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.

A Lawnmower review - sort of

The dog likes the seaweed juice the best.

New Lawnmower Review, sort of

I bought a mower this week. I have umm’d and aah’d over buying one for weeks and did my usual extensive research before I made a decision, then went out and bought something on impulse that was on special offer!  I have been hanging my nose over a Flymo for a while as we only have a tiny lawn at the front of the house and very little grass on the back lawns due to the dogs. I fancied the hover so I could glide over the dog poo. 

I’ve ended up with a Flymo called a ‘Mow and Vac’ and alarm bells should have rung when their advertising spiel consisted of them saying that “It’s just like vacuuming the lawn”.  It’s electric and not powerful at just 900 watts, it has a single handle and not a bar to control it, just like a vacuum cleaner - and has a grass collector that when half full stops the flymo from floating , which makes it impossible to budge. I could suck more grass up through a straw than the mower does.

What do you expect?

Before I condemn the mower totally I have to point out that it’s the first cheap mower I have bought and as Julie says, what do I expect for €50? I am accused of living in the 1970’s when it comes to money but I still expect something that says it cuts grass to do just that.  The last mower I used cost nearly 1000 euro so my standards are high.  I battled with the Flymo for a while, mumbling about taking it back to the shops and then all of a sudden I adapted to its ways; I relaxed and let it do its thing. Firstly I took off the silly collector which lifted the mower higher and then put it back on again to “sweep up”  OK it’s got plastic brackets to hold the handles in place, the blades are plastic too. But it’s quiet, and actually does do the job. Before I was using my large strimmer and because I find it a pain to fill it with petrol, put on the safety gear then spend 2 hours washing the walls of mud and grass splatters, I didn’t do it very often.  This mower is set up in a minute and clean and tidy, with no safety equipment needed. In fact it’s just like a vacuum cleaner for the garden. They ought to use that as a slogan.

Plant Tonic

The place where we get our well rotted manure has disappeared, well not disappeared exactly but the supply has been buried under a new cycle path and the horses have moved on to pastures new. I don’t know where but hopeful when I see them again it won’t be in a sandwich. Because of the loss of supply I am being inventive and playing with different solutions. I have three buckets, one with seaweed in, one with comfrey and the last one with nettles. They have been steeping in stagnant water for about three weeks now and are getting to the stage where the neighbours are asking if our drains are blocked so something’s working.  I’m going to put the liquid into plastic milk cartons then feeding the watered down solution to different plants and see which perform the best...science! I think the best solution will be the three mixed together and that’s probably what’s going to happen.  The dog likes licking the seaweed one the best for some reason, he must be deficient in salt.

Latest Creation

My latest hanging basket has been created on a budget. After the shock of spending money on the mower I couldn’t stretch to a basket liner so made one up myself.  I have a lot of ferns in the garden and seeing as they grow quickly I thought their leaves would make a good substitute for sphagnum moss. The basket looked great when I had made it up. I got a great deal at the DIY place last week when the weather was bad, they decided to sell the geraniums off really cheaply, so I crammed in three of those along with nasturtiums, sweet peas and creeping Jenny’s. Three days later and the basket looks like I haven’t watered it all summer. The ferns have gone brown and crispy and the plants haven’t had time to establish. Maybe I should have used an old dustbin liner bag. I’m sure it’ll look great when the plants grow over the top of the basket, until then it can be a constant reminder that it’s sometimes a good thing to part with a bit of money occasionally.

Unearthing Hidden Treasures- well a path anyway

A hidden gem underneath an old concrete path.

I don’t really like weeding. Most of you probably already know this as I say it often enough. I can usually find better things to do with my time than kneeling down on the paths pulling the unwanted plants up and leaving the tap roots in so they can come back to haunt me. It’s not just the time it takes getting rid of the weeds, it’s the fact that I can see them growing bigger and stronger everyday and not having the time to get out into the garden to tackle them. That’s what gets me more than anything and it probably is a reminder for me to lay out a decent time management plan so they don’t get on top of me. 

Positive Action

I decided to take positive action this week, and this time it’s not to convince myself that I love weeds, I wouldn’t go that far. For some time now I have been going outside and spraying vinegar onto the path edges to keep down the dandelions and couch grass. The solution doesn’t seem to be strong enough (I think it’s 3% in a normal bottle of the type you put on your chips) so it’s pretty useless really and the stuff in the pickled onion jars is even lass effective. I don’t want to resort to weed killer so I decided to get out the bags of gravel, sand and cement. If you can’t beat them, cover them in concrete.

Concrete paths

The concrete path runs the length of the garden up to the tunnel and is used a lot to get to the washing line, so keeping it clear is important. The previous owners edged the path with concrete breeze blocks and then to stop these disintegrating, smothered them with more concrete. This mix has become loose over the years, cracked then allowed the weeds to take hold. Add to this the movement of the garden and long gaps have appeared the full length of the pathway which has filled up with soil making these an ideal nursery for weed seeds.

It took me two days but I managed to remove all of the concrete that was moulded onto the path edges, leaving what I think are attractive blocks covered in moss, then I have dug out the fine soil from the path edges and backfilled with a dry mix of concrete, pushing it well down so the frost won’t break it up too much.  The resulting path looks refreshed and the time I spend not having to weed can be used for something more productive like planting seedlings and sunbathing. I will also be able to appreciate the garden more as my eyes won’t be drawn to the weeds every time I look out of the kitchen window.

Hidden Treasure

Whilst doing the remedial work on the path I unearthed a bit of a treasure where the washing line is. The previous owner’s exploits with a big wheelbarrow load of cement stretched to covering up beautiful granite set path running for about fifteen metres. I heard from the neighbour that the sets were covered over to make a smoother surface to walk on as the lady of the house got older. It’ll look like road on Coronation Street when it’s cleared up. I’m always amazed that Weatherfield Council haven’t dug up the road and asphalted over it for health and safety reasons. I’ve never seen any road works on the street either come to think of it.

Expansion

It was bound to happen. I have run out of space in the veggie patch. Inevitable really as I planted far too many seeds for one garden.  I am moving my empire forward into the lawn area by cutting away strips along the wall to make two foot wide beds. I’ve already put up two more of my delightful bean structures (you can never have too many of them) into the space and have left enough to plant more courgettes and anything else the dogs wont trample. The soil has been enhanced by adding the contents of the two compost bins that have rotted down nicely into what resembles soil. That is apart from one or two things that don’t want to rot down, namely old sweetcorn cobs, egg shells and avocado pips, the latter when planted up again should grow. I’m putting one in a pot now one now!