What have you done in the garden today? Part 2

[ThreeRingCircus]

A continuation of the last thread.

Yes, I had to put a brake on DH’s smoothie habit when the mulberry tree was younger!

DH has just announced a business trip for 3 days, so that's me out there until dark

I could be out there 24/7 this time of year and the jobs just keep emerging with no end in sight.

Wheelbarrow has a puncture so I've got to try and get over to the tyre centre as DH has already destroyed 2 new inner tubes trying to fit it with a crowbar hmmmm. Oh well at least he tried.

@ComeIntoTheGardenMaud sorry if it came across as me trying to teach you to suck eggs re your clematis, I should have twigged this is the Gardening thread! If it's any consolation I also lost a gorgeous Montana due to overzealous pruning, it turned its toes up just to spite me.

I’ve just wandered into my greenhouse to water and all my little seedlings have been munched. Honestly, my borders are all flattened after torrential rain on Thursday, my strawberries are sparse. My roses seem to have done 3 months of flowers in 3 weeks , and look very much after the party and the only thing truly flourishing is the slug and snail population. Feel disheartened.

I loved Gardeners World this week though. Did anyone see? There was a lovely lady called Brenda who had a “ polite garden” and an “impolite garden”. She gardens from an office chair with an adapted claw thing. Gardening makes her happy and it makes me happy too, mostly.
I visited someone this week who has just spent a fortune to have her rural garden terraced, adorned with 2 levels of plastic lawn and a living wall and borders of plastic plants.I would much rather have seasons and slugs.

Oh and there’s a snail stuck in the spout of my watering can. Bleurgh. Better than a dead frog but that is faint praise.

Put some donated tomato plants into bigger pots and added compost. Dead headed roses. Watered generously, swept scruffy bit... went to beach!

I loved GW too. The scale of Adam’s garden is easier to relate to (although yes, of course, one can also take ideas from Monty’s) and Brenda was fabulous. I loved when she said she had realised many years ago that she didn’t want to garden, she had to garden. We should all be more Brenda.

Today I found a nice pot out of my pot stash to put a chocolate mint that I couldn’t resist in, then I put some reduced lavender in more pots from the pot stash and tucked in a few of the bargain plug plants I bought and grew on but forgot to label. Then I took and sent a picture of the rose my cousin grew for me from a cutting, it has flowered and smells divine. I found some scruffy plastic pots and stuffed them full of old bulbs I found when I sorted pots the other week, they might grow, they might not, but I hate throwing things out for the sake of a bit of spare earth and compost. I sat in my new chair and read for a bit, entertained the cat, made plans for tomorrow to fill in the new hole the fox has dug. Finally I went and had a little rummage under the potato plants to see what was occurring and have enough potatoes for supper! Also admired my teeny yellow courgettes. Happy day.

Oh that's happened to me lately @Zebracat I started off thinking it was a leaf and then heard it rattle. 😅

Yep Adams garden is relatable, if his intonation is slightly odd at times, but I like his garden. . I like Nick and Frances and Rekha all having new gardens too.

I’ve been so busy on the inside of new house that hadn’t had anytime in the garden so today was the day. Friend came over with some baby lupine, foxglove and centaurea - all now in as are my cosmos, ami magus and snap dragon jumbo plugs that have spent about 3 weeks in water.

Met my neighbours who are lovely and got a tour of their beautiful garden and we have plans for a hedgehog hole as there is one that has appeared. Found one raspberry and one tiny mulberry on my dwarf mulberry that has yet to ge planted. Apples of some sort growing well on a tree covered with clematis Montana vine.

Blow hard down the spout and it’ll drop back in to the can (voice of experience)

Or poke with a garden cane, if you don’t fancy playing your watering can like a trumpet!

I keep thin canes at handy places around my garden specifically to knock dead snails out of my watering can spouts.

I'm trying to be good this month... 20 year anniversary and both children moving schools in Sept, so a lot of expense on the horizon.
However...I've had a pink flowering Chinese witch hazel in my basket for weeks, only £10. I'm just hovering as RHS seems to suggest it's not fully hardy, any views/experience?

I weeded yesterday and was a sweaty, muddy mess at the end. Nothing garden wise today apart from hopefully the admiration of Dad and Stepmum, as they are visiting and haven't seen the work I've done in the past 6 months!

Who’s talking dead snails? Mine are always live. I get hazelnuts too. Good demo of the Codd bottle

I've had a pink flowering Chinese witch hazel in my basket for weeks, only £10. I'm just hovering as RHS seems to suggest it's not fully hardy, any views/experience? Loropetalum? No experience, but I reluctantly rejected it for the same reason

Yep, that's the one. Bums, it's so pretty, and ever-green, and pink! Wondering if I should just take a punt anyway...

My loropetalum was very short-lived, despite being on the patio in an urban heat bubble.

The snails I poke out of watering cans are alive too. Apart from lily beetles, I don’t kill things in the garden, and the snails always survive a gentle prod with the cane and being thrown over the fence.

He hee .I’m an over the fence thrower too, but only into the completely uncultivated part of neighbours garden. I can’t quite fancy tooting on a watering can, so it will be cane. I hope it’s the little horror that ate my basil and marigolds!
I have written a list with a few easy wins at the top. Sweep paths. Plant a primula, cut back the roses on the path.

I chuck them into the street, in the hope that when they choose their next garden home it won’t be mine!

Wrap your hand round the top to make a mouthpiece. No contact with can required.

You can turn big jobs into easy wins by subdivision. "Weed front garden below study window"Weed round Araucaria""Weed magnolia bed" "weed under front room window" - and an impossibly large job turns into a series of jobs you can tick off after half an hour or an hours work. And don't forget "Check pruning requirements" "put secateurs and pruning saw ready"

@MereDintofPandiculation - a woman of much practice 😂

Which - the snails in the watering can, or the ability to make myself feel I've achieved a lot when in fact I've done damn all?

I've just given the greenhouse its regular Saturday watering + tomato feed (yes I do know its Sunday not Saturday) and picked the alpine strawberries and garden strawberries, thrown a handful of goosegrass on to the compost heap, and watched various flying insects (wasps, but not Those wasps) around the cherry tree stump that I'm now leaving for them (it used to be a perch for a large brass owl before it got too crumbly).

Three weeks ago there were aphids everywhere. But now I keep having ladybird larvae land on me, and I'm finding it really difficult to find any greenfly to put them near. I guess predator cycles are always behind prey cycles.

I’m currently watching the great tits eat aphids from the apple tree.