No Promises.

No Promises.

Right..............so it's been just about 3 years since this blog was active. My father died in December 2016 after being really ill for most of the preceeding year. I seemed to spend most of that year either in A&E with him, visiting him in Hospital or trying to arrange home care, particularly when the hospital sent him home by ambulance, late at night when he was unable to get out of a chair unaided. Even the ambulance driver said if we had called them out when he was in that state, they would immediately have taken him back into hospital. By  December of that year, when I eventually lost him, I was so ill and run down myself I was finished with everything except getting through the next day.  I have fought my way back to some kind of reasonable health, although nowhere near where I eventually hope to get. I am still on depression meds, but have been making some cards along the way. I promise NOTHING about how often I will be able to post, as I have learnt that putting myself under any sort of promise or pressure seems to result in instant "don't wanna do it" syndrome, and I crash. I have another blog entitled "Blackbutterfly Handmade Cards & Crafts"  where I shall post this same message. Without putting any sort of requirement as to posting timetables, perhaps things will get a little better, we'll see. Anyway, here goes with a few pictures....

Raspberry canes 2018

French Climbing Beans "Cobra" & Runner Bean "Moonlight"

Snape, Bluebell, Flash and bringing up the rear......Nickleback

Maintence, and Orders!

The weather in the last week has been awful,... just awful.

 It's been cold, wet and windy, sometimes one at a time, but mostly all at once. Today tho', I found it's turned suddenly quite mild, and although the wind was blowing, it was almost warm.

 I dashed to the bottom of the garden where my mess is all stacked up and pulled out an almost empty pot of Fence care. I have no idea how old it is, but it has to be nearly the same age as the old paintbrush I found to plaster it on with!

I have a nice wood fence around my garden, but I will have lived here for 3 years in June, and so far I've never put a bit of preservative onto the fence. To be honest, I don't know how many years it is since anyone has coated it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was 'when it was erected'. The house was built in the 80's and it's the original fence.

I had about an inch of preservative in the pot, and the wood just sucked it off the brush and it vanished without trace. I managed to get the garden gate done (both sides), and that emptied the pot. I called it a day at that point, but I know somewhere under my stairs I have another pot that I bought last year, full of good intentions. I can continue around the garden with that.

Unfortunately the forecast for the next 10 days is far from good.We had temps of 13 degrees today, but it's dropping down to 5 and 6 again with rain tomorrow.

 I'm determined to get it all done though, as I've gone ahead and ordered my Polytunnel,(YIPPEE) and I also need to get the new piece of fence painted, behind where the Chicken run will be.

You can clearly see the fence beside the gate in the photo,and the gate was equally as bad, if not worse, so it is obvious the painting is fairly necessary. 

I wonder if the next pot of fence care is the same colour as I've done the gate? I'm reasonably happy with how it looks, although I was a bit worried when I first put it on, as it looked terribly ORANGE!  I kept thinking about fake tans, but it's settled down to a reasonable colour. 

Even so, I have a feeling I'll need to do it again at the end of the season, the wood was SO dry.

I went through my seed packets again last night, and was shocked to discover I hadn't got half as many as I thought I had. I know I turned out a  LOT of badly out of date packets, but still.....

It seems I have  "buckets" of seeds all of the same sort, but no cucumbers at all, and I also wanted some flower seeds. OK.........so 'buckets' was an exaggeration,.... but I do have 3 half packs of Runner beans, ditto of Broad beans that I'm not planning on growing this year at all, and 3 packs of Peas.   

I ended up ordering Cucumber Tiffany F1. I've grown this for several years now and it's never let me down. However, I've gone for some new tomatoes this year. I know......Risky.....but what the heck, I like to live dangerously. So I've ordered Mountain Magic, supposedly blight resistant, I hope I don't have to find out. Also "Cherrola" a small tomato, as my daughter prefers them, and 'Roma Nano', an Italian plum for sauces etc. I'd like to get some Ferline again, but I'm resisting the temptation.

I've also ordered some Sweet peas, Cosmos, and Sunflowers, plus I got a free pack of Dahlia seeds thrown into the order.
I'm hoping to pick up some more seeds locally,( less expensively).  Marigolds and Nasturtians will be ok. Not the most exciting plants, but they are such a lovely splash of colour, and I can save my own seed at the end of the year. Lettuce too, I can probably find in the local supermarket, cheaper than the seed companies, and I've just remembered I need new stock.

If I want chickens this year, the cash has to be saved from somewhere! But that's another post......

The Buddleia is gone!

I haven't started off any seeds yet, it still seems a little chilly to me. Today however, I've been out for an hour or two cutting my Buddleia down to about 12" high. I'm undecided what to do about the stumpy bit that's left. I can't dig it out on my own, and the reason I cut it down was because it was far too close to my Viburnham.
This is a shrub that I bought about 23 years ago, and is in it's 4th reincarnation now, via cuttings from the original plant. Every time I've moved I've had my father root some cutting for me. I've never been successful with it, but he seems to have the magic touch. I'm not planning on moving again, if only because my father is now 89, in poor health and gardening isn't something he feels he can do anymore. So my bush is in need of tender loving care. It is just starting to come into bloom, and produces huge 'snowballs' with a really heavy sweet clove scented perfume.
Viburnham "burkwoodii" if anyone is interested.

