Gardening -- Lite

Tired.
Watered the front window plants. Planted the Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata 'Sundance') in front plot.

The lavender has survived so far, but at least one of the baby foxes likes to sorta 'lean' on the front ones a bit.

I'm Lazy

I'm 45. That's my excuse. I'm still exhausted from all the digging and pulling and tugging and yanking out of the ground I did over the weekend.

Those bushes and flowers I was going to plant today. Didn't do it. I'm pooped.

I did dig the dirt out of a big old sink. Pix tomorrow. Under it was a HUGE toad. I needed it to find another hiding place but it was scared of me. I was scared of it! I called binooby's hubby and asked if there are posionous toads in England. He would know this -- being in Wales (d'oh) *Men know these things* He's a sweetie, he managed not to laugh out loud at me over the phone or correct my pronunciation of any words ;) His advice was probably not, but wear rubber gloves and wash hands throughly immediately after moving it.

But every time I bent down to try to get it, it hopped. Slowly. It was really FAT! I think it was just living under the old sink and eating all the fat, really FAT, slugs that wandered by. His sides were bulging! There were a bunch of slugs under the sink, too.

And this one gi-normous worm. I have never see a worm this fat. It was really FAT, almost as big as the slugs and definitely longer. I was scared of it too. Man, was it confused, I think it might never have seen light or something, like those gi-normous worms scientists discovered deep, deep in the ocean. This worm under the garden sink was like one of those. It was so dark under there that even though I had turned the sink on it's side and it was still daylight I had to use the camera's flash to get a decent picture of this gi-normous-never-seen-daylight worm. So I got a couple of neat pictures of it.

Then I moved it to my compost bin. It's gonna be really happy in there. I just know it. It's dark and there's rotted horse poo and rotting food and stuff. Worm Riviera, right?

So that's today's did list:

I removed a big bunch of dirt and roots from an old sink. . .I forgot to tell about the roots in the sink. They were crazy. Really crazy. When I got almost to the bottom of the sink I hit an obstacle. Eventually, I got an edge of it to come up so I pulled thinking it was just a bit of roots. NO, it was a huge, really HUGE, mesh of roots that wrapped all around the bottom of the inside of the sink. I literally was able to peel and the dirt with it like a sheet of contact paper. Crazy stuff in that garden. Wow. Anyway, the did list --

Fat worm into compost bin. Frightened fat toad into hopping. Made peanut butter/honey sandwiches for wild critter (the foxes, natch). Oh, yeah -- I did some academic stuff too. *Oh, yeah! I'm growing garden biceps & triceps, but I can't show them, they ache*

Pix tomorrow. I'm that exhausted. I'm old I tell ya! 45. Can't I get a zimmer yet?

Lavender & Rosemary (& some ugly stuff than had to go)

I'm exhausted, but proud of myself. Here's what I did today. It took much longer to get that big clump of some-sort-of-ornamental-grass out. Then I planted 12 lavender plants and 2 rosemary. I hope the rosemary will become bigger bushes. They are supposed to have pink blossoms. The lavenders are white and deep purple, 3 different heights and different foliage, one very silvery. All smell wonderful!! Apparently, slugs don't like them, but the bees love them and the one of the tiny song bird type birds was interested too.

BEFORE yesterday and today's work (beyond the table on the left):


MORNING:


AFTERNOON:
1 (I cut all the leaves down yesterday, but today getting the huge root clump out took ages)


2


EVENING:


The rose was already there. The trellis was blown down in a wind storm. The roses must be finished blooming before they can be pruned back & the trellising repaired. In the meantime, I'm working around it.

Then I unloaded 5 of the 75 litre bags of compost into a big compost container that my neighborhood neighbor who owns the local cafe, gave me. It's great! I completely love having it. Load stuff in the top, remove from the bottom. So much better to use than the compost pile in the back of the garden! I added veggies from the little Saturday organic market in front of the cafe.

