More Spring

Yay! The chard looks like it is germinating - lots of little bright red stems with the most delicate pale green leaves. Now all we need is for the broad beans to come up - I'll give them another week, and if there's no signs of them I will sow some more in pots indoors. Sowing outside was always a bit of a risk, but everything else has come up now - I was rather amazed by the salad leaves, as we have had some very cold nights here recently and I wasn't holding out much hope for them! Another few weeks and we'll be having baby leaf salad - so much nicer, cheaper and greener than the stuff in bags from the supermarket. Everything indoors has now germinated to some degree, although some of the sweet pea varieties have been disappointing. The tomatoes were up quickly, and even the cayenne chilli peppers are now growing, though they look very small and delicate.

Last night and today we have had the first rain for several weeks, so no need to water the garden this evening. I am quite relieved as I had planted two dozen bluebells which arrived 'in the green' the other day, together with a couple of the snow-in-summer, on the bank, and it was so dry that I was actually watering up there as well as the beds and the patio pots, which was all getting a bit tedious. All three of the new trees now have leaves, I am hoping that the quince will blossom, but maybe it's too young?

Wildlife notes - the first butterfly today, some sort of small white jobbie (not good on butterflies!). Lots of finches (gold and green) around the feeders today, they are eating me out of house and home again! Yesterday I was up at Builth Wells, at the Royal Welsh Show Ground, and spotted my first swallow of the season - then noticed there were lots of them around the buildings. Beautiful. Nothing so exotic here, just all the usual suspects - collared doves, wood pigeon, misc finches, sparrows, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, thrushes, misc tits, and of course the jackdaws, although they usually sit in the high trees of the garden behind us and rarely come down into the garden. Lots of bumblebees around - big plump ones. Interestingly, since I started the 'messy area' behind the raised beds, the blackbirds and thrushes are now mostly foraging there, rather than elsewhere in the garden, suggesting that even this small change has increased invertebrate numbers in that part of the garden.

Now that his beloved Asparagus has arrived and been planted, Matthew is getting impatient to see some results! If he's lucky, he may get a couple of spears this summer just to keep him happy - about a month's worth next year, then full production the year after. He will just have to learn to be patient!

As I write this, there is a heavy shower coming down and the sun is shining brightly at the same time - how very stereotypical April weather!

Signs of Spring

Another lovely sunny day, and I took my camera for a walk around the garden to look for signs of new life. The sunlight on the rhubarb made some interesting textures when taken as a close-up. The buds and beginnings of new leaves on the quince tree are particularly appealing. The two little pierises are doing well, one is flowering and there is new growth which looks like it will turn red very shortly. And the rocket has germinated despite the cold nights, which is very satisfactory.

The two dwarf Buddleias which I had on order (special offer from Thompson and Morgan in one of the gardening mags) arrived a couple of days ago, and I have potted them up into a pair of sludge-green glazed pots about 35cm across. They are quite big already, and look like they will flower later this year, which will be good for bees and butterflies!

Lots of firsts...

It's been another busy day - the first mow of the year, with a brand new lawnmower which Matthew (mower in chief) is very pleased with. It has revealed just how many holes and molehills there are in the lawn, so I hastily purchased a lawn repair kit to attempt to fix it! Also, the first time we have ever installed our rotary dryer, despite having had it in two previous houses - the first one had a very public garden and I never felt comfortable hanging my laundry out, so the dryer stayed in the shed - and the last house was between three building sites for most of the time we were there, so there was no point hanging clothes out to get dirty again. So the dryer stayed in the garage. Now it is finally installed outside the kitchen window, in a sunny and fairly windy location, and it has already had its first load of laundry, which dried in record time.

I went down to Blackwood Garden Centre this afternoon to get some more compost, and finally got round to buying a water butt, together with its attachment to capture water from a downpipe. They were out of stock of stands, so that will come later in the week, at which point we'll have a shot at following the instructions, complete with hacksaw...I only have room for a small butt near to the downpipe, so have bought a slimline one which holds 100 litres. By my reckoning, that's about a dozen watering cans-worth.

I also bought four large and healthy snow-in-summer plants (see previous post for my problems with these), so I am going to grow them on a little and then excavate large holes for them in the bank, fill with compost to counteract the clay, and hope for the best!

The robin and the cock blackbird were very excited about the mown grass, it has obviously churned up all sorts of tasty titbits. Cue much excavation of the clippings! Visitors to the house often comment about the range of birds visiting the garden feeders - I think it's 19 species so far, almost all daily visitors. The sunflower hearts have proved a great success, especially with the goldfinches, who ironically take no notice at all of the nyger seed thoughtfully provided for them. The sparrows were the 'early adopters' when I first started feeding sunflower hearts, which I am pleased about as they are in such decline nationally that anything I can do to help has got to be a good thing. Have even put up a nest box with the right size hole for them.

