What have you done today in the Garden?

Son said the post holes had to be a few inches deeper, so we did that this morning. He was able to get those two posts into the holes. No, we do not have one of those post hole diggers. I had borrowed one a few years ago, when I rebuilt my shed and chicken coop.

I also transplanted my canna lilies to the fish pond flower bed today. And I began working on redoing the fence wires. Of course, if you cut the wires, they are no longer as long as they were before, so I had to splice some new wire into the pieces.

 

I got into this wisteria on the pergola attached to the garage this afternoon. I do this around this time every year. I only needed my step-stool to get at it.
I guess a hairdresser would call it, "first time cutting to shape."

There's been a lot of growth during the year, hidden by the foliage. A lot of this growth is unwanted. Any new branch that wants to grow upwards, had to go. I only want lateral growth at the top and branches that cascade over the patio at the side.






It'll get a more detailed pruning between Christmas and New Year.

The other pergola still needs to be stripped. I'll need my big ladder for this. I also need to change a 6ft lateral beam that is showing signs of rot. I'll also check the tops of the two posts at the same time. They have caps over the tops to keep the water out. I may need to re seal them with silicone. The three 16ft main beams are fine.






I used my Flymo Ultraglide mower to collect the silver birch leaves off the lawn.
The patches of moss will get some more iron sulphate this week.




My new Flymo blower vac. is very good, though it's a pain to swop between the functions, as the nozzles have to be changed and the bag attached or removed. But for the price, it's only a small inconvenience.

The two acer palmatums need the dead wood pruning off, as they do each year.

This one will need more attention to get it back to the "dome shape" I like. Removing the dead wood may leave a gap or two, but I can wire some branches to close them up if necessary. The "fringe" will also need evening up.

I can then remove the wire in the early summer once they have "set."

As usual, there's lots of new growth coming from the tops.




Once these jobs are out of the way, that's pretty much it for the year.

 

Nothing outside at the moment, got things to do inside.

 

DHR Looks all neat and tidy. Brilliant garden.

 

@Willowisp0801 , I finally mailed your 4 o'clock seeds this afternoon. We had a heavy freeze the other night, so I hope the seeds for the pink ones are okay. I also sent seeds for yellow and for white 4 o'clocks. The pink ones were really slow ripening.

I finished putting the fence back together today, and it looks good.

Cold weather moved in today, and it is supposed to be 25 tonight.

 

Spent yesterday afternoon tidying up the aftermath of Storm Bert. Lots of snapped branches were lopped off, some trees were re- staked, taller battered plants / shrubs required some major cutting back to get them back in shape. A ton of leaves had fallen so started on sweeping and bagging them up , will continue with them this morning as by 4:45pm it was too dark to carry on. Hubs had to mend one of the large coldframe covers that Bert tried it's best to destroy.

 

As it was dry this afternoon, I pruned the last wisteria.



I removed quite a bit of old growth.
I started at 2.00pm and it only took me half an hour.






Then an hour to clear everything I'd pruned off!




I had to use next door's green bin as ours was full from the pruning of the other wisteria and his empty. The bin men come tomorrow morning, so it's not a problem.

I still need to clear the gutter over the French windows and inspect the tops of the support posts. But I was running out of light. The suspect cross beam, doesn't really need replacing. I gave it a few coats of Cuprinol in the Spring and looks OK.


This morning I had a round trip of eighty miles to Preston to collect my Stressless chair from Buffalo. It's had the back and the seat re-padded and the front panel of the headrest replaced, I'd worn through the colour of the leather, but it is getting on for fifteen years old. They made a good job of matching of the leather. The back and seat still have a a crease in them, but that's just because the leather has stretched over the years. They would have to over-fill the padding and it would lose the contours. I took the tables and the arm rests off before I took it up there.
I really missed the side tables. It cost £350, but that's a fraction of the cost of a new chair and it's now very comfortable.




On the way there, I noticed a big tailback on the other carriageway of the M60. I guess there'd been an accident. I've an old TomTom sat/nav. The maps probably haven't been updated for over five years. I'd have to pay if I wanted it done. Although when I bought it, it said the maps would be updated "for life." Five years ago I got the nonsense that the hard drive couldn't accept the updates as there wasn't enough memory.

