Its a good life...

 The hot weather, we have been having, has been great for the plants. Those ferns and hostas next to the pond are starting to look great.

 We moved some of the chipped bark to create a path from the pond through to the end of the flower bed. When the plants grow it will be a quick way through to the patio.

 The vegetable garden...just turning green with tonnes of spinach, when they say perpetual, they really mean it! Soon we will take on popeye characteristics or turn Incredible Hulk green, one or the other....

 Meanwhile, the chickens have been here nearly a week and today has been a good day for them. This is Omlette who has finally managed to lay an egg with an intact shell. She may need renaming...

In fact, I had a surprise to find two eggs in the nesting box at the same time. That is a first for these ladies. It was a three egg day in total today. I was so pleased with them that I gave them some disgusting looking mealy bugs. They loved those. Now I know, that when I let them out into the rest of the garden, how I can entice them back into the coop if corn doesn't work...

Feathered friends

The last corner of the garden, behind the garden shed, houses our four new friends. They arrived only yesterday. I was told that they would be ex-battery hens but instead they are free range hens. They were going to be turned into pet food as they were apparently past their prime! They were part of  the lucky 1700, unfortunately another 6000 won't make it...

 My friendly neighbour and chicken expert, Nicky and I, went to the farm; the removal boxes made great chicken carriers, although they did need recycling by the time we got back!

This henwas the most curious and confident and I later discovered she was also an escape artist.

We had some very quick enforcements to make as she flew up onto the gate. I hope that it will now be high enough to keep her from doing that. She gets a funny look and stretches up her neck before attempting to fly through the chicken wire. I think she is curious about the rest of the garden. I've learnt alot about handling chickens from her already!

This (yes, very similar looking) hen has a completely different personality, preferring to be shy and retiring. She has been named Nugget by Sophie as she is the smallest.



These hens have no names yet either, I'm waiting for inspiration and contributions from my friends on Facebook!

 Last night, only one of the hens decided to roost in the house, the others preferred behind the compost bin! Fortunately, I managed to lift them all into the coop as they were sleepy.

It was an adventurous day for all of us.












In the morning, it was all worth it, with the first egg!

From Tulips to Onions

The front garden has undergone a transformation too, going from mostly mud to sea of Spring tulips (yes, some of them genuinely from Amsterdam) to

a mass of alliums! The only drawback is that the Alliums are in the onion family. I didn't think much about it until I tried to find the source of the onion smell in my study! The upshot is that the study recieved a much needed tidy up!

Garden update

 I can't believe that it's been nearly a year since I wrote in this blog. We have done quite a lot in the garden during this time.

At the end of last year, we had the deck area laid, it was great, just a little bit too cold to sit out.


We also had help with seeding the garden, it doesn't look up to much in this photo but it soon greened up!

Meanwhile, over last winter, we made some raised beds out of left over construction wood so that this spring I could start attempting to grow a few vegetables.

The tension wire fence has been great for starting the espalier fruit trees that I hope will eventually make a living fence in the different garden zones.

The pond area is looking more established this year but is still very green. On reflection, I could have sited it further away from the trees.

The overall garden is really starting to take shape now. I like this photo because everything is lovely and green and you can't see the weeds!

Battlefield

Things have been very busy in the garden since the arrival of Nick and the digger. The neighbour was wondering why we were recreating a battlefield, digging trenches in the mud, but it has to look worse before it looks better.

The skip is filling quickly as Nick gets to work removing the matted lawn and vigorously growing weeds.

 We weren't sure but this plant turned up in the garden - could it be Audrey from little shop of horrors? No, fortunately it is a large pink poppy.

Now the garden is flat, our cunning plan can be started.


This is the original plan for the garden. It is great to see things taking shape and evolving as the ground is worked.

The two circles and the S-shaped path are started.

The wooden gravel boards are put in place. This involved making them wet so they could bend around the curves of the path.

The type 1 is whackered in place on the path.

In the foreground, the left over edging from the front garden is used to separate what will be veggie patch from the rest of the garden.

Meanwhile, the green pond is looking more sophisticated. Nick has used the rocks gathered from the garden and from kind Freecyclers to create an edge for the patio. The granite sets were also left over from the original garden and have been re-used to edge the patio and gravel areas as well as create a bed for the smoke bush. We have a small area of sandstone that matches the front path. The ony thing that is missing is the bistro table and chair set!

 

Hello new plants

 

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?

A month of changes

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.