It's been another month and we have been busy. This was what it looked like a few weeks ago, in the spell of very dry weather. In fact it was so dry that our rain water tank was empty.
Our pond was very dry and looked very red.
We decided that we would tidy up the miscellaneous dried out foliage from last years' pruning and had a bit of a bonfire. We were very careful not to let it get out of hand, but a spark still managed to land on my fleece jacket and melted a hole in it!
You know I mentioned, plan B with the weeds...this is it! A ground cover membrane. Before we laid it down I dug out all the weeds again, for the third time. We decided to stop at that point with the membrane until we have levelled the ground a bit more but I intend to cover the whole vegetable garden so that I can concentrate on growing veggies instead of weeding.
The friendly Robin, that likes to eat while I dig, was most annoyed as all his favourite food is now hidden.
In the battle with the weeds, I also resorted to Round up in a more concentrated form and can now say that I am winning against the ground elder!
There may be another succession of weeds but I feel more in control.
While we were tidying up we discovered a store of nuts, all of them eaten. At least, even though there isn't much in the garden except weeds, the wildlife has found places to hide.
The garden isn't completely devoid of plants, there is this shrub with yellow flowers...
My favourite tree ...
And some white bulbs...anyone care to identify them?
There is also the crab apple blossom.
There have been plenty of frogs that have survived the big upheavals of last year. this one is going courting, taking a flower to its mate...?
We have seen at least five frogs in the garden, one of them even ran into the edge of the bonfire but survived by hot-footing it into the pond, steaming...
The front garden is beginning to take shape. I am determined not to put lawn down (because I don't want to have to cut it; being green or laziness - you decide).
We have buxus balls aligning the path, some dogwood bushes next to the fence and a magnolia stellata tree.
It has very pretty star flowers, this is its very first one!
There are also some hardy geraniums- (Buxton's blue) which are beginning to grow, maybe by my next blog entry there may be flowers.
Thanks to the generosity of a fellow Freecycler, we now have three new shrubs in the garden. They are in temporary positions until we manage to get the landscaping organised. The one on the left is called bridal bouquet but we are not sure about the other two.
These little pink hardy geraniums came from another freecycler and are doing a good job giving us ground cover to compete with the weeds.
Meanwhile, this 'weed' is of the same family but is allowed to stay temporarily as it has some colour.
Ironically, these blue geraniums have arrived unannounced near the apple tree. They look remarkably like the ones that I have planted in the front garden.
The pond has now turned from red to green, the water levels are quite low with all the dry weather. Unfortunately, our rainwater tank is empty so we would have to put mains water in the pond. We are trying to avoid using mains water as it contains higher levels of phosphorous and nitrogen which would mean that more algae would grow. Hopefully, we will be able to get some waterplants soon but we have decided to wait until the landscaping has been done. Next step landscaping....who's got a digger?