On the way home, although I didn't really need it once I was back on the motorway, "Sally Satnav," warned me that there was a hold-up ahead, but the planned route would still be the quickest.
"It was the first time she'd ever spoken to me, other than giving directions!"

 

DHR you have a knack at garden super management thruout the season. The wisterias looks perfect and ready to set flower buds for next season. I think you keep your garden exceptionally neat and tidy in fact I could eat off the ground. Looks immaculate

Your story traveling with TomTom cracked me up. Been there done that… Even with new models and dash cams these gadgets have gotten me lost many times and found roads that go one way - the wrong way. I’m old school still like to print out a map in large numbers and letters to see while driving somewhere new.

My best experience is the auto map system while driving my sons Tesla . The screen is huge , easy to see and read the print while driving . Post a little car avatar on the screen to notify of current location. And the voice coaches way ahead of the turns prompt on the screen. Plus it has a fancy way of shutting down at night. It’s programmed a whole auto light show at night to music of your choice, to let you know it’s ready to recharge. It’s like having a small dance club in your garage. Or maybe in your case a ‘Jukebox ‘ on wheels. I never knew a car had so many different places and colors of lights to flash to the beat of the music.
It was a fun experience with very little effort. That’s a ‘Good Thing’.
PS: nice chair…

 

What always puzzles me, is that "back in the day," it was illegal to have a TV in a car where the driver could see the screen.

Now the dashboard display screens are far larger than that of TV screens which would have been imagined, at the time the law came into force.

 

I did get another load of chips hauled to my compost heap this afternoon, and some odds n ends of things done. It is sunny and windy and cold today.

 

Riley— nice Wisteria trim and clean-up. The patios look really smart.

I do not use my old Tom Tom either, I just found a good one for me and if I need directions, I use that for driving, biking or walking. I was not a big fan of how it went with Tom Tom updates. It is the reason that I stopped with them. Greediness is an ugly thing to experience .

 

It was a golf day today, so I didn't get into the garden until after 2.00pm. This only gave me a couple of hours to get things done.

But I got into the acer palmatums. This the larger of the two needed a lot of "fettling."





As usual each year there was this much dead wood to come off. But there's plenty of young branches with buds growing from the top.





Then I had to work on getting it back in shape. I like it to be contained as far as possible, within the brick edging, this reduces the amount of moss I get in the lawn in its shadow.

I run garden wire connected to stakes in a circle around it. I can then attach more wires to individual branches and pull them down. You have to be careful as it's hard wood, bend it too much and it will break. But I can shorten the wires a bit in a month or so's time.







Of course, the branches above the lower ones also need training. But they are more pliable.
I can do this by chucking a net over the whole plant and tying it down.

I need to get some more garden wire to finish this off tomorrow.

The lot can come off in April, by which time the branches will have "set."
I have to do this every few years.



The smaller acer had just as much dead wood.




But this won't need much attention. Just a couple of branches wired so that they close a small gap. I might get some pavers to replace the grass that refuses to grow under it.




This acer in the end bed will get a trim tomorrow.

 

Nothing we've been out all day today.

 

DHR All your acer palmatums look spectacular after a very profess trim. Nice job. To bad you live across the pond ,
My acer’s need a good trim too.

 

Indoors - I did a major pruning of the mini roses I was playing with this year. They looked sad. I cut them to about two inches tall, above viable - looking nodes. We'll see how they do.

Outdoors -

I dug up a daylily that was in a place that no longer works for me, and moved it to a different location in the xeric border. Are daylilies xeric? Maybe. They are pretty tough plants. If not, well, that's OK.

I buried some kitchen scraps (trench composting).

I did some more cleanup. I noticed, all of the half-rotted apples were removed from the compost pile. Deer.

I found topsets from the Egyptian Walking Onions, with lots of roots, laying on the ground. So I planted a few dozen in a new location. I like those as Spring scallions.

My neighbor dumped a few wheel barrow loads of tree leaves in my front yard. Thank you, neighbor! I transported two wagon loads to part of the border that had bare soil, for a thick layer of mulch. Lots more remain to move.

Included in that area, a hybrid Itoh peony that I transplanted last week, and a huge mass of Rudbeckia that appears to be perennial (I expected annual). That corner is progressing pretty well.

I did a little more cleanup in a raised bed.