s such a long time since I wrote a blog, though I have added some comments, that I thought it time to add one.
On a note that I commented on about plants that we are given, the first picture shows the Nicotiona that I was given and planted in the wrong place. Thinking it was the dwarfer variety it got put at the front, but of course it’s the taller variety and now has to be propped up.

The next photo is not a given one, but one purchased from a road-side stall, can’t remember the name, but it was planted in the border and grew to prodigious size, over 7ft! It was so rampant that it had to have 2″ × 2″ stakes like the sort you see round trees in parks, just to hold it up! With lovely thick blue string to keep it upright, it was as you can imagine more an eye-sore than the striking yellow flowers intended. It got moved to the back and side of the pond where it is really dry which kept it in check and this year is only about 5ft tall.

Part of the front garden is still not completed, the grass has so much of the wild Potentilla in it that I daren’t have it ploughed up as the roots will be everywhere! So, it’s wait again for it to be weed-killered off and then I might get on with the wildlife pond I am planning. The Japanese anenomes I still haven’t managed to dig up or kill off from around the yew, they seem indestructable! The peacock, who always manages to get in the picture, just in case he misses anything, has lost his tail feathers now so is faster on his feet – especially when there is cake about!

The Judas Tree (Cercis canadensis) has grown and drooped over the grass and though it seems a shame to cut off a huge part of it, it will have to be sorted somehow. Behind that is what was supposed to be a wild garden, which has had poppies, buttercups and all sorts of flowers in it, but is now swamped with bindweed and the ghastly ground elder! Must get up there and thin it out.

The begonias have been a picture this year after a late start and were placed along the edge of the pond to deter the heron from visiting, they look good reflected in the pond, but do drop their flowers into it! The pond is another project, as it was here when we moved in and is not level – the back is lower than the front so you get all the liner showing along the edge. Would be nice to have it full.

Now a few oddments from the garden. The fuschia which is one of the ‘climbing’ ones, which of course doesn’t, but is waiting for the training wires to be fitted – more work to do!

The garden bed which has to be drastically sorted. This buddleija will have to come out as it spreads so far it smothers everything else, not sure which sort it is, but not the usual growing type, this has arching stems and smaller, but more abundant flowers. Seems a shame to cut it out, but it seeds everywhere, so will use one of them to save it. Somewhere in this bed are more Buddleija, white, red and dark purple, bottle brush, smoke bush and hibiscus!

Pretty little eryngium, I also have the big blue ball ones which the bees love – but seed everywhere again.

Unknown bulb which is just past it’s best.

Sad Hostas eaten by the army of slugs!

Pause while I investigated the cackling of a chicken which will insist on being up in the garden, digging up my plants. She was cackling loudly before she got chased back down on the field. A few minutes later the peacocks were hooting loudly, so out again to see what the problem was – probably the feral cat in the garden again, they hate cats and make a different noise entirely when that or a fox is about. Nothing found, but there are so many beds for it to hide in. Back to the plants.

Sedums waiting to do their thing later in the year, another one loved by the bees. These recovered after being flattened by the jackdaws and crows after we hung peanut feeders off the lamp-post. They got knocked out of the feeder and the birds rampaged over the Sedums to get to them. They also knocked over my winged fairy ornament and broke her wings, fingers and ears!

Thank you for reading this far, new policy, little and more often writing blogs. Now must go and bake cake for the peacocks, they are running out!

Cake baked, not as fast as implied on the blog, another four in the oven!

• 9 Aug, 2016
• 7 likes

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