What have you done in the garden today? Part 3

[ThreeRingCircus]

The old thread was filling up so I've created a new one!

Link to old thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/4823202-what-have-you-done-in-the-garden-today-part-2?reply=128367673

Packets of mixed seeds are distinctly naff. Fair enough if you have a big garden, or are looking at overall design. But I have a small garden, and I want to spend 15mins at least walking round it each day, and seeing which colour cosmos is out today definitely beats looking at the same mass of white with pink tips every day. (I don’t extend that to cornflowers. They must be blue).

Yesterday - remember that big job I talked about starting a few weeks back? Mega-prune of a 6m mock orange and its associated Clematis montana. Well, I finished it! And I pruned 2m off the top of a Pyracantha and a couple of stray sticking out branches, so it’s now neatly espaliered along the boundary. Flushed by success, I trimmed the bay tree so DH can get into his car (the fumes are overpowering. Too much bay scent is not necessarily a good thing) and finished up by clearing dead foliage from a stretch of flower bed and revealing the stone slab edge to the lawn. I’m well pleased with myself!

And so you should be! I’m exhausted reading about all you’ve done 😊

Thank you. That gives me hope. I did think it might still be early up here, but I saw that someone on another thread had as good as written theirs off already which gave me pause for thought.

There are some crocuses in flower here in Lancashire - as it's still only January that seems early. I don't think mine are doing much yet (though I've not checked) - maybe they're going to be a bit erratic this year, frosts etc can be quite significantly different due to microclimates?

I've just been out and mulched one of the beds I made last year and laid cardboard/old compost bags and bark over the next bit to extend it. It's -4C here today so more than a little bit worried about the bare roots I potted up on Sunday... But I suppose only time will tell and at least they were cheap.

I also only realised yesterday that the average penstemon isn't very hardy. Which is annoying as I bought quite a lot last year on my mum's recommendations. So I'll be watching them with bated breath for the next few months.

My Exchorda The Bride are both in bud which I'm very excited about as they were one of my favourites last year.

Is it nearly spring yet?

There are some signs of nearly-spring here: Pulmonaria and hellebores are flowering and snowdrops and N Tête à Tête are close behind. I’ve just been pruning roses and removing dead leaves from emerging plants. It felt good.

I have been weeding someone's garden today, mainly digging out unwanted wild iris. While doing that I found this nice sized piece of Staffordshire combed slipware (1680-1750) which I was very pleased with. It pops up here and there in gardens that have been cultivated for a long time and the patterns can be quite lovely so it's always a treat to find.

I made a start on the smaller of my 2 mainly rose beds. I cut back the miscanthus and severely pruned the roses, and weeded about a metre square. It looks dreadful, was quite pretty before. Probably another 2 hours work to do on that bed and need to find somewhere to keep the miscanthus clippings as I use it to mulch my strawberries, but I need to weed them first. I’ve quite enjoyed all the days when it was too cold or too wet to garden. I feel a bit daunted. But the birds were chirping away, hellebores and winter jasmine in bloom, bulbs showing, I know I’m lucky to have a garden.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast how lovely! I love finds like that. Sadly my garden dates from 1970. But the Romans camped two fields away so I live in hope of unearthing something one day.

@BestIsWest land uses can change a great deal over time so you never know what might be underfoot! I wonder if the Romans dropped anything interesting. It may be deep by now, but moles are good at bringing things to the surface and their hills are worth rubbing a stick through.

Gorgeous! I have a few fragments of Victorian china which have surfaced in the garden but nothing as old as that.

We have some intriguing lead pipework in our garden. I suspect it may have fed the glasshouses or veg garden of the manor house whose former grounds we are in the far corner of.

The oldest pottery fragments I've found in gardens locally have been Tudor, identified by the green salt glaze. Finding these things is a real perk of the job. At one garden I worked in the property had once been the village post office and I found all sorts in the soil. I had a deep longing to dig up the entire garden and sift through the soil 😅

This reminds me that our old next door neighbours had a collection of unbroken Victorian glass bottles unearthed from the bottom of the garden. I understand that refuse collection had to be paid for, and so it wasn’t uncommon to bury rubbish in the garden.

That is beautiful, @Vegemiteandhoneyontoast! I regularly find Victorian stuff, and once a WWI medal. But I wouldn't recognise anything older. A colleague of mine found a thirteenth-century remnant (I forget whether it was pottery or jewellery!) in the grounds of a local medieval castle. He reckons he was lucky to have been employed to dig there; I think he spotted it because he's a trained archeologist. Pretty cool either way!

How lovely @Vegemiteandhoneyontoast ! I haven’t ever found anything before apart from previous owners little stone statues.

Haven’t had a chance to get out yet but have seen a couple of snowdrops, some crocus and first daffodil is out.

Oh what a find @Vegemiteandhoneyontoast that's fantastic!

I have one, solitary crocus poking up through the lawn here in Berkshire. I planted about 50 last year so am living in hope that more will appear. 🤞🏻

It's still quite early for crocus, @ThreeRingCircus plenty of time still!

that's a lovely find you have there @Vegemiteandhoneyontoast For me, it's like the lottery and raffles, I never win or find anything! Hoping my luck will change as it's £122MM tonight on the Euromillions 🤞

Blow forgot to buy my Euromillions ticket again. I sometimes think what I'd do if I won, but never buy a ticket.

I love that combed slipware - such a positive pattern.

I'm our garden, I once unearthed a medium sized enamel bowl that had been buried not very deep and upside down. I suspected it had been used for nefarious purposes but quite what, I don't know.

All this garden's ever unearthed is Victorian clay pipes, round here was nowt but fields until the 1930s.

previous owners little stone statues

Statues of what, @Seaitoverthere? I'm very curious!

And what was being done with the enamel bowl?

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast statues is over egging it really! Little stone figures of birds, a man fishing and also a broken Bill and Ben so far. There is a stone bird bath and a little stone bird with a broken tail that had fallen off but I’ve stuck it back on as I like it.

That sounds like some of the stuff I see, @Seaitoverthere, only they're not buried but placed around the garden. Sometimes I get told why they're there, such as the hideous plastic gnome in one garden that turned out to have great sentimental value.

Marbles turn up fairly regularly and I now have a collection of all I've found. Some are quite old and are handmade.

I love that, bit by bit, gardens will start to give you the stories of who lived there before and hints of what might have gone on in the past.

I unpacked the plastic gnome my DC gave me for my old allotment the other day 😀I’d love to find marbles, here’s hoping.

We have the sales details from the 70s and it says there was a vegetable garden, shame that has gone but I intend to reinstate one. Step over Apple was planted the other day.

I do like a step-over apple. What variety is it? And is the gnome going to keep watch over the vegetable garden?