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[Lexilicious]

Welcome to the gardening quiche :)

Earlier malarkey was here

All welcome whether you are a Sackville-West or a Dimmock, an Oudolf or a Swift. Whether you dream of digging or dig for dreams.

Fair weather or foul, we've got disco lights in the potting shed and fairy lights on the terrace. Bring gin, wine just doesn't cut it round here.

There is something going on here. DH went to let out our hens this morning and found one dead. :(
She was fine earlier in the day, positively bouncing in fact so I have no clue why.

So, digging a grave in the rain was the only gardening I did today and then retreated to light the fire and watch the Queen on TV.

Was hoping it might be my stall Maud but no-one's been by, far too wet!

In a very short break from the rain yesterday evening I raced around the garden and found that...
:::I now have a LOT of pods on my autumn/winter planted Aquadulce broad beans and Alderman peas.
:::The Amethyst dwarf french beans I planted out last week are looking healthy.
:::I have a few lovely flowers open on my climbing rose 'Open Arms' which is three or four times the size it was when I bought it at last year's Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Now needs to be trained into the pyracantha hedge.
:::The brassicas have been unmolested, but I am going to get some nemaslug anyway.
:::Leaving potted-on small plants in washing-up bowls when you think the weather is going to be dry is a bad idea when the weather turns out to be monsoon-like.
:::Allium flowers haven't lasted long this year at all - most going to seed already.
:::I am going to have some properly enormous onions (Radar) - I may look to see if I have a local show I could enter!
:::I am never going to win against the weeds in the front garden.
:::I do need to prune or restrain the Glasnevin else it will actually mean you have to duck to get in the front door. Same with the honeysuckles on the fence in the back garden or they will start clinging to the washing line.
:::I need to mow the lawn once a week diligently if it's going to be neat as well as wildlife-length. I'll take the blades down a notch when there is enough flowering elsewhere.
:::The Monarda 'Squaw' (Hampton Court again) is evidently an x Triffidus hybrid . It is taller than it got last year, and covers at least six times the ground area compared to the 1 litre pot it came in. No sign of flowers yet.
:::I don't think the tomatoes will have enjoyed being outside already, and the chilli seedlings on the top deck of the growhouse may not have benefitted either.
:::My two 'adult' chillis (grown from Marshalls plug plants last year and overwintered indoors in 9 inch pots) which you all laughed at me doing Artificial Insemination on a few weeks ago... are bearing four more chilli fruits!!

Got interior demolition projects going on this weekend so not sure how much cultivating I will be able to do, but friends coming round for the 'smashing party' are also quite garden-y, so hopefully will get some good swops going. I took fibre-pots of lupins and gazanias grown from seed to a friend last week, and more gazanias to my mum, but the fibre pots were carried in those veg punnets that mushrooms and tomatoes come in, so with all that rain they got a little bit drowned.

Commiserations to the chicken death club. I found yesterday that the box housing the bluetits was askew... I think the local cat had managed to whack it, but it stayed on the wall of the shed - just at an angle. Hopefully the babies just got a bit of a headache and didn't fall out or get abandoned.

Wow, Lexi! You have been busy. What are you doing inside the house? Are you going open plan?

Goodness me Lexi! Well done.

The hurdle is going up

The house project deserves a thread of its own, Maud, but in short we are reversing an earlier open-plan disaster. First we have to take down a purely cosmetic (which is not the same as aesthetic!) 1970s brick wall in the living room which will give us about 15cm more length there, and also taking out a hall cupboard upstairs. Then get a builder to make two stud walls - one downstairs to (re)create the living room off a hall, and one upstairs to make two bedrooms out of one. The upstairs hall cupboard has to go so that one new bedroom door can be punched through. Those two walls (and all the associated radiator plumbing and lighting/electric circuits basically deal with the front half of the house. Just the back bedroom to go and we can sell up enjoy our lovely home...

Good luck Lexi - we are mid house project. I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end, and ignoring the dust oh the bloody dust and the fact that our back yard looks like something Steptoe would feel at home in.

I eased up on slug watch and 2 of my courgettes have been completely eaten. I shall be waging war with a vengence tonight

What is going on with the birds? I'm off to see the chicken lady tomorrow for two more. Should be entertaining introducing them all.

Noticed today that my morning glory are flowering. They are still only around 18in to 2ft tall but they are flowering! Trouble is as they're at the back of the bed you can't actually see them...

Also like to report that we went to see a puppy on Monday! She'll be coming home mid-July when we get back off holiday. Much excitement in this house. Now to puppy-proof the garden...on a positive though she may keep some of the rabbits away - one actually got into the veg plot today, I think it snuck under the door. So cheeky.

Saw two red kites flying over the garden today. It was amazing. They were being chased by a buzzard and flew really close. Couldn't believe how huge they were.

MIL bought a large box of primroses so I put them in the crab apple beds, where we have already put pulmonarias, hellebores, primulas and snowdrops. The hazel fence on the one side of the crab apples really sets off that bit of the garden, with two box balls flanking the path at the top, a rectangular bed on each side with the trees in and then a strip of grass of either side. I think we may have to demarcate the grass on the other side as well or it may look a trifle lopsided.

DH and I spent a lot of time admiring the half finished fence.

What are you going to call the puppy Bertha? I'd love a puppy.

Humphrey your garden sounds amazing. How lovely to have the space to plan where things can go! I love hazel and DH has been coppicing the odd bit out of the hedgerows in the lane to use in the garden. So far just pea sticks and sweet pea wigwams, but would like to work up to hurdles to chicken proof our gappy boundaries.

Planted yet more sweet peas. DCs and I decided they would be fitting to surround the chicken's grave.

