Lampshade of Shame

The novelty is still there with my mower vac.

Taking her eye off the ball

One of our dogs has been an in-patient week. A short time ago her left eye started to get a bit crusty and as salt water wasn’t clearing it up we decided to pay the local vets a visit.  We found out that she had gone blind in the eye and it was under considerable pressure which would give her a constant headache, and maybe even explode if she scratched it! We were left with no alternative but to have her eye removed.  Apparently the damage was caused some time ago, years maybe, probably by her running into an immovable object.  As she has spent most of her active life running into things it could have been a tree, dustbin, road sign, car, bike, bollard and she has often been on the receiving end of a hurly as she has a go at catching the ball before it makes contact with the wood.  Who would have guessed that running after a ball could be so dangerous?

 She’ll be coming back from the vets in the morning with a “lampshade of shame” on her head, which she is supposed to leave on for ten days to stop her from scratching at the eye socket. I’ll give it ten minutes before it’s off and she’s in the hedgerows with the tail wagging. I’m missing her in the garden already.

From bust to boom

This last week has seen us move from a time of very little available food in the garden to an abundance. Just a few days of sunshine and a warm breeze have made all the difference. We are now enjoying spinach, which I am convinced you can see growing, lettuce, mustard and all sorts of herbs. Julie’s mum is even enjoying courgettes. I haven’t had to do a lot of work this week either as the soil is so dry that I can just skim the surface with the hoe and the weeds are gone, leaving the veggies to grow without competition.  The sunny dry weather does mean that I have to water the pots and baskets but that’s a pleasure on a sunny evening. Most things are thriving, the peas and beans have taken entwined themselves around their structures and the broad beans are in flower. The slowest thing to make an appearance is beetroot. I think I must have planted it a bit too early and it’s gone into a dormant state. I planted hundreds of seeds but as yet only three have come up and I am not entirely sure they are beetroot seedlings, they have red stalks so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think I will be putting the surplus into jars for pickling this year to tide us over the winter.

Still a novelty

I’ve cut the grass three times this week with my vacuum lawnmower. Not that it needed it mind you; it’s just so easy to use and quick to set up. I’ll keep doing it until the novelty wears off.  The only thing I am finding is that the machine doesn’t get into the edges and corners where the walls are, so like it or not, every few weeks I am going to have to get the strimmer out. They don’t look too bad for a while but eventually the lawns beginning to look a bit like my head, lush growth at the sides then baldy patches in the middle. (“Patches? don’t you mean totally bald?!”) You know what I mean.

Oil tank Cover

There is one thing in the garden that I haven’t done anything with yet and that’s putting some sort of screen around the oil tank. It’s green in colour (unlike our orange and red one in the other house) so it doesn’t stick out too much, but it’d be good to get something to disguise it a bit. I could go down the HidBin route and cover it with synthetic leaves or I could get some wooden trellis for a climber to grow up. The aforementioned red tank had a leylandii growing around it which was a bit much, especially when the poor oil man had to cut his way through it to get to the filler cap. I’ll leave you this week with a question.  What have you got around your oil tank to cover it up? I can plant steep slopes with ground cover and mask unsightly concrete blocks but for some reason oil tanks have me flummoxed.