What have you done today in the Garden?

Yesterday a friend and I cut back the asparagus fronds in the community garden in preparation for winter. We then spread compost over the root area. I was grateful for the help

 

Shopping done, grass cut, leaves collected. The garden is sometimes a bit wet at this end, despite the soil being quite sandy as it is part of the Mersey alluvial plain.
It's not the lawn sprinkler leaking at this end, maybe there's a very small underground spring or a leaking disused pipe, as all of our houses in our road are built on former farmland and our garden is where the farmhouse was built.
Mind you, we have had a lot of rain.



I removed the rock. It was just one, I needed a spade and a crowbar to get it up and my sack truck to move it. I guess it weighs the best part of a hundredweight.
I laid this rockery thirty-five years ago and I do remember bringing them all round from the road in a wheelbarrow, but this one must have taken some shifting, but I can't recall doing it.



No Idea what I'm going to do with it. I might break it up into two or three pieces with a lump hammer and bolster chisel and work it in "somewhere."

The cherry tree as I suspected, was root bound and took some effort to get it out of the tub. But it's in now. I reduced the rootball a bit to give it a better chance.





Where it is my wife can see it from her chair. It looks a bit sad now, but there's a lot of new growth on it. The blossom will be nice in the Spring.

Not a lot to do now for the rest of the year, except a lot more leaf collectiom. The wisterias are still holding on.

I would like to get a small rhodo for this gap. The big tortoise shell rhodo, I pruned back some bottom branches earlier this year as they were spreading too far over the lawn and making it easy for moss to grow. I put a retaining wire around the rest to encourage it to grow upwards rather than outwards at the front. It always loses some leaves in the Autumn but there's a lot of new growth and buds. The leaves are a pain as they don't decompose easily and it's no good blowing them to the back of the border as I do other leaves. They just have to be raked out in December.



But another rhodo might have to wait until Spring, Hopefully, we'll be going to Wyevale or Dobies in Timperley, as it is now, on Thursday, we've not been since it changed hands, I'll have a look but I'm not hopeful. We need some compost/topsoil for the five bare root roses coming from David Austin's in November. I've enough green ceramic pots for them, my wife says, "there's enough room for them on the patio and the paving over the former koi pool."

 

You have a lovely garden.

 

Thanks for that. It's very much a Spring garden.

Here's a tour, if you've not seen it.

 

Doghouse, I just watched the video of your garden. It is beyond lovely, it is absolutely gorgeous,! Tell me, what do you do with all those potted plants come winter? Do you live in an area where they won't get winter killed?

 

Thanks for the kind words.

We live in the South Manchester/North Cheshire area. It's the plain of the river Mersey. The river is half a mile to the North from us. We are surrounded by low hills on three sides, so we get a reasonably mild climate, but we can have some cold winters. We've not had snow to speak of other than stuff that melts mostly overnight, for ten years.

We don't bring any plants in pots in. Unless they are really small. The ones on the patio are on "pot movers" so they aren't in contact with the ground.
We have a new Palmatum Taylor, which is new to us this year. I will put that in the shed for the winter.

Our garden had a big change this year, our thirty-three year-old 3000 gallon koi pool developed a serious leak. To change the liner would have meant removing all the perimeter rocks, a part of the waterfall and the imitatio bridge which covered the return pipes from the filters in a dedicated room in the garage.

So we had it filled in with 20 tons of eco-friendly hardcore and paved over.
I'd dug it out on my own and didn't fancy filling it in myself at my age.

So this from last year is just a memory, but apart from no water and no fish, it doesn't look that different.



The fish went to a good home, a friend and fellow koi-keeper two doors away. We took them round in my big fibreglass skip on a dolly.



Three at a time, they didn't get stressed.



I could have sold them for quite a bit of money on eBay, but I felt I had a "duty of care" as they'd been with us for quite some time. I can of coursego and see theem whenever I want. But I've only been once in three months, they are all doing well and I've "moved on."

 

Must have been tough to fill in the koi pond. Especially since you had made it yourself! But obviously, the right decision.

 

This was how deep was the pool originally.

I panelled the sides with roofing ply wrapped in heavy duty polythene. These were fixed to 3" X 2" posts similarly covered, fixed to the pool collar and buried in the ground.




They were still intact when I had the pool filled in.

I drilled several 1" holes through the screed base so water falling on the flags drained away. We've had no problems with standing water.

