What have you done in the garden today? Part 6

[MereDintofPandiculation]

What have you done in the garden today? What went well? What surprises have you had? What could have gone better?

Back from holidays to a windswept garden. Left DD in charge with full instructions. A few things in the greenhouse have clearly not been watered at all - the nicotiana, sunflowers and a pepper are dead. The tomatoes are a bit yellow but the courgettes and cosmos are ok. No deadheading has been done! The dogs have flourished though.

I’m so happy today! I’ve planted more into my borders after having to start from scratch, the roses are looking beautiful there’s bees all over the new salvia and nepeta. Tidied the garden mowed the lawn and cleared out the garage. Just wish it wasn’t going to rain all week so I could go and enjoy it! Trees arriving next week. From having nothing last year to an actual garden this year has made me really very happy! 🪴

Gardens are such a source of well-being and happiness, aren't they @WildFlowerBees

I have been in the garden all weekend and everything is starting to look really good. Still picking up dead leaves from nooks and crannys. I just threw them on the border as tomorrow I'll dig them in and they'll disappear.

Tomorrow, I'm finally transferring my dahlias from their pots and troughs into the border. Every time I've got to do the job, I get pulled off on a tangent, and I figure they are perfectly happy in their troughs, whereas some of the seedlings and hanging basket plants in the greenhouse have been wilting and suffering from not being potted up, so I had to prioritise them.

my other job tomorrow is to plant up the sweet pea and morning glory which have been doing extremely well compared to this time last year, when it was freezing cold, blowing a gale with horizontal rain. Everything in the garden this year is doing so well, which is a joy to look at each day.

Your new plants will appreciate the rain, @WildFlowerBees

I planted some pots for the summer to replace the gone-over spring ones. I’ve got some more still to do because my local nursery didn’t have everything I wanted. Pulled out the remaining forgetmenots and did various other bits of tieing in climbers and tidying up.

It has been such a good thing for my mental state having a garden. I've worked so hard on it these past few months, but especially the past few weeks since my dog died.
Today I had to hurriedly pot up some dahlia shoots when the main tip of the plant got broken in the strong winds. Sadly couldn't save the sunflower which bent in half.
I had to give a lot of my recently planted plants a good soaking. The strawflowers were drooping as was my DA Claire Austin rose. It's first year in the garden & the buds are about to open. Can't wait!
Dh has been putting in a new fence with the help of our neighbour. It's been very hard work due to the sheer amount of concrete in the ground from previous fences, but it will be worth it. I have been staining the panels, mainly so said neighbour doesn't use any creocoat on them. I always wanted dark fences like dark grey or even black, but dh was not keen at all, so we have gone a light golden brown which is really lovely. It's like there is dappled light behind the silver birch copse.
I have some long vines from the wisteria which I am soaking in water to make more pliable and am then going to weave them around an ugly hanging basket. It's currently lined with black plastic but it's not very nice to look at. Hopefully the weaving will be an improvement.

Finally got my water feature connected and working this morning- really happy with it!

Weeded all the green alkanet and forget-me-not out of the top 2 beds.

Intended to weed the back garden but was very easily put off by about 3 raindrops.

Instead wondered how hard it would be to dig out my old rambling roses that have already finished flowering and just sit and spread disease the rest of the time and replace them with some nice Etoile de Hollande.

Just picked up some rubbish and sycamore leaves from the front - I'm in an end-terraced house, next to a public path.

The sycamore leaves are courtesy of a council ground tree which has self-seeded in hedges all round the neighbourhood - the bane of my life: I'm forever pulling up seedlings and (when I've missed them earlier) saplings. There's one in a boundary hedge that I'm still battling.

I don't even know where the local sycamore trees are.

Am on my third round of seedling pulling this year. And if I ever find the person planting poppies...

I don't mind the Welsh poppies - they're quite pretty and easy to pull up if they're in the wrong place. The sycamore saplings drive me batty - I miss them as seedlings because they sneak under my shrubs and hedging and then I have to resort to my root slayer to dig 'em up.

