What have you done today in the Garden?

Wow your home is truly a showplace! Those wisteria and azaleas are spectacular!

 

Thanks for that, I wasn't going to bother, but I bought a £3.99 can of green paint this morning and sprayed them all. There was just enough paint in the can to cover all six, though I didn't bother with the centres as the pots will cover them. There wasn't a lot of choice in our village hardware/DIY shop, but it's not a bad green. I'll leave them in the garage to dry overnight and put them on the patio tomorrow.



Four of them are on the bench in my garage. My wife talked me into a new sideboard from "Dwell" earlier this year, I didn't resist as I had in mind a use for the old one.

 

We harvested parsnips and B. Sprouts today and cleaned-up some more.

 

I need to get out to the community garden to see if there is anything left. I know there are some leeks, l don't know how the brussell sprouts are doing. I am guessing kale is still hanging on, but I bet the Swiss chard has bit the dust. (Actually the frost.) Hopefully I will get out there tomorrow and can report.

 

Nothing in our garden today, but I went round to my wife's best friend's to sort out her wisteria. Couldn't get round there until mid afternoon as there was shopping and stuff to do first.



If left to it's own devices, wisteria is just like a weed. There was a main plant and two others that had layered themselves part way along her side fence. So it needed some drastic pruning. She was concerned as the guy next door attacked the top along her six foot fence with a chain saw. I can understand his frustration a bit, but that was a bit drastic. I found lots of places where it had forced it's way through fence panels half way up. Many of these were an inch thick, so he might have quite a bit of growth his side, which will now of course die off as I've cut them right back to the root. I've reduced it to a few main branches from the three main trunks running the length of the fence that I'll finish off tying to the fence just below the top. It'll need some eyes screwing in the concrete fence posts and some strong wire streched between them and some ties to connect it to give it stability. She has several big rhodos in that border which were getting strangled by the wisteria. No point in having any wisteria growth below about 5ft as it won't be seen over the planting in front.

But that'll have to wait for another day as it got dark.

Yesterday, I bought some fairy lights for the eaves of the teahouse. We've some very old multi-strand ones on there which are very dim by comparison of which one strand doesn't work. They come on with one of the four switches in the lounge are used that control all the lights and the fountain in the garden, so aren't often used. The new set is mult-coloured and there's 100 of them. Five quid in Wilcos. I've put them on a timer as are the red berry ones on the pergola next to the garage. o we look a bit more seasonal, though the red berry ones are on every evening.

As one or two houses in our road heve got their Christmas lights, I dug ours out and put them up.

We only have them round the front door. That's the extent of our Christmas decorations, we never bother with a tree, but there will be a lot of Christmas cards to be put up later.

This is the "tradional" way of having lights around the front door as all the houses in our road, have the same shaped front door. I'm not sure but I think I started it, a few other neighbours copied our style of front door.

It's hard to get a balance with one string of lights and a lot of plastic suckers.

Many houses have a narrow porch with a second front door. But we got rid of the inner door to extend the hall slightly.





They look better without the table lamp on. The mat under the plant is for visitors shoes.

 

We've been struggling for a week with a very slow drain below the kitchen window. The sink, dishwasher and washing machine, plus rain from the back of the house and the baisin in the garage all empty into this. So it was overflowing every now and again. I suspected some wisteria leaves and moss off the roof had got down there. No amounts of buckets of water chucked down it and neither a whole carton of drain cleaner improved the flow. There was no plunger available for that size of drain. It's a pot one with a diameter of six inches. Most key terrain pipe work is now 4". So I decided to make a plunger out of some plywood and some duct tape wrapped round it to improve the seal. I was pretty sure there was no earth or anything that could get further compacted in the pipe, so I gave it a go today. As it had a very good seal, filling up the drain and ramming this down forcing about a gallon of water down the pipe every time, cleared it after a few goes.







It would have cost about £100 to get someone in to do it, so I was quite pleased with myself.



Our five quid lights from Wilko look quite good.

 

We went out to the lottie and discovered that the rats had been eating on our parsnips. The Bride went ballistic, so I suggested that we take everything out. The parsnips were quite smallish this year for some reason, and that fits into the the Bride's familiar category of "gourmet". We just cleaned the whole lot and froze in what we could. The foliage, micro-parsnips and those ruined by the gnawers we fed to the deer in the park this afternoon. They really loved it.

Rodents have destroyed quite a bit this year--beetroot, parsnips and loads of apples. I shall have to re-double my pest-fighting measures. It is always a challenge combatting these beasts, as refuse using methods that make them suffer like poison. We have ermine's and cats on our complex which may eat a dead rat that they would find lying about...not to mention the jackdaws, crows, ravens and magpies.

 

You really have had a time of it SJ with the rodents this year. Let's hope the population collapses. That does happen, right?

One of the ladies in our community garden had been researching how to attract raptors to the garden as a way of dealing with our vole problem. She plans on putting up raptor perches. ??? Who knows if it will work.

@Doghouse Riley :. Congrats!! You must be rightfully quite proud of yourself.

 

Thanks for that, you won't believe the efforts I'm willing to make just to save some money.

My wife said, as usual whenever there's a similar problem, "Don't do it yourself, get a man in, it's not as if you can't afford it."

But to me, it isn't the point and you never know, some tradesmen think that because you're getting on a bit, you are easily talked into spending more on a job than is necessary, "'cos you don't know any better."

 

Doghouse, growing up, our family always did things ourselves. Not out of lack of money, more just how we did things. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night because our septic system was backing up. So the whole family was down in the basement in our pajamas, trying to snake out our septic line. I remember asking "what do normal families do when this happens?"

 

We are certainly in the "do it yourself" camp! When my daddy died I was 12, and mom and I coped with a large yard and vegetable garden, learned to make repairs around the house, and it was my job to keep the coal feeder for the furnace full. For a 12 year old, I had great biceps!
My husband came from a family of "hirers", but he is an engineer and can out-think any problem. He fixes things, builds furniture, and now on the farm he shreds the pasture and keeps our equipment going.
We did hire a contractor to rebuild the workshop and repair the barn after the June storm, and we were so lucky to have a competent, reasonably priced, and hard working crew. Insurance covered almost all the cost, but even knowing it was an insurance job the contractor didn't raise the price, as so many do.

 

Fingers crossed for that raptor solution.

 

Headed out to the lottie today and found it in order. The wood pigeons have been working hard on our sprouts though. We harvested the last of the useable sprouts and now the garden truly sleeps. We will have the sprouts in our stampot tomorrow or the next day.
The temp was right at freezing, so we came back home; however, on the way we went through the heart of the old city centrum and there is an oliebollenkram. We didn't go for the oliebollen today though, rather appelflappen, or as they are called these days-- appelbeignets. At home we warmed up two and had these with some hot cocoa. Have a look:


These appelflappen are cooked then sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar...and as a topping powdered sugar. See that little plastic sack behind the beignets?

 

Had a good tidy up and pruned one wisteria.

 

Sjoerd, when we lived in upstate New York, our next-door neighbors were of Dutch heritage, and we were given a recipe for olliebollen. I made them; they were pronounced authentic; and eaten up, every one. You keep reminding me of wonderful memories. Thank you!