What have you done in the garden today? Part 7

[Jimmyneutronsforehead]

Continuation thread from MereDint's previous threads.

Put in the last of the bulbs. I will reap my reward in spring,hopefully.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I looked up on RHS as well, as I wasn't familiar with pennisetum. Can you bring it indoors or up against a protected wall over the winter - it say it needs frost protection with fleece or that strulch stuff, maybe all is not lost 😊

we've had a lovely settled spell this past week. Yesterday it was that lovely gentle warmth that stops me from digging up my dahlia.... just another week or two left in them... seems a shame to disturb them when they've got so many new buds on them.

I cleared away some nettles by our compost heap, emptied out two bags of old spent compost and scattered some wild flowers seeds in the hope they'll do something before winter and give us some April/May colour. Also scattered some Aubretia seeds down onto the wall, to see if they'll take before the spring.

lots of clearing up - hydrangeas were poor this year as they hate drought. Even my most established one suffered with very few flowers, I had tidied them up a couple of weeks ago, so I gathered up all the debris and did a bonfire while the breeze was going off into the field.

after an entire summer of Morning glory not giving me a single flower, I noticed there are flower buds all up the stems. We'll see if they'll come out over this week, before I lose patience and throw them away.

I've got a stack of bulbs to plant @Hedjwitch might do that next weekend. I had a beautiful display of tulips this spring so I plan to do the same this year. I found adding some grit and bulb fibre into the compost was a good formula,

I love making a lasagne and a couple of tubs of miscellaneous bulbs that I can't identify (there are always a few that get separated so I just bung them together and they add a nice informal splash of colour by the front door.

I planted some in-the-green snowdrops in March this year, so I'm hoping they didn't suffer from our drought. Hopefully they've survived.

My cosmos are flowering! At last! I’d given up hope and pulled a few up.

Had a busy few days, mowed the lawn, cut back some trees and the euonymus in the front garden. Repotted some hydrangeas into bigger pots and filled the old pots with bulbs.
I’ve got some heathers and more bulbs to go in but need the potted dahlias to finish first.

My problem (well, one of them!) with the Pennisetum is that I have quite a small garden, and where it is placed is where I previously had a wonderful ornamental grass in a focal point. I don't think I can take seven months of staring at a pot wrapped in fleece and I don't really have enough space to put it anywhere else (if I put it in the shed I will forget to water it). I'm going to put the ornamental grass back, bring the pot closer to the house and see if I can find somewhere to hide it behind some of the other ornamental grasses.

Honestly, my garden is so small that i need everything to work pretty much year round and not sit sullenly being An Attractive Pot for ages at a time.

Stepped out of my house this morning to an insane ringing in my ears. Thought I was having some sort of thunderclap headache. No, next door but one have replaced their ultrasonic cat repeller with a much larger ultrasonic cat repeller.

I've come down with a cold, so I'm grumpy anyway but I wanted to be able to sit in the garden while we've got the last of the sunny warm-ish weather now the pool is down and I can see all of my hard work. The stonecrop have started turning pink and I've been given some allium bulbs I wanted to get in the ground.

Today has been absolutely lovely so my intention was to repaint my shed as some of the colour (Seagrass) has faded. I managed to not actually do that, instead I emptied some of the summer flowering large pots, kept three geraniums that might survive in the garage until next summer, faffed around the borders a bit and never got round to the shed.

I might be able to start it tomorrow morning but the nice weather is due to finish Friday so I definitely need to get my arse in gear and get on and do it.

I had a delivery of compost last week so I have no excuse for not getting on with potting up more spring pots and repotting some azaleas that need much bigger containers as they grew so much last year.

Plus point last week, my Nerines are in flower, this year five flowers. I've had them nine years and they've only produced flowers for the last three years. They took their time but they are worth it to see the lovely pink blooms.