Then it was time for the foxes to come out again!


Tomorrow is an easy gardening day. I'm just gonna put some of the shrubs and other flowers into the front.

Good Grief!

The owners are gonna have a showdown about the garden. Found out today that the owner downstairs has been renting her place out saying that the front part of the garden belongs to her tenants. The nicely cared for part. The part that my landlady, and now I, have been caring for spending our time and money on. When my landlady called her about sharing maintenance costs, downstairs lady hung up on her!!! So now, my landlady is calling a meeting of the owners to discuss the garden and it's maintenance.

See, this is what happens when there is shared ownership of the land, but not of the flats. Really, it should have been worked out from the start, when that woman bought in a few years ago. Gotta say, this is one of the only times, I'm glad that I'm a tenant.

Of course, it's gonna to really burn me up if the tenants downstairs start using the front of the garden instead of some another section. It wouldn't take that much weeding, pruning and mowing to make the 'middle' section usable and pleasant. He said they just want to sit out sometimes on the weekends, have their friends over sometimes. For now we have agreed that we will keep each other posted on when we are planning to have guests over. So I told him right then that I might be having someone over tomorrow early evening and on the 28th.

The Big Picture

The Grand 'Design'

I finally just had to put it on paper because I can't remember it all. I expect this will take all summer/fall.



Of course, this does not include the one plot of vegetables in my neighbor's section of the garden. I might plant it out this weekend.

Follow the foxes. . .

Ok, here's a link to a bunch of fox pictures.
If you need a password use: PASSWORD
Click on a picture to see a large view.

The picture are blurry, they move around almost constantly and it was dusk.
Enjoy!

The babies aren't weaned yet. Surprisingly, she allowed them to nurse out in the open in view of me the past few evenings.

Medicine sandwiches aren't working so we're being sent some stronger medicine.

I've found a great garden centre and got great help refining the design I'd drawn up: shade front, big front window ledge, the front u-shaped bed, all the back flower beds -- including some ground cover to replace the ivy (once I get it pulled out), and "Corsican mint" to go around the path stones which need to be dug out too. So cute, "Corsican mint" and smells nice too. So I started buying the plants for the front and flower beds. I'll pick them up on Friday.

Horse Poo & Bubble Bath

Today I re-located to: compost bins and pile, a huge pot, flower and vegetable beds -- 9 bags of 2-year old organic horse poo compost. Each bag contained 75 litres of compost. They were very heavy.
This is what the front now looks like. It is ready to be planted. I'm considering camellias. This is one of the plots I covered.


Here's what it looked like when before I started a month ago.

My landlady came by, we walked the garden and front and discussed what I can plant. She's pretty much giving me carte blanche and will reimburse me for whatever plants I buy. She also taught me how to cut back roses. Neat. She also helped me bring out her table. I've decided to put a few plants on it as a centerpiece. This is what my garden space looks like tonight.


Then I took a long perfectly heated bubble bath.


Monday, I'll post a link to pix of the foxes.

Not about gardening!! Can you believe it?!

Second post of the day.

I have art! Earlier this year when two Americans visited. For each it was their first visit to England & Europe. They each gave me a work of art made by them. I took them to be framed and picked them up yesterday. As soon as I arrived home I unwrapped them and hung them.

One is a painting by Bri from Louisiana. It's in my front room facing a huge mirror on the mantle piece so it really I have two paintings. I love the koi, it reminds me of an old family friend, a former professor of my parents' who is now 93, an expert orchid grower with a koi pond in his back yard. Oh, he's also a world re-known historian too, but his love is his orchids. So for me, this is a little piece of North Carolina in my little London flat.


One is a photograph by C.H. Paquette. This photograph. I have the first in the link, "Atlantic City, skyline". C.H. has a special touch with Chocolate Polaroid. It's an amazing film and his work with it is nothing short of magical to me. Now, every morning when I wake up, this the view I have just outside my bedroom door, in the hall, protected from direct sunlight.


