What have you done today in the Garden?

It was raining yesterday and will be raining tomorrow.
But I got a lot done this morning, dead-headed the roses and a couple of rhodos, pruned the wisterias, had a general sweep round and vacuum up.
Doesn't sound a lot but it took me nearly three hours. So much for my "low maintenance," garden.

I did spend some time on some wisteria training.

This pink one starts here in the small bed under the kitchen window next to the fence.



Part of it grows along the wall under the kitchen window, a bit more grows up to the pergola and a few feet along it.
Most of what you can see is the rest of that big branch that comes from the narrow bed next to the garage and then along the top of the fence between the garage and the house.



But I trained a branch to grow over the fence and along the side of the house.



It's now reached a point beyond the landing window. Today I put a couple more screws into the wall to support it. I'll let it continue to grow until it reaches the front corner of the house then prune off the ends. This will make it bush up if I continue to cut back all the side shoots it throws out.



So far, we've been getting blooms up as far as the side kitchen window. But there should be more next year.

 

Nice!

 

Thanks for that. I made a 3" high concrete plinth in front of the fence to store the bins so the drive would be easier to keep clean. They fit nicely between the drain on the left and the door in the fence on the right, so they are out of site. Then the council added a fourth bin!

My hoselock reel clips onto a bracket at the bottom screwed to the all and just a plastic pin secures the handle to a bracket at the top, for quick removal if you want to take the reel somewhere. I thought that was a daft arrangement.
I fixed an "L" shaped bracket to the case and the wall, to stop it getting nicked. though you can't see it from the road.

 

We had a wisteria vine out back when I moved in. Finally cut it down 2 years later (it'd been there since before my bf moved in), it had never flowered that either of us knew of, and it was growing into the siding of the house. The bits of root left in the soil keep throwing up new plants. The thing just won't go away!

 

Our house was built in 1965, we bought it from the first owner in 1972.
The wisteria on the side of the garage was planted when they moved in. They told us it had never flowered.
I pruned it as it should be in the following January. It flowered every year after that.

 

Oh yes, I see now--flooding. Good grief, so much water there. Yeah, then it is quite understandable. The poor guy, and then stuff that didn't rot, got washed away.
Hahaha....now he wants to grow rice. That's a good one. Perhaps he could get government subsidy to set up a series of sawa's there.

 

I went out early this morning and thinned dill. I also cut stevia and they are both in the oven drying, now. I cut my lemon and regular thyme Friday and dried them. I checked this morning and both of them are coming back, already. When I was cutting the stevia I saw that my zucchini had some little babies on them. Nothing on the cucumbers I will be very disappointed if I can't make pickles. It's my first year making anything other than pickled beets or watermelon rind.

 

Mowing the lawn.



I am still not finished.

 

it looks as if you have a never ending lawn. beautiful view but never a day off.

 

Schoffeling weeds, and picking broadies.
Made some cherry jam.
Gave lotsa water in our garden/greenhouse and the neighbour lady's as she in on hols.
Tied-up the swelling geranium plants.
We are having a little heat wave here at the moment. It's a handy way of getting rid of excess salt in the body.
We ordered some summer spinach today. I am curious how it will go.

 

Actually, nothing in mine but a lot elsewhere.



Our neigbours in the adjoining semi are quite a bit older than are we, if you can believe that. He went into a care home a few months ago and she followed him today. The house is to be sold. They have no family.

For years they never did anything to the garden, a friend came round once a month to cut the grass. But he stopped bothering.

They could afford to have their garden looked after, but didn't really care. They were away a lot when he was still able to drive.



I've always had a problem with their bindweed, growing through the party fence and strangling my azaleas, which she thought was a nice plant,

As the house is now empty, I went round with a bucket with the intention of getting rid of it where it was creeping through. I actually need the green bin there was that much of it. Anyway, I cleared it all, including that which was growing over the bench seat on the patio near the fence. It filled the bin.



Hopefully the new owners will take more care of the garden. For the most part it's a blank canvas, being mostly grass with just a couple of overgrown beds.

 

I didn't do anything in the garden. The sky was spitting off and on all day, then around 6-ish it was a down pour, with hail. I did continue my war with creeping Charlie. I have no idea what to do. It took an hour (at least) to do one little patch... I did find one of those rectangular blow up pools for my granddaughter, so that should kill a 120 inch x 72 inch area. The tarp underneath is slightly larger. And I left the smaller pool up. That's her, "hot tub". I cut down and dug up a big burdock plant. I think before the last people left, they just gave up on the whole yard. That plus sitting empty for a while, then an unsuspecting person (me) moves in with no idea what creeping Charlie is, or burdock for that matter, so I kinda let it go last year, just to see what everything was.

I have blooms on my watermelon, and now three (3) potato plants. Whatever was eating my beet greens has stopped (weird). The lettuce is still doing great, but I'm letting the first batch go to seed. The cucumbers are climbing the trellis and looking good. And the zucchini is still small; no logs.

 

I filled in a hole in our terrace. We used to have a sandbox built into the terrace for when our kids were young. It was long over due to be replaced!

Did you know bricks come in different sizes? Well they do. I didn't know that. I got some free bricks from our in-town website, but they were all 1/8" too wide!! You wouldn't think that would matter but it does when you are trying to fit them into an existing terrace. I checked out several other sources; all to wide.

That's when I got the idea of canabalizing an existing brick walkway.

Here's a picture of the hole I had to fill in; it's 3/4 done in the photo.

Next are two shots of the finished project.


Now there's plenty of room on the terrace to socially distance whole entertaining

But of course.... When you finish one project, you create another one to do!

And, wouldn't you know it....I'm short of bricks again!

 

Cayuga, your patio is beautiful! I'd sit out there all day and enjoy the lovely plants (which means we would be ordering take-out for meals!).
I cut and cleaned the last of the onions today. I still haven't put the leaves and outer skins in the compost pile--too tired after dealing with the onions to finish up. Thank heavens there is always tomorrow!

 

I have never heard this term nor can I find a definition of it. Where does it come from? cannibalizing was always eating human flesh...but I have never heard of it for laying bricks..