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Monday 7 January 2013

Wet wet wet

Nah, not that awful 80s pop group who I always thought were really drippy. It's the drippy garden I'm talking about! It hasn't really rained for about 4 whole days although we've had some of the very light rain we call here 'pissy drizzle'. It's just that the grass and everything is sopping, and that makes working in the garden hard as I'm rotating about 4 pairs of gardening gloves around, always a couple drying by the fire as I wear the others until they are sopping wet and muddy (which takes about 5 minutes actually).

There are photo opportunites when it is damp like this but I'm really trying to get on with jobs that I should have done back in November and December, so I can start on the winter jobs. I'm so behind!

Anyway, here's a photo of my lake and that cherry tree which has flowers on right now, which I took out of the 2nd floor shower room, the only room in the house upstairs which actually looks out over the back garden and lake.  You can see how spindly the tree is but at least the blossom shows up and looks pink from here. The ripples in the lake are not caused by the Breton equivalent of the Loch Ness monster but my useless ducks. Useless because they don't lay eggs any more (neither do the hens right now either). I am buying eggs for goodness sake!


More photos of drippy things, because it's more interesting than pictures of muddy wellies and gloves.

Horse Chestnut branch - do you think that's why it's called that, because of
the horseshoe shaped marks on the bark? I really must look that up one day.
That's a raindrop reflecting a branch by the way.

'They' say that lichen indicates good clean air - we have tons of lichen here.

Drippy discarded duck feathers from the useless ducks

PSB leaves - always covered in droplets it seems

Ditto the purple Curly Kale - I love how photogenic this plant is.
Which is just as well, as despite mild weather it's not growing much!

Lime (Tilia) seeds pods and bract

I decided to be brave and show you my weedy old veggie patch, just to prove there is a bit of work in progress. I have dug a sort of L shape round the edge of the bed with the leeks in (top left). The nicely dug bit in the middle is where I've planted my garlic.


As you can see below, that's not all of it, there's two more plots on the right and I haven't even pulled out the dead things in those plots yet.

And that's just the veg patch! There's the rest of the garden to attack. But I did get my red and blackcurrants pruned, so that's something.


I've also finally cut back the dead growth on the asparagus, which I should have done a couple of months ago. I haven't mentioned my asparagus bed yet on this blog, because growing it from seed is a long process and takes three years before you can start to harvest it. I'll feature it when it emerges in the spring - only one more year to wait until we can eat it!

4 comments:

  1. Mandy, your photos are fantastic! Particularly like that horse chestnut one. Nice to see something so lovely coming from the general dreariness that seems to have been going on as long as I can remember (moan moan etc). I've started overhauling my veg plot a bit - building some raised beds and digging over. Even managed to plant some broad beans in there at last!!! Garlic should have been in ages ago but it's just been too wet...

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    1. Hi CC, glad to hear you are doing something in the garden too! It's hard to drag yourself out there into the dreary grey, isn't it?! Thanks for the lovely compliments about the photos - it's the only way to enjoy the general sogginess for me. :-)

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  2. Super photos as always Madame.
    Re pruning blackcurrants - an old boy on my allotment in Manchester, because blackcurrants grow on year old wood, just used to cut the fruiting branches off with fruit still on them - harvesting and pruning at the same time.



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    1. Hi Anon. Thanks for your compliments re. my photos.
      I have heard of people pruning that way, but I also think then you'd need loads of currant bushes, because you'd be cutting away so many fruiting canes. I just cut away the oldest canes (usually the thickest and most covered in lichen) and any that are growing out horizontally low down, as they will be drooping on the ground when they are covered in fruit. I got 8kg from two bushes last year!

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