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 I know I turned out a  LOT of badly out of date packets, but still.....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!!