Anyway, back to the Buddleia. I think I've decided to buy a pruning saw and take it down as close to the ground as I can, and just keep cutting off any new growth as it appears. I'm afraid if I dig it out completely I'm going to damage the roots of the Viburnham, and it's just not worth the risk, as far as I'm concerned. I could use a pruning saw anyway.
Usually I compost everything in my garden, but I haven't the space to wait for tree branches to rot down so they've been packed up in bags for the council to take this time. I don't know what the wood burns like but the thicker ones they won't take, will go onto the wood burner in the summer.

These two pictures show just how out of control that shrub got last summer.

The before shot..........

......And the after shot!

I am sorry about the quality of the pics, it's an old camera, and I was hoping to have a new one up and running today. Unfortunately, the delivery didn't arrive as promised last evening, so when it did arrive around 2 pm today, the batteries weren't charged. I thought about leaving the bush til tomorrow and showing you then, but knowing my luck we would have had a week of rain. The pictures are what they are..........but from now on hopefully a bit better quality. Unfortunately I can't do a lot about the photographer!

As you can see there's a lot of tidying up to be done in the garden. But it has to be done a very little at a time, due to my health and mobility issues.  I do what I can, and call it a day, it's the only way I can cope. Occasionally I may have to call on some outside help, but I'll see how it goes.

One of the next jobs had better be painting that fence. This is my third summer, and I haven't done it since I moved in. It's looking a bit sad........my "things to do" list is growing!! 

2016..........and we're off on a new adventure!

All my life I've wanted to live in the country. A small place with a little bit of land to grow fruit and veg and have a couple of pigs, some hens, and possibly a goat or two. Ideally, it would have a creek running through it, and an area of woodland big enough to wander through in peace, and to provide some wood for my cooking stove. Space for my dog to run in safety, and for my cat to hunt mice. I'd be happy if it was off grid, and I didn't have to answer phones all day, and hear people shouting.
Such are the stuff of dreams! In the words of an ex..........."It ain't ever going to happen"......and he was right, darn 'im!

The reality is I live in a housing association 2 bed semi, with a postage stamp of a garden, no woods and  LOTS of noise! I used to have an allotment, but that had to go when my back did!
I still miss it, but lately I've been looking at my postage stamp garden and a new challenge has arisen. I've been playing at things out there, and this year its going to get serious. I've measured as well as I can on my own, with a wavy metal tape. As near as I can figure it, my garden measures 14ft wide and 28ft long..........0.01acres! ha ha ha
Since I moved in here, I've been buying raised beds from linkabord bit by bit, so I don't have to kneel (impossible) or bend too low ( almost impossible). But now I've made up my mind... 
 The challenge is: 
How Much Food Can I Make This Garden Supply?

The answer is.......nothing like enough to be self sufficient, obviously. But, I'm on a basic state pension, and money only goes so far. Can I grow the things I love, but have to go without when times are tough?
 Can I grow some luxuries that I would otherwise have to forgo?
 I have an added bonus that on application to my housing manager, I have been given permission to keep some hens in the back garden! No cockerel obviously, but if you don't want babies, why keep a male about? Lol
However, it now means that on a small scale, at long last I can have a backyard small holding. Or should that be micro-mini-smallholding? So this is the year it gets a bit serious. I'm hoping to get a small budget polytunnel in and a chicken run built. I would have liked a nice polytunnel from First tunnels, like I had years ago on the allotment, but cash won't run to it this year, so a budget one will go in for a couple of years and then I'll replace it with a tip top model.

Last Autumn I added some fruit trees (cordons) along the fence. I have a strawberry bed, and some rhubarb, so we'll go from there. I clearly won't be able to do crops that need a lot of space, but it will be interesting so see how much I can get out of this ground. I'll have to religiously weigh and keep records of everything I harvest, but it should be interesting.

Usually I allow £40-50 per week to feed myself and my daughter, a large dog, and an un-fill-able cat! I noticed that a blogger I follow is doing a new blog called "A year without". she had been saving some cash in a pot and has decided to see how long she and her husband can live without housekeeping this year. Well, I can't do that, because I have no savings to speak of, BUT.......I thought to myself, if  put my housekeeping in the savings bank, how long could I live off my store cupboard?
Obviously milk, and veg would need to be bought as I need it, except NOT from the supermarket in bags bigger than I need......how about I find a greengrocer locally and if I need two tomatoes, that's what I buy. Once the freezer and cupboards start to run down, I can do the same with finding a butcher. I can buy 4 sausages if that's all I need. I'm sure that's why so much food is wasted, people are obliged to buy the packet size stipulated instead of what they actually need.

So these two challenges will run alongside each other this year. I wonder how much better off I might be by Christmas, I'm looking forward to finding out.

Point nought one acres as it looked the day we moved in!