Beauty is all around me. I am lucky.

I have horse poo & I'm happy about it

The horse poo arrived this morning (Friday). It's really 2 year old composted organic horse poo. I figured if I was going to have to pay for dirt, it might as well be really good stuff, better than I could 'make' in my own compost pile. Well, this is.

The man who delivered said I should use it soon because it's full of worms. This is good, very good. The worms will pull the compost down into the existing soil. This is even better, it means I can just spread it and plant directly into it without having to dig it into the ground. YAY, thank heavens for small blessings. Oh, did I mention, it's 15 bags, 75 litres in each bag?

Not sure what it will do to the slugs and snails that get covered over. Like these:



I also mowed yesterday. For all the weeding and clearing I've done, I still find something truly wondrous about the look and smell of a freshly mown lawn. There is a hand push-mower here and I use it. I love the way it rattles as I push it back and forth. The grassy patch is small. It only takes about 10 minutes to mow it, then I sit in my chair and read for a while warmed by the sun and surrounded by the light fragrances of the newly cut grass and the roses.

Progress & Rain

So, this weekend, my downstairs neighbors decided to set up a table and chairs, with sun umbrella (in England?!?!?) in my portion of the garden. You know, the beautiful rose filled, rose scented section that I, and I alone (with help on rosed by my landlady) have been weeding and pruning back in to shape. It's incredible to me that people will not do a lick of work to improve or maintain the garden but as soon as someone else has made it pleasant to be in they are quick to stake a claim and settle down for a day of garden leisure.

The weekend was dry if cloudy, not too hot, cool even. Perfect weather for weeding and especially mowing the grass. But I couldn't do it because I was uncertain about how to deal with the table and chairs issue. I mean, they just materialized while I was out on Saturday. They tenants downstairs never said a word to me about the garden about putting table and chairs out there. I'm really appalled, I would never do something so arrogant. I could never watch as someone else did all the hard work and then when things are prettier, neater and weather is getting better saunter out and settle on to enjoy the space. The nerve. It bugs my landlady too (I adore her) because this has been a problem even when she lived here. The woman who owns downstairs doesn't contribute a thing monetarily or come by and work in the garden then tells her tenants that they can use the garden. The nerve of some people!! Last year, I stopped maintaining the garden after a while to stop them using it. It worked but the garden looked like crap and it made me a bit sad to look at it and embarrassed to have people over for parties out and has made that much more work for me to do this year. But I'm making progress. Things are shaping up nicely.

Sunday I'd wanted to get some work done in the garden before going off to a museum exhibition. I couldn't they were out there, not weeding, just sitting at the table. Did I mention that I don't even like the look of their table and chairs either?? What to do? What to do?

I decided that to not let things linger too long I would have to do something today. I also decided that there was no reason for me to feel defensive about the situation because they didn't even bother to talk to me about what they were going to do. I told a friend that I wondered if they were taking the 'it's better to ask forgiveness than permission' approach to this. Surely, the remembered that there had been a table and chairs out in the garden when they moved in months ago.

So, I took action. This afternoon, I moved the unsightly table and chairs onto the unsightly concrete alcove below my bedroom window, completely out of my sight but just outside their apartment windows. Yay me. Later, in between rain drizzles I managed to get errands done (including a bit of groceries), I got the last of the pruning in the front done (that is now ready for new plantings!), and this evening it stopped long enough for me to go into the garden and weed out a bunch of stuff along the flower bed's edge and the path. Ivy and other vines will now become compost.

my garden chair


Then I was hoping to sit outside for a bit and read one of my new photography books for a while before coming in. But as is the way with English weather, as I was getting to the end of my weeding energies it began to rain yet again, but more steadily this time so in I am for the night.

runner bean blossoms


the first strawberry -- it was sweet like candy!

Sleep well, all.