No going back now!

As Open Gardens loom even closer, things have been pretty frenetic with little time for blogging.  Plenty of outrageously early starts and achingly late finishes.  Even so much has been achieved and things are looking pretty tidy.  Because of the atrociously cold spring, hardening off greenhouse plants has been later than ever before.  Still, with any luck visiting gardeners will understand.  The  much moved Hostas have put on growth and, we might even have some roses in bloom for the weekend.  The greenhouse has had a late spring clean and the potting bench has seen much activity.  The pots and urns which Chris brought have all been filled.  The nice lady from NGS has organised help with serving teas and more cakes have been promised (phew!)

More Cast Iron

Found at the Spring Garden Show...

...a new addition for the shady side of Chris's wall. A bit of cherub-like rusting cast iron ornamentation found at the Garden Show.  It's  rather small to plant up and then there's always the responsibility of remembering to water something that's likely to dry out every 5 seconds so, we'll probably leave it as it is.

Homeless Hostas on the Move - Again!

It's been a couple of weeks since Chris rounded up all our Hostas, divided them (and brought 3 of his own) and planted up a dedicated Hosta bed.  What happened on Saturday?  I spotted a couple more that had popped up in the Woodland Border.  I bought one from the Spring Garden Show and had popped that one in. Yet another was awaiting planting with 4 bags of bark chip all bought using nectar points at Homebase.  The trouble began when Chris spotted Bindweed roots whilst digging a planting hole for the very last one - the Homebase Hosta.  That meant he lifting out 8 more of the newly planted ones and then digging a massive hole 2 feet deep (and about 8 miles across!) to access and remove all the Bindweed roots.  The lovely settled bed looked like a bomb crater with Hostas scattered around!  Chaos! Eventually after ages of careful digging and sifting, we removed half a bucket of healthy, stealthy Bindweed roots and then couldn't remember where all the removed Hostas had been planted in the first place! All had to be laid out again (sigh!) along with the 2 new ones, replanted and then the bark chip carefully mulched around each plant.   If I see any trace of Bindweed in the Hostas this summer, you may hear screams!  As for slugs..........!

Trough Work

After Chris Genever single handedly lugged this massively heavy stone trough from the well up on to the terrace (patio to him!) I thought it was about time I got some plants in.  Having ensured maximum drainage and put in a layer of grit, I made up a fairly gritty mix, placed in a few pieces of stone and put in  a few Alpines - all purchases from Malvern Spring Garden Show.

Bees in Trees - in Plague Proportions!

A sunny and much warmer day and jobs included lawn edging and planting out Pinks, Petunias and Aeoniums and moving other plants from the greenhouse and into the cold frames for hardening off.

Bees in the apple trees

Whilst lawn edging, I heard a loud droning - rather like machinery.  Wondering what it was, I looked up into the Prunus Serrula above and saw that the entire tree was alive with bees.  I have never seen or heard so many bees at one time.  The noise was astonishing.  They were definitely not swarming and all were busy going about their business. On many of them, I could see the pockets on their hind legs bulging with pollen.  This is a big mature tree and it was literally full of bees!  The funny thing is that this tree is grown for its shiny peeling bark which is a real feature in winter.  The flowers are small, pale and insignificant. It is covered in blossom all of which appeared to be moving with the vast numbers of bees moving around the blooms.  We hear nothing but doom and gloom about the ever decreasing numbers of bees, their decline due to Verroa and sudden hive collapse which made this all the more amazing!  It was like a plague of bees infesting a single tree.  It's not as if there weren't huge numbers in the apple trees 'cos there were - just nothing like the prunus!  Absolutely no shortage of pollinators here!

A whole tree of bees!

Winter in May

The spring flowers are blooming and the trees heavy with blossom.  Queue strong winds and lashing rain and glacial temperatures - a drop from 20 to 8 degrees C. in just a few days - winter is back in town and the lawns are strewn in petals and tender young leaves which have been just whipped off the trees in the vicious gusts of winds.  These 2 photos disguise the cold temperatures and the fact that 2" of snow fell in Shropshire - our neighbouring county!

Towards the Hennery

Towards the Pear Arch

We are back to one Chris on Saturdays and we started by moving the urns to their summer places and carrying some of the tender plants out of the greenhouse.  It was just too cold and too wild to bring out Pelargoniums and standard Fuschias but we did make sufficient room for a few tomato plants.  Having done that, we set about laying out the very, very last of the York flag stone remains between the Pear Arch and the Hennery.  When the trees are in full leaf, the grass there is quite shaded and in winter, it is wet and is prone to excessive erosion from trips to the compost heap.  I cut round each stepping stone and Chris dug out sections of turf and set each stone in its place - carefully and patiently cutting out strips of turf to fill in around and between them.  I busied myself re-defining all the edges in that area - weeding and tidying as I went.  The last job of the day was to spend 20 minutes dead-heading the dandelions whilst waiting for our selective dandelion killer to arrive.  We picked half a bucketful each and with a whole bucket last week that zillions and zillions of seeds that won't be blowing around and seeding everywhere!

Coop Commentary

Wild Winifred 

It's 10 days since the arrival of our new flock and, I have to report that our egg total is actually 10! 8 brown (Marigold) eggs and 2 cream (Partridge Star) eggs. They continue to settle in and don't fly off to the furthest corners when I enter the Hen Pen. They won't take corn from my hand yet but are happy pecking around close by. Winifred alias Miss Flighty Whitey seems to be top of the pecking order despite being the smallest.  She's the least friendly and always wildly chasing - something!  Bumblebees, sparrows, blackbirds - anything will do.  She really isn't fussy. By comparison, Persephone is very timid and gentle and the remaining 2 are somewhere in between.  All girls seem very happy in their new home and are very happy to explore inside the Hennery and even stay in there for shelter from the rain and winds - which makes them rather more sensible than their predecessors.

Persephone