 

It's been quite mild today. But I didn't do anyrhing in the garden. I had an e-mail from David Austin to say that our five bare root roses "would soon be on the way."

I'll believe it when I see them. We did go to Dobies formerly Wyevale this afternoon, to buy some rose tree and shrub compost so I'll be ready for the roses, nothing much has changed yet, except for the name. Even the bags of compost had Wyevale on them. We did go into the Edinburgh Woollen Mill concession. I bought a Pringle fleece for the garden for £20 and a Pringle sweater for £18. Not much "wool" in either, polyester and acrylic.

Digressing

The sweater is to replace one I was wearing today, that will be designated "golf gear," as it's getting on a bit. We're not like the pros you see on TV, where the sponsors provide all their kit. It turns up at their door on the morning they are about to play. They wear what they are told.

They of course don't have to carry their bags, clean their clubs, rake bunkers or dive into the scrub beyond the fairway to help looking for partners' lost balls. Anyone in my club who wears decent golf gear, particularly at this time of the year would be considered a bit of a "show off."

Many of the professionals are "show offs," Ian Poulter for one, though perhaps not so much these days.

The most noticeable if indeed it could be considered so, was Payne Stewart who had a contract to promote different NFL football teams, by wearing kit in their colours. Usually the club in the USA nearest where he was playing in a tournament.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=payne+stewART&atb=v133-1&iax=images&ia=images

He had a very sad and untimely death.

http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm

 

That is very sad about the golfer and the other people on that plane.

Interesting hearing about golfing attire and all you have to do if you are not a pro. You actually do get good exercise.

 

It's the sort of game you can play well into your eighties. It's the only game I know where you can get a "start," i.e. the handicap system. The better the player you are the lower is your handicap, so it makes the game more even when the better players have to give shots to the lesser able ones, a bit like the weights better horses have to carry in horse racing.
The other thing is of course it's not how far you can hit a ball, it's how many strokes you take to get round.
You're walking for about three to four hours, you are mostly on your feet all the time.

 

Good exercise then.

 

Shelled some more almonds, checked to see if we need to put the supports in for the sugar peas (job for this coming week), and saw the first green shoots of the garlic coming up. The lettuce is doing well, especially with the rain we had two nights ago. Fall gardens are limited in plantings, but what is there is sure appreciated!

 

I sorted out my pot movers. Spayed all the wheels with WD40 to make sure they move easily, so easy for them to tip over with just three wheels as the pots are so heavy, cermic pots are so easy to break too. The movers are designed that way, as with four wheels they might wobble on uneven patios. A couple of the bases were a bit cracked so I'll be replacing them and getting 4 more for the David Austin roses which are coming at the beginning of next month.

Tried to get some more green ones, but no one has them in stock. So I've ordered these. These have four wheels, but that will be fine as our patios are level. Only £4.62 each, for the 30cms ones plus free delivery.


1 X Plant Pot Stands Round Wheels Mover Trolley Caddy Garden Plate Round Wheels | eBay
1 Flowerpot Base. The tray is equipped with a number of universal wheels. Not only the axis of each wheel can rotate 360 degrees, but also each wheel is composed of two sub wheels, which can rotate independently, greatly increasing the flexibility of the tray.

www.ebay.co.uk

Still too wet to do any proper gardening, so I watched Kiki Bertens beat No 1 Ashley Barty, on TV. She was only a late replacement in this $14,000,000 prize money tournament in China, as Naomi Osaka baled out injured today. Kiki had been playing in another tournament in China until Sunday. The tournament is for the top 8 players. Bertens is only no10. Prize money for just turning up for this one game, is over $300,000. Not bad for two hours work.
She could go all the way in this competition.

As it was wet yesterday, I taught myself to play the Ronnettes "Be My Baby" on my leccy piano,


Today I uploaded it to my Yamaha keyboard players' message board.
My piano records to WAV files so I have to use "Audacity" to convert them to mp3s.

I don't think it's bad considering I'm just busking it and didn't spend a lot of time on it. This piano has a sophisticated editing suite, which I never use. "What I play is what you get."
I attempted to get a Phil Spector, "wall of sound." Bit more "wall of noise."

https://app.box.com/s/ot197g04mmikmumpoag1byu4qhcqytv3

 

I spread about 300 lbs of fertilizer for the yard. I broke my tow behind spreader so the exercise was mandatory.