Of Waterfalls and Wooden Planks (by sarah)

After the heavey rain the plank of wood that goes over the top of the waterfall to raise the level of water in the water garden (the pond) was missing - we found it at the bottom of the water fall - here are some pics of Alaric and Babara getting it back out again.

Clearing the dead stuff (by sarah)

End of April and the beginning of May we discovered is the time to clear out all those dead plants and things that sit there in the flower beds dwarfing the flowers that they were last year.

You snap the dead stuff off which is really easy most of the time and then its bomfire time which as pyros is fun 🙂

Jean decided to help 🙂

New Turf Path (by sarah)

Over six week ago now we cleared our veggi plot and split it in half with a turf path - mainly becuase I couldnt reach things easily to water/weed them - the trueth is I still struggle slightly with this but the path has made things alot easier. Here are some photos of the process - complete with Jean 'helping' 🙂

Jean and Dandilions (by sarah)

I have been training Jean to pick dandilions and only dandilions! We spent ages saying 'no not that yellow one Jean look only these yellows ones!' as I gently guide her away from some prescous prize flower of Barabaras which just so happens to be yellow!

However she does spend most of her time taking them in and out of the punnets, she will even 'claim' dandilions from other peoples punnets!

Potting up the seeds (by sarah)

Yesturday we started digging over the plot and putting a turf path through the middle of it to make two smaller managable plots - I could not really get to everything last year so we are going to see if this improoves things!

We still have a bit more work to do on the plot as we have the ground dwelling catipillars to get rid of for a start!

Still today I started potting up seeds but becuase I am a skin flint I decided that the peat pots from last years house guest forgetting to water cuasultys could be used this year - so there I was and later Al, emptying them and trying not to crack them in the process!

I used the soil from the wormery - and oh what bliss! Compared to last years mole earth and riddling compost through sieves milarky!

However I did randomly find a pice of blue j-cloth in the wormery along with some of those stickers they put on fruit! The bizarest thing was that the j-cloth had some how become rubbery and elastic when the ones we use are not elastic at all!

The only down side to the wormery soil is that I had to extract some worms before using it but I dont think this is too high a price to pay!

I potted up cucumber seeds, cauliflower, carrots in a seed tray (this is a bit of an experiment and is completely against the instructions!), lovage and tarragon.

I was sad to find the globe artichoke packet upside down with no sign of the seeds especially as I was going to give some to Barabara who had realised she had forgotten to get any this year and wanted some.