Dh helped me (ie did all the work) take out a lilac shrub from a border. It was meant to be a tree but is instead a shrub and is sending out new suckers all around it. It will instead live back in a large pot which will go where there is currently a buddleia that is just struggling so will be dug out and do the root killing liquid. I will plant a rowan tree in its place and hopefully that will grown into a tree and be happy there.
I started taking out the done tomato plants from the same border, still have a couple to go but they have some nice large green tomatoes on them which I am hoping will start to go red soon. If not, I'll bring them inside and ripen them there.
I took down the temporary trellis I put up for my clematis Arabella and put in a some bamboo canes tied into a fan shape. Looks much nicer than the old expanding trellis.
Yesterday I gave the grass a good trim. It still amazes me every time there is a drought and the grass goes all brown, how quickly it greens up again. I also took my dahlia Mignon red out of its pot and have stored it in my greenhouse to dry out before wrapping up for the winter. Fingers crossed it will come back next year, but to see how many tubers have grown when all Implanted was a sad dry piece of twig is pretty amazing. I have planted some daffodils in its pace, yellow or golden trumpet and Minnow

We're planning on getting rid of my weeping birch. I'm a bit sad to see it go. I remember bringing it home when I was little and it's grown into the most whimsical shape. Unfortunately it's causing a lot of blockage on the pavement with its overhang and it's such a fast grower it's hard to keep it pruned back.

I've really fond memories of trimming a door hole in it and sitting under there with my late dog after school.

It will be being stored for mushroom innoculation so it won't be going to waste completely. That said I've never inoculated logs for mushrooms, it's a new skill I've got to learn so I hope I can do it right and do it some justice. I have inoculated other substrates so I'm just telling myself it can't be terribly hard.

My trees are all still small so no big maintenance here. However the wisteria is another matter! I cut back some bits because the patio was just too shaded. I've tried to find something that will grow underneath, but after probably killing one Japanese anemone and finding the other with barely any new roots after 6 months, I've decided it's just going to be a bare patch for my cats to poo and to put the blueberry pots.

I'm terrible for buying half price plants and leaving them in their pots far too long. So the big planter that doesn't quite get enough sun and rain is now my temporary bed for things to keep growing while I decide where to put them. Should have thought of that when I built the planter 3 years ago!

Tomorrow I shall go up the ladder to cut off the wisteria bits on the neighbours' houses. Hopefully I'll also pot up some willow sticks that have been rooting in water all summer, and the ginkgo which has put on quite a bit of growth... and is now a dazzling 30cm/12" tall.

Had a new water butt put in yesterday at the front of the house. My guttering was overflowing badly, it was like Niagara Falls in very heavy rain. The guttering has all been reinforced and levelled and the new water butt will be very useful as it saves me lugging watering cans through the house each time.

Today, I may mow the lawn and also carry on emptying summer bedding containers, planting with bulbs and repotting azaleas, weather looks dreary but dry so ideal day for it.

Don't get me started on wisteria 😭

After I accidentally pruned ALL the stems, it made a swift recovery back to the top of it's trellis and I thought the wind had blown a loose slat and it had sliced it off at the top. I was gutted. I've since tied all the slats down, no movement, and a second and third vine has also been neatly snipped.

It coincides with my strange kleptomaniac next door neighbour "collecting" my parcels from the back of our house.

Honestly feel like she needs a thread of her own.

Spent the past few days giving the lawn some care & attention.
Mow & trim, airiate, scarify and sand.
Applying nematodes this evening as we have some rain forecast.

I did nearly nothing today because it rained and was very windy! I did put a bungee cord around some sunflowers to prevent them toppling over.

Wisteria mostly tamed - need to prune the bit on the fence, but at least the scary ladder part is over...for now 😅

I think you need a camera to guard your wisteria and parcels @Jimmyneutronsforehead! One with a speaker so you can tell her to piss off!

She's a menace! I suspect mental decline is behind it sadly. I've talked to her daughter and she says it's a pain getting professionals to look into it further because she seems so competent and alert at her appointments and then it all falls to pot at home.

Last Easter I ordered 3 of these half egg filled things, kinder bueno flavoured.

When the postie arrived our dog was out front so instead of trying to redeliver or arrange collection he left it next door. I'd just seen him walk down the drive and get in his van to drive off from outside the neighbours and at the same time got a "Your parcel was delivered" text.

So I immediately went next door, knocked, and heard fast little footsteps away from the door. I waited a minute, knocked again, and no answer, so decided to come back home. As I walked past her living room window back to ours I saw her literally DUCK behind the couch.

