What are we doing in the garden 2025

I found the pic @Robert Bowen - 14th April 2021


This is how the pond looked on the same day. God loves a trier eh?

 

@fairygirl Thats a great photo !! Huge beastie !!

 

I was probably just lucky that I looked out the window at the right moment @Robert Bowen
I just looked out the back window a few moments ago, at the same moment a little fluttering of young long tailed tits appeared. I've hopefully got a couple of viable pix.

 

Well a very fruitful morning.
Picked yet more morello cherries and loganberries.
Also picked our first sweet peas grown from last years seeds. Fabulous scent.

 

Seeing the heron pics reminded me of a couple that have visited my little pond in the last few years

 

Blimey, I stopped work in the garden to get lunch and have just looked up and it's absolutely tipping down - bouncing off the windowsill. 'Light rain' was forecast!
Still it's all good and suits my present project. I'm digging out the earth from a stone trough on the terrace and filling up various receptacles. Thank goodness I'd covered them with plastic before I came in. Found lots of TnT daff bulbs so have kept those aside to reuse elsewhere.
I've yet to work out how to transfer the soil to use as a mulch onto the flower beds below the terrace - the wheel arch of my old garden cart has cracked badly so I daren't bump it down the steps. One bucket at a time I think!

The trough has got to be demolished before the terrace is - it's leaning away from the house.
I never liked the trough much anyway and as there's concrete underneath it gets very dry quickly and nothing seems to survive in it for long in these hotter summers. One more watering job I won't have to do.

The rain has stopped already.

 

One photo tells it all:



The Child planted (=emptied the bag in the pond) my Frogbits that plopped through the letterbox today, I ordered them on Friday via Amazon from Lincolnshire Plants. Pretty good delivery I directed the plantlets to the farthest corner away from the pumps but they decided to navigate straight away to the most moving part of the water

She also carefully planted the annual Chamomile "Free seeds with every issue" seedlings behind the Bergenia zone, and the creeping Campanula I took from the previous house. It will nicely tie in the lovely white upright Campanulas given to us with the one upright Campanula that is apparently a rather vivid purple.

I toiled to reclaim the part of patio where we had one of the scrap soil mountains, potted up some Asda begonias and my trailing ones into big clay pots and spent time to adjust the chair most aesthetically. (The Child was muttering something but the sound of the rain drained her words )

The Child dug up the next bit of ground to house my Penstemons. If it stops raining, we'll mix in bagged compost, gravel and whatnots and plant the area up.

Bit by bit, things are starting to look less like a scrap yard and more like a garden.

 

@Selleri , if you've had enough rain, send it here ----pretty please

 

I've been watching the weather radar - any time it gets near my town it splits in half and goes around us!

 

Picked some broad beans. Made morello jam. Then tackled part of the veg patch.
How come with so little rain, the veg we want is slow growing but the weeds are HUGE?
Then onto more ivy removing. We think it is holding the fence up but it is getting too much so a lot has to be removed.

 

This morning I've picked one and a half pounds of blackberries and 8oz of gooseberries. They are both very early ripening this year. My strawberries look as though the current crop is coming to an end so I'm giving the pots a good soak in buckets, then will cut off the fruited stems and give them some fertiliser. They are Mara de bois ones which hopefully will keep fruiting.
I've picked up a line of small cobbles along a path to reuse elsewhere and pulled up lots of gone-over Love in the Mist plants. That ought to give more room in my main flower bed for rain to penetrate better.
Now thinking what to do this afternoon - better get cracking instead of thinking!

 

I have a great affection for herons, I grew up with them launching themselves silently out of dykes, ditches and rivers of East Anglia scaring me half to death as I ran or cycled along.
It was their silence that I liked, it's much underrated by many.

 

Harvested garlic, reasonable crop and at least worth the effort unlike last year. Elephant garlic still to go. Dug a few adventurous potatoes up.
This afternoon it's plant the winter brassica time.

 

@NigelJ our garlic is rubbish but then that is because we didn't plant them out until very late. However we gave some garlic from last years harvest to our son and he planted them out in the Autumn and has a great crop.

 

Mine went in late November, early December, I should get it in earlier, but I never do.
Brassicas planted and multiple rows of leeks, don't want large leeks and planting leeks a bit later tends to avoid leek moth.