An awful lot of seeds are in various stages of germination around the house. The utility room looks like a greenhouse. I am mostly going for salad leaves, broad beans/peas/dwarf French beans, chard, spring onions, pak choi and my beloved sweet peas. Have bravely sown the broad beans straight into the lovely new raised bed - normally I grown them indoors in pots, but I thought I would risk it. If there's no signs of them in a couple of weeks I will revert to plan B with a very late sowing indoors. Have also decided to try tomatoes, which (like roses) I have always avoided as there is so much gardeners' mystique about them - but for goodness' sake, how hard can it be? As well as the traditional Moneymaker, which needs support, I have gone for two varieties designed for patio pots - Tiny Tim and Garden Pearl. Both sort of cherry types, and look reasonably idiot-proof. Watch this space...

Update

After yesterday's exertions I spent some time today pottering around and looking at progress elsewhere in the garden. The trees are thriving, as is everything in pots (apart from the eucalyptus which is failing to come back after its severe cut back in the autumn - but I'm not giving up on it yet!). The roses are getting new leaves, the honeysuckle which is destined for the arbour is up and running, and the trees, especially the quince, are looking very promising. It has been a strange spring without bulbs, but I was too late last autumn, after we moved in October, and by the time I got round to thinking about it the garden centres were all out of bulbs. Better luck this year! But some primulas have appeared along the bank, which is nice. And the dead looking clump of grass is starting to come to life again, looks like it could be quite large when it gets going.

The main casualty is the snow-in-summer, which all seems to have curled up and died. I wonder if it would have been better to pot on the little plants into larger pots of compost, and then transplant them later, rather than putting them straight into heavy clay soil, especially as we then had several weeks of heavy rain. Might try that again, as I am really keen to grow this plant - it just looks so good on sunny banks.

I still await the arrival of the bluebells in the green, the two dwarf buddleias for the patio, and the asparagus crowns, but at least the bed is ready for the latter now!

Apart from dealing with the seedlings etc, the main garden tasks for the next few months are dealing with the last of the brambles, tidying up the patio area, and building the arbour and planting it up. Emlyn and Barry kindly left me a bag of sand when they finished the patio extension, for me to use when laying the paving slabs which the arbour is to stand on, so all I need is some paving slabs, a bag of gravel, a spirit level, and a willing Matthew! Once it is assembled and in place, and before I plant, I think I will paint it with the same stuff I used on the garden bench last year, as it is attractive and apparently hardwearing, easy to apply and didn't make me feel sick! It would be wonderful to be sitting in my arbour by midsummer...

Wildlife note - lots of bumblebees around already. And I think the collared doves and the woodpigeons might be nesting, as they are now coming to feed singly where before they would come in pairs. And the mole seems to have emigrated - for now, anyway.

Spring appears to have sprung!

It's ages since I posted anything, because my attention has been pretty much all on my art assignment which was due mid-March, and on work, which has been a bit overwhelming during the last couple of months. However, having determinedly taken the week after Easter off, and with the next few weeks not looking quite so manic, I am able to think more about the garden - and it has even stopped raining for a while!!! There are buds and new leaves on everything, including the newly planted trees and the roses on the patio, which is very encouraging.

I shall be attempting to load some pictures today - we spent an energetic morning in the garden, finally getting the raised beds finished. Each one had its turf cut, then was filled with four bags of topsoil, four bags of John Innes No 2, and a large bag of manure. Additionally, the asparagus bed (close up picture) had a bagful of sharp sand incorporated at the bottom to help with drainage on our very heavy clay soil, and the other three beds had a quantity of very good garden compost forked in - this precious material was transported from the previous house in Tubtrugs in the boot of Matthew's car - he was very skeptical at the time, but was today waxing lyrical about what wonderful stuff it is, which amused me...

The rhubarb is a bit of a surprise - it had been cut down to ground level by the workmen who cleared the jungle late last summer, and I had not expected to see it again - but over the last couple of weeks, it has reappeared, phoenix-like - which is a bit of a pest as neither of us is that keen on rhubarb, but I haven't the heart to dig it up when it's been so persistent!

The other photo shows the new section of patio, and its accompanying gravel trench, which is Emlyn and Barry's attempt to deal with the flooding corner of the lawn. The whole thing is sat on a bed of gravel about 2 feet deep. It certainly seems to be working - in the recent heavy rain, the bottom corner of the lawn was a bit damp, but there was no standing water spilling across the path and lapping at the house as before. This is definitely progress.

I was late getting the first seeds in this year, but will report further in due course. I have found in previous years that late sown plants more than make up for their delayed start with the extra light and warmth later on, so I am not too worried. The utility room has been transformed into a greenhouse!