No Lilac flowers this year, then...

As the whole of Spring packs itself into just a couple of weeks, I'll stick my neck out & say the Lilac is not going to bother flowering this year:

Lots of green, but no lilac

Its compatriot 3 gardens over is in full pomp right now, but there's no flower buds on ours at all.

I suspect this is the result of another dodgy pruning incident :/

I know that Lilac is pretty robust - I've hacked it back pretty hard in the past with no real bother, but I don't ever recall having a no show like this.

But last year I did my usual thing of pruning it when I could be arsed, rather than when it should be done, & I guess sometimes there's a price to pay.

A bit of online digging indeed suggests that Lilac is best pruned immediately after flowering, so I'll keep an eye on the neighbours' blooms & give ours its annual haircut when theirs goes over. Won't be long now, which is handy as all that green is making a bid to dominate Stinky Dog Corner.

Ah well, fingers crossed for next year.

New Lilac on the block

And talking of the future, the white Lilac root cuttings from my mate have made it through the Winter:

Go little cuttings!

Yay! More residents for The White Corner. However, now I've learn about Lilac's bullying ways, the plan is to plant it on the other side of the wall, on the Council land. Not only will this complete the hedge, but it'll return that area to similar form of a few years ago:

When we moved in, The White Corner had 2 Conifers & a Lilac running along the bottom wall. But as they grew bigger & bigger, they started pushing the wall over. So a few years ago, we had a tree surgeon take them down & grind out the stumps. Our mate rebuilt the wall, & I've been slowly replanting the area since.

It was all quite a change for that bed as it's gone from deep shade to full sun, so some long term residents haven't survived all the drama. And we do miss the huge Lilac that was on the end - not only did it screen us from the street, but it always put on such a great Spring show.

Hopefully the new white Lilacs will grow up big & strong, just like the old one, and will have a bit more room to do it in too.

End of April catch up

Crikey, nearly a month since my last post. Is it because I've been too busy doing actual gardening? Of course not.

But that doesn't matter as it's been a fairly sunny round here this April. Admittedly some of the showers have been a tad, erm, white & lumpy, & the temperature has been up & down like the Assyrian Empire. But the garden has clearly decided Spring is here & is just getting on with it. That's the spirit!

So how's everything getting along while I've been maximising my quality sofa time?

Bay cuttings

When I pruned the bay last year, I had a go at taking cuttings from the trimmings.

2 pots, 3 stems per pot, over-Wintered in the greenhouse & they seemed to be going well. But I've been as slow to get started as Spring has & the other week Hubby spotted the cuttings were wilting. With the weather heating up (a bit) they weren't getting enough water. So I've moved them outside & given them saucers, to help them keep some of the rain they catch.

Some green left on the Autumn's Bay cuttings

As you might be able to spot in the pic, at least 2 of the 6 cuttings still have green in their leaves, so hopefully they'll strengthen as Spring progresses.

Magnolia flowers

The week before I put the stairs into Stinky Dog Corner, I bought a couple of trees: a Himalayan Birch, for the top of those steps; & a Magnolia for The White Corner, bottom right of the garden. To be honest I didn't think the Magnolia's flower buds would survive a March planting, but 3 or 4 look like they might just hang on in there. Yay!

New tree: Magnolia Manchu Fan

Old bulbs

In The White Corner, the Magnolia joins some other white plants put in previously. A few years ago I started thinking about playing with some colour theory to make the garden feel a bit longer: strong colours nearer the house; paler ones further away.

So a few years ago, I declared (in my mind) the bottom right end of the garden The White Corner, & I put in some white tulips & pale daffs.

Tulips & daffs in The White Corner

I love the pale green on these tulips, & the flowers are huge.

So, normal sized daffs, fairly large tulips, large tulip-shaped magnolia flowers... yep I've just realised that my colour/distance illusion is going to be shattered cos it's not accompanied by an illusion of scale: large flowers in strong colours nearer the house; small flowers in paler colours further away. Doh!

Hellebore

Also new to The White Corner this Spring, planted underneath the Magnolia, is a white Hellebore... Well it was white when the flowers were new. I didn't realise the flowers would change colour as they aged & set seed.

White (& pink & gold) Hellebore flowers

Bonus!

Dwarf narcissus

Dwarf Narcissus in the Eye bed

The bulbs I planted late last year are going great guns & have brought much joy between the snow showers. The daffs were 1st up & have put on a beautiful show regardless of what the weather has thrown at them. Fair play.

New tulips

2 sorts of tulips went in at the same time as the dwarf daffs. The orange Shakespeares have come & gone & to be honest I was a little disappointed - their colour wasn't as punchy as I'd hoped. Hopefully the Synaedas will be more zesty when they make an appearance... & that should be an "if" cos none of the tulips currently maturing are orange... they're all purple:

The Queen Of Night tulips are starting to colour up

Wow! Looks like these Queens are going to be suitably regal. The purple edges look very much like the dupion silk of my wedding dress.

