Just a while ago I was feeling pretty fed up with our garden. I even wrote a depressed little blog post about how despondent I was feeling.
However, this evening I am glowing with happiness about our garden, after two evenings of good work. Yesterday we mowed, pruned the herbs and had a big of a general tidy up. Even fed the lawn.
Today, since it was a sunny day, I was sitting outside knitting, and as I looked around I kept noting down little jobs that needed to be done. Eventually I had to go and fetch a bigger piece of paper, because there were so many jobs. So I put aside my knitting and we went to our local garden centre with a long list.
Soon we were back, proudly transporting a range of garden tools, two new willow climbers, as well as four new plants, chosen for their beauty and HARDY qualities:
Since it was so hot, we left them to drink in buckets on the lawn while we got on with other things inside. When it'd cooled down a bit, we went outside and began our lengthy gardening sesh!
First, Rachel got to work screwing the first willow climber to the fence, ready to hold up our new climbing plant; yellow jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens). When I looked it up to see how best to plant it, I learnt that it's extremely toxic, as it contains strychnine! Apparently it even kills bees if they sip its nectar. I hope our bunnies and the local bees are clever enough to stay away!!
We did things by the book - even putting a tasty layer of compost in the bottom of the hole and watering it in before putting the plant in! No excuse for anything to die of shock this time round!
Soon the yellow jessamine was cosily roosting in its new hole. Next I had the arduous task of gently teasing apart all the stems, which had been growing around that bamboo cane for a considerable length of time. Like unravelling tangled wool, except this was wool that was alive and precious, so couldn't be snapped. Very tricky.
I managed it in the end though, and tied it in various places to encourage it to spread out and fill the space. We also planted our new green phormium (I think it's Phormium Tenax) nearby.
Meanwhile, Rachel had put up the second willow climber on the other side of the garden, where a plant we had bought last year needed something more substantial than four bits of string to climb up. Much, much prettier.
Of course, because these plants are blocking the rabbits' running routes down the length of the fence, I have had to construct protective barriers to prevent them from nipping through the "pesky roadblocks" at the base.
We also planted our tall red shrub. Can't for the life of me remember what that's called. Has lovely star shaped seed cases at the moment. Good and sturdy looking, and it should survive in our lousy soil. Hey, and check out the size of that Cosmos next to it - the rabbits haven't eaten that one so it's been able to grow to a reasonable size!
Lastly, we planted our greeny-yellow shrub. I know. I'm doing such a great job of naming these. Really should have noted down the names in preparation for blogging! Too dark to scrab round the garden looking for their labels now! It's a shrub. It's green. Deal with it.
Once all the planting was done, we set about various other jobs. Harvested the last bag of potatoes, and then cunningly spread the compost from the potato bags and various other empty plant pots all over the flowerbeds. It made it LOOK like we'd weeded and dug over the garden. Bwah ha ha! I'm not usually so lazy, but pregnant ladies are apparently not allowed to dig over soil. Particularly when it has the texture of concrete due to lack of rain. So we cheated. It looks SO much better. Plus, I think the compost will smother the weeds, so we won't HAVE to weed them! So very, very clever!
I then re-potted a forlorn looking budleia and put it into Rachel's new bicycle plant pot (birthday present), and sorted out a viciously spiky plant which hasn't been tended for months, simply because it is so spiky. Pulled off the dead leaves and put it in a big ceramic pot (our tall fuschia used to live in that pot, but it died on us for no reason that we could see). Then Rachel lugged the apple tree up to the patio and we re-arranged until it looked LOVELY:
Oh, and I re-bambooed the tomato plants, because they were drooping considerably. I'm SO happy with how the patio looks now. Putting little pebbles on top of the flower pots really makes a big difference too. It looks so smart! By the way, the big plastic pot of what looks like scrawny weeds is what is left of pansies and violas once rabbits have enjoyed munching on them. However, I'm sure they'll come right back to life now there are no smaller pots around them for the bunnies to use as steps.
And look at the little apple on our tree! That's our fourth and only remaining apple on the tree. Two had already fallen off and been rescued from the floor. The third tumbled off as Rachel dragged the pot across the garden, and we've misplaced it. I think the apple tree will be much happier on the patio, where it can get some sun. And we can enjoy looking at it!
So this is what the left side of the garden looks like now - the willow climber adds some interest and the soil looks heaps better with its new posh top layer.
And on the right hand side, we have three new plants snuggled in with the rest, and fewer (visible, anyway) weeds.
I'm particularly pleased with this small section of the garden, because it actually LOOKs like a proper flowerbed, with lots of plants all in one area and very little mud visible. Now we just need to get it looking like that all over!
So very, very pleased ^__^