A few days later she came round with the parcel, opened, and said "Sorry I didn't realise it delivered to the wrong address". One of the eggs were missing and another had been de-robed of its packaging.

I wish this was the first and last incident like this.

She also once said "I took a parcel in for you", when the Ring camera shows it being put in our blue bin. When she gave me it she'd given me the product, not the product in it's box. What the ring camera didn't pick up was her coming down the path, and it's never missed anyone coming down the path, so I reckon she's gone round the side of the house and ninja-rolled over the wall and done the same to get back.

When she's caught us in the garden she's pointed to the wisteria and said things like blimey that's getting big isn't it, and I've thought nothing of it, because why would any person with sane neighbours need to think anything of it? Alas, it's untimely pruning times up perfectly with her "rescuing" an exciting package of 3 nit combs.

She does sometimes leave me little presents too though. She leaves me seeds and seedling trays, and less wanted strange oddities from charity shops that usually find their way back there.

Bought myself a Rosa Glauca for £4 at my local Hardy Plant Society open day sale. Although, I have too many plants, I needed this plant, despite it being very thorny. I'm hoping to site it against a west-facing fence and train it so that it'll grow bushy on top and still have lower growing plants underneath.

Also, picked up for a pound, a "Shrubs" book by Martin Rix and Roger Phillips - this will add to my other books in the same series. I just love these photographic books showing all kinds of plants for the UK gardener.

You will soon have many, many Rosa glaucae! (I love this rose too.)

I planted some bulbs and some violas, that was it. But it's lovely out there.

Does the rosa glauca self-seed? Or are they easy to take cuttings from? I've only a tiny garden, so I wouldn't want to grow more than one plant!

I got some very large glazed pots (60cm wide) for my birthday a few months ago with the view of planting bulbs in them and perennials, but as I want tulips, I'm delaying potting it up till its time for tulips to be planted. I'm not sure if I can hold back on my bulb order, though, that's another issue!

Yesterday, there was a plant swap event and got hold of about 30 seeds that I think were old stock from HPS which will keep me busy researching them and sorting out what can be sown now onwards.

It self-seeds prolifically. But they're easy to weed out and I sometimes pot them up for people who want them. It's a beautiful rose - the habit is so pretty.

Yesterday I cut back three of my roses, I know you are supposed to wait until late winter really but they have grown so tall, I didn't want them to suffer from wind rock if we had more strong winds.

I have another two to prune but one has a lot of buds on it so I'll wait until they have finished and then do it.

All the dwarf daffs are now in pots and it's just the tulips left now and they won't be potted up until November. I probably will still buy more bulbs though, I can't resist them unfortunately ...

Everything else in the garden is ticking along nicely, which is nice. 😄

Used my telescopic hedge trimmer for the first time today. It is big! And heavy. But so is my hedge…I only did the back, I will do the front next weekend.

And also repotted all of my August cuttings, which was probably a bit early in retrospect. Some had beautiful roots and some… did not. The osteospermums weren’t ready, and neither were the nemesias which don’t really seem to be thriving at all. I’ll see how they get on in bigger pots but I don’t know if all of them will survive. Salvias, verbenas and calibrachoas looked pretty happy though. I will protect the parent plants with fleece and see which make it.

I have a pink rose bush in my garden, it's been here since before we moved in and I suspect it's been there for many many years. A lot of the houses around here have the same looking one. Anyway, I noticed it had one very red looking petal and the rest of the new bud looked white! It opened up into an almost half white half pink rose. I've cut off the stem it was on and seeing if I can grow something from the cuttings. Does anyone have any ideas why this might happen, or is it likely to be just one of those freak things that plants do.

I don't know why this variegation happens sometimes but it is certainly vert beautiful.

Beautiful rose.

Our lawn border stuff arrived yesterday so with luck we can get that put in the front garden this week so I can get the border itself tidied. It’s going to be very boring but low maintenance shrubs and bulbs for the moment until I get more time. There’s already an euonymous and azalea so I’m going to be adding some heathers, new daffodils and some iris Hollandica.

I never feel the same interest in the front garden as I do the back and it’s mainly lawn which is a pain as it’s quite long and I hate mowing. One day I will do something more interesting with it.

Off to my volunteer garden project this morning. I think we’re bulb planting.