New Alliums

Last of the new bulbs are the Alliums. I've had them before but they don't seem to stick around in the beds, so this time they're all in pots so I can keep a good eye on them.

The first Allium flower head makes an appearance

The leaves are suitably & noticeably oniony, which I really like. Hopefully when the flowers explode, this tall slender pot won't get toppled.

Onions

I planted them! I found a little time a couple of weeks ago to get them in the ground:

They're alive! The shallots are sprouting! Yay!!!

I've got 2 of these module trays, plus I planted 10 out in the central Twisty Hazel bed. Most of them have started to sprout, one so vigorously it was pushing itself out of the ground... I maybe shouldn't firm down the soil in the seed tray so enthusiastically...

Salads

Hubby's done a great job of keeping an eye on the Greenhouse Gutterbeds:

Lower pipe: over-Wintered coriander & parsley.
Upper pipe: this Spring's mixed salad.

The parsley & coriander in the lowest row have struggled through the Winter - not really vigorous enough to harvest, but hanging on in there. I guess if we plant them out into the main greenhouse bed they might make for a good early crop.

I'm really good at buying seeds I never plant, so this time Hubby's stepped in & put some Spring salads in the middle gutter. A mixed leaf selection closest to us, some little gem lettuce in the middle & some flat leaf parsley at the far end. Hopefully we won't have to wait so many months to harvest these.

Weeds

& of course the early weeds are making a Spring dash too, but I did manage to get in some mid-week weeding recently. My compost bin's never hot enough to properly deal with serious weeds like dandelion & burdock, so I usually put them into my Council garden waste bin. But this time I thought I'd give Alys Fowler's soggy rotten bucket suggestion a go.

Bad-asses in the bucket

But Hubby came in this afternoon & cheerily announced:

"Whatever's in the bucket is sprouting nicely..."

The leggy buttercupy things are loving it in there. I've given them another mushing but if by next week the bucket looks more like a pond, into the Garden waste they go.

Hopefully, at some point soon, I'll get out there & sow some more seeds, & fill the gaps the weeds have left.

Can I keep on top of the weeds this year? Only time will tell.
Let battle commence!

One step at a time

The snow was back Sunday morning.
But I still have a tree to plant in stinky dog corner.
But I've got more structural work to do before it goes in, & that's going to take all day.
But it is quite literally baltic out there...

I bought the tree last weekend & it has already fallen over in its pot once, when the wind got up midweek. Fortunately it isn't damaged, but I do this all the time: buy something expensive & leaving it lying around neglected/rotting/dying.

But today is not that day.

Grasping at a very short straw (that it was very sunny for about 30 mins between the very brief snow showers), I decided to Carpe the damn Diem & get out there.

A quick jaunt to B&Q, filling up the passenger seat of little car with "rustic sleepers", then back to the ranch to use them as steps of the grand dog corner terracing plan.

An editorial aside: As (for me) this blog is about playing with blogging tech as well as gardening, I'm now going to try something new. Those waiting since the New Year for Japan posts will know that I'm struggling with a content backlog, so I'm wondering if a format change might help. For this post I'm going to try intro - piccies - outro, with all the explanation in the picture captions. I'd love to know what you think.

1st things 1st: Finish clearing the rest of the weeds from stinky dog corner.
All systemic weeds though so they're not going into my compost heap;
they'll go into the Council compost bin instead.

That's not vermiculite & meteors. That's snow.
I think my face has frozen.

Straight down the centre line:
I've still got the centre point pegged out from last year's path laying,
& the steps will respect that arc.

So, how far apart should they be?
A bit of shuffling the sleepers, measuring, & marking with bamboo pegs.

Cutting the steps out of the top soil.
A bit of level checking at this point too, so I'm at least in the ball park.

Weed barrier fabric laid in overlapping sections, with bamboo rails to
help keep the corners tight. Hopefully, by not using just a single run of
fabric from top to bottom, I'll reduce the risk of movement across the
whole run.

The sleepers placed on a bed of sand, levelled left to right, but with a slight tilt
backwards. The sleepers are not pegged down in anyway as this won't be a high
traffic area... I might revisit this decision if things start shifting though.

The rest of the fabric is covered with sand.
There'll be more gravel once I've nipped back to B&Q.

As you can see, there's more work to do: the rest of the terracing needs to go in. Then planting to soften the edges, maybe some low-lying things in gravel &, oh yes, plant the feckin' tree... still didn't manage that. But I was chuffed with my afternoon's work, and my ability not to trip up or stab myself while trying to think with an ice cube brain. & I learnt that it is waaaaaay easier to keep going than it is to get started.

So that's the end of the post - please add a comment to let me know what you think of this format. Thanks! :)

Honoured guests & unwanted pests

The plan on Sunday was to plant a tree. That was the plan. But that's the thing with plans - they change.