To make matters worse, the council sycamore has infiltrated the main drain at the other end of the terrace. The council refuses to remove the tree, stating that it's not their problem because the drain is only half on their land and there's a brick wall (I kid you not) on top of it. After I put in a complaint last year, they finally pruned the tree back, but that's as much as they would do.

Scottish Water has told me that if my wet room floods (again!) then they can pull down the wall to access the drain and cut the roots. Sheesh!

Funny about poppies, the number of times I’ve collected Welsh poppy seeds from DM’s or scattered other poppy seeds and I get maybe half a dozen some years. It’s willowherb and carex pendula here. Drives me nuts.

Oh, I've always had problems with willowherb, no matter that I try to get the seedlings as quickly as possible. I blame it on the park at the top of the hill.

The willow herb is an amateur weed compared to forget-me-not and sycamore.

We have lots of willowherb but also vetch which is really annoying to pull out. We live opposite a grain field which is the culprit.

I’m also constantly pulling out sycamore and oak seedlings.

This weekend I planted up quite a few lavender plants to fill in some gaps as our local garden centre had an excellent deal of £4 for a 12cm pot of Hidcote lavender. We seem to have lost our 3x winter flowering heathers so I’m mulling over what will go in there, thinking a ground cover California Lilac.

I do love lavender. I thought that I'd lost all of mine over the winter, but I've discovered a couple of surviving plants.

I love forgetmenots. They fill in the borders in spring, suppress weeds from growing and then are easy to pull out in big handfuls.

And I like poppies when they occasionally appear if I’ve disturbed the soil. So far they’ve always been a lovely double raspberry colour.

I don’t mind Welsh poppies, but have an ongoing sedge battle as it sets off my hayfever. Got on top of the dandelion battle early this year so hopefully won’t have so many by summer.

It’s been raining a bit today so I tackled the tidying of the greenhouse, when it wasn’t raining I led a hose around the garden so I could use it at the top of the garden without having to unwind it all the time. Invested in a drill last week so used it to put tool hangers up in the shed.

now a coffee and a muffin x

Love Welsh poppies. They come out before the big red ornamental ones.Hope the wind and rain stop before they come out. They get so easily battered.

V long day here and I'm rather tired, but I've just read that as you leading a horse round the garden...

I think Im going to have to get some Welsh poppies. Used to pop the seed pods in my great nannans garden as a kid. Better than toys, was great fun.

That's me. I've pulled thousands out of my beds this spring, no exaggeration. "Bloody Sycamores!!" <scowls and shakes fist as more sprout dammit> It is exhausting

I couldn't manage to dig up the b* in the hedge, so resorted to cutting it down and applying weedkiller. (I know...I shouldn't use weedkiller.) The damned thing is still growing.

Picked up two lovely preaged terracotta pots off FBMP. Now to decide what to put in them. Half Chelsea Chopped a well esrtablished geranium and phlox. Planted some violas and monardas. Planted another small row of lettuce in the ground under the beans and a couple of rows of sacrificial nasturtiums round where I'm going to plant my cucumbers (they are not quite ready to plant out yet). Although my ladybirds seem to have done a good job on the aphids so I might get to enjoy the nasturtiums.

I planted nasturtiums once 5 years ago and now I can't get rid of them.

But the caterpillars love them. Rather the nasturtium than my cabbages. NDNs fancy pigeons have worked out the net though. Lovely birds, absolute menaces though.

Last year they picked off my tomatoes, but didn't actually eat them, just left them pecked and on the ground. Considering getting an owl statue or a falcon of some sorts as a deterrent because as much as I'd like my cabbages to remain intact I also dont want the birds getting stuck in the netting.

Next year ill plant them in rows rather than as gap fillers and then I might be able to get a framed cloche over them, but its my fault for not using my brain this year.