I can't believe your Morning Glories are flowering already bertha.Mine have succumbed to sickness and been binned.Welcome to the world of Squidgy puppy kisses and roly polies on the plants.We got a puppy last year and the first picture i have of his sitting in the flower bed sniffing the Lavender.He sits on my alliums [cocks his leg against the pots of Pelargoniums]and cools down sitting on top of the clematis.We still all love him to bits though.Lexi you sound amazingly energetic.Good luck with the demolition which sounds like fun.
Can any of you recommend some small shrubs[up tp 1.5-2] suitable for an sunny acid free-draining soil.I have dug out more Laurel bushes[and roots] and now have more space for pretty flowering shrubs.So far i have planted Hydrangea x 2,ceonothus.Lavatera barnsley White,convolvulus,choisya and Polemonium.I am thinking about a Philadelphus[to replace the one that became swallowed up by the Laurel],Exochorda The Bride and maybe a viburnum[but which one?].

I've spent the whole afternoon taking every single plant out of my lovely side garden, and parking them down the side of the house. This is to facilitate the stump grinder men who are coming tomorrow. There used to be two large trees in the beds - cut down before we bought the house - but stumps are quite big and need to be gouged out by some digger thingy. Tree stumps are deeply loved by termites, which will move on to the house once they've chomped the stump (that sounds a bit rude).:o

Once all this is done, we can plant where the stumps were and feel termite free.

Thank God it's winter, and the plants; clivia, bromeliads and hoya will be forgiving if drenched and fed on return. It'll also give me a chance to build up the soil of the bed with soil wetters and native compost, before putting them back.

Eek, echt. That sounds like a huge undertaking. I have a tree (well, cistus) stump that I'm leaving to rot. I worry about honey fungus, but at least we don't have termites to contend with.

It wasn't too bad, Maud. The soil is effectively sand, so digging out is easy. I think the acanthus/i? might sulk, as they were new in summer, so don't have the tougher leaves of the second year growth. Everything else I've dug up is leathery and can take the trauma. I hope.

O know what you mean about honey fungus. Not sure there's anything quite so devastating here, for plants, at least. Just focussed on keeping the termite buggers away from the house.

It's lovely to hear all the goings-on and growth in the UK. Very nostalgic, and getting me thinking of planting sweet peas.

Eek, echt. That sounds like a huge undertaking. I have a tree (well, cistus) stump that I'm leaving to rot. I worry about honey fungus, but at least we don't have termites to contend with.

Whoops. Weird posting effects as the wifi comes and goes.

Is your move to Oz permanent, echt, or do you expect to return to the UK at some point?

wowsers. Just had one fabulous garden salad for dinner tonight... radishes, salad leaves (still going from the cut and come agains I planted before winter!) rocket, peas fresh from the pod, and baby broad beans just blanched for a minute in a steamer basket.

The slugs have finally got going... caught one in the act hanging on to a bamboo pole and munching a dwarf bean leaf, a snail doing the same from the wall of the growhouse to a chilli leaf, there's a slug amongst the salads, and a snail waiting on the edge of the potato sack planter... well, there was until I showed the snails the exit and put down organic-friendly slug pellets for the rest. Mwahaha.

Also harvested some hellebore seeds and am looking out for the right moment to take off the aquilegia seedheads.Poor things in this wind though - I have some recumbent alliums now and the irises in the pond are also somewhat askew.

very very of salad! My third sowing of lettuce and spinach has failed.

Was it delicious?

Anyone else petrified of what the wind is going to do to their garden? 50 MILE GUSTS forcast for tomorrow night. I wish they had finished the fence.

Yes i am Humph.Have just staked my Delphiniums with those stupid green plastic hoops with a cane through.Managed to break the first two with too thick a cane.Ended up just lashing them to a climbing plant support[assistant at Dobbies didn't know what she was talking about].Also planted out lupins and Foxgloves in the rain[meanwhile pondering whether the foxgloves will still be standing after tomorrow].

Yes Humph, the wind is trying my patience here. My asparagus (first year so not harvesting them) are right by the gap between sheds, which I thought was ok because the woods behind should be a good enough windbreak. It is not really working... The peas and beans are also taking some strain, but all I can do is go and tie them in a bit more in the morning.

Oh and the salad was proper delish, too.

Very blowy here too. My asparagus getting hit hard as well (first year too) even though they're up against a fence. Worried about the trees too as we always loose some in high winds. Neighbour had a tree come down earlier this week and it wasn't even windy then. Lucky he's on holiday as it came down on his drive and would've squished some cars if he'd been home.

New chooks are here. Old chooks being a bit pecky with them but we'll see how it settles.

We're naming the puppy Meg.

Here for good, Maud. Both DH and I are in our late 50s, with no hope of work in the UK if we returned, and we're in work here. We sort of knew that when we came here, that things would have to turn very bad indeed to make us come back.

I've had an email from GQT asking if I would like to ask my question on the phone for a 'post bag edition'. It's a total yummy mummy question as well, hee hee.

Oh!! I'm missing GW!!

I missed that there was a hurricane forecast. I wondered why the patio pots fell over.

My veg plot is just weird this year. Everything has bolted, gone massively leggy or damped off; nothing looks right and there are huge gaps in my rows which really disturbs me as I do like a neatly spaced row . The only thing that has been really successful in terms of germination and continued growth (so far) are the parsnips - which is unusual as they are normally quite tricky. The courgettes and squashes look like they're on strike waiting for a change in the weather. Even my leeks have stopped growing.

Still, the flower beds look lovely. I have a lupin in the little corner bed which is just amazing at the moment.