While grubbing around in the bottom left corner of the garden where I want to plant the tree, I spotted this in the top of the boundary wall:

Signs of burrowing

Look closely between the stones & you'll spot 2 holes. Too big for mouse holes. This is rats again, & alive this time, not dead in a bag.

I imagine the wall is a dandy ratty abode. Stone on the outside, soil on the inside, plenty of room, shelter, & rarely disturbed... a veritable des rodent res.

I can't let this stand, I have to do something to deter the rats from remaining in residence. So this revelation scuppers another plan - not only am I not planting the tree, but I am now removing my attempted honeysuckle screen.

Best laid plans

Down that end of the garden, over the other side of the wall, the neighbours have their dog cage. And it stinks. It's not hosed down much, so the smell is rank most of the time, proper gopping on a sunny day. It's a shame cos that corner of our garden would be an ideal location for a water feature, or a bench on which to sit & catch the last of the evening sun. But such whimsy is just not an option because of the overriding stench.

I had hoped to create a sweet smelling, long flowering screen, by training the vigorous honeysuckle we already have over a trellis. A trial trellis went up last year & the honeysuckle has romped away. So this year I had intended to replace the trellis with something more sturdy & keep weaving the tendrils in.

But now... it's got to come down. I need to keep an eye on the wall to see how much rat action there is. Time for a Plan B (or is that C...?).

Everybody out

The soil in the wall supports many plants: a nice blue trailing thing; the occasional mountaineering foxglove; a whole host of nettles; 2 tree saplings.... yeah, these guys should've been out well before now...

I quite like nettles. If you can tolerate them in the garden, they're great for the wildlife (caterpillars & pollinators), good in the kitchen & you can even make textile dyes from them: green from the tops & yellow from the roots. And the yellow roots I think are my favourite bit of the plant, cos it means that when I'm yanking them out I know exactly what they are :)

Yellow nettle roots

Deter & observe

With the top of the wall cleared, I want to keep it that way so I can see what level of ratty activity we're dealing with. So I took the soil level down a bit & lined the top of the wall with polythene. The garden waste recycling bin is already full from the purge the other week, so I'm having to bag up offcuts at the mo. I'd just nipped up the shop for a new roll of garden sacks & figured they'd make a great (& cheap, & to hand, & just the right width straight off the roll) alternative to some of that barrier membrane stuff we've got under the gravel.

Plastic down, & covered with 2 bags of gravel, it now looks a lot tidier:

Gravel dressing over a double layer of polythene

Given how eager things like thyme, rocket, foxgloves, poppies are to seed themselves into gravel in other areas, I'm sure this won't be bare for long. And any incomers will be more manageable than the previous thick mat of nettles & grass.

Finish on a song

All the hacked honeysuckle took a little time to clear, & while tidying up I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye:

My clean-up companion

This little laddie/lassie was hopping in & out of the gooseberry's bare branches, picking up bits I'd disturbed. It was remarkably bold, not more than a meter away - I've never been this close to a Robin in our garden before. I thought it would scarper as soon as I moved, but no. It kept hopping in & out of the bushes to have a peck around. It appeared so tame I wondered if someone had been feeding it by hand.

Then, as I sat stuffing garden sacks, it sat & sang. It was just lovely.

I reckon there's a nest in them there shrubs.

Rat in a bag

We live on the end of a terrace. Our street is a cut through from the bottom of the High Street to a big estate & the local dene park, so we get a lot of through-traffic: dog walkers mostly; the occasional horse rider; commonly pissed-up weekend revellers on their noisy way home.

As a result, the garden picks up a lot of detritus. Pruning the hedge often yields treasure: I've had perfectly serviceable mugs & pint glasses out of it, as well as the less exciting crisp packets & spent Fosters cans.

As I've probably mentioned before, the wind fair whips & swirls around both the garden & the yard, so it's not uncommon to open the curtains to find a plastic bag in the middle of the lawn, which is exactly why Wednesday morning's weather report was "No snow, placcy bag on the lawn".

I'll admit I was a bit surprised it hadn't moved by Thursday morning, but then it wasn't very windy. Still there on Friday. I thought nothing of it other than "I'll sort that tomorrow".

So hubby heads out this morning & picks it up. "Ah" he says, flatly. "It's got a dead rat in it". Certainly explains why it wasn't blowing around...

It was a big fella too. Very deliberately chucked over the wall, but deliberately for us? We have had a rat problem in the past but after hubby's stirling poisoning work expunged the buggers from inside the walls, this winter has been the 1st in ages mercifully free from random scratching & scurryings.

& I've not seen rats in the garden since unearthing one when turning the compost the other year. Man, that one was huge. I don't know who jumped higher - me or she.

But a rat in a bag is just odd. Does someone think it's ours? Is it a message from some local low-rent mafioso we've unwittingly dissed? Is it just more passing detritus? & if so, who the hell wanders around with a dead rat in a bag (apart from Tom from Father Ted)?

Weird.