A friend asked me whether I was putting my feet up now the wet weather had arrived. I had to have a little laugh to myself. No, I am not, in fact I am probably busier now than during the summer when gardens are largely left to their own devices. In the summer all I am usually doing is just keeping gardens tidy but when it comes to this time of year things really get busy as now is a great time for lots pruning and dividing as well as all those maintenance jobs and projects that you keep adding to your diary. So I thought it might be good to keep a little pictorial diary of the past week or so and just a few of the things I have been up to.
Ah these are lovely - spotted in a client's garden
It was a wet day so a perfect opportunity to get stuck into a client's garage and get it a bit more sorted - if nothing else so they could actually get into it and I knew what tools they had (and the state they were in).
Ah these are lovely - spotted in a client's garden
I thought I had sorted this out last year. It just goes to show you can't keep a good Wisteria down. Oh well, let's get this sorted.
Took a little while and some bare patches had to be "combed over" but still a good job I think.
A Rose spotted in a clients' garden - lovely
A Dahlia spotted in a clients' garden - lovely
This is a lovely yew tree but for some reason the base of it is being treated like a hedge which really doesn't look right and cut off a valuable corner of the drive. Out with the loppers.
That's looking a bit better. All the rubbish around the base needs clearing but we are making progress.
At the bottom of a long garden is a forgotten shed - or to put it another way, four woodworm chomped walls and a space in the centre. Oh dear.
This hadn't been looked at for a long time. So it took a while to prize apart the protection, cut out the grass and then put things back but a job worth doing.
A small thing, it takes a few minutes but makes such a difference.
These supports are rotting, just look really ugly and may well be causing problems by rubbing again the lower growth. Work is needed.
This is some Autumn maintenance work. I had removed the old (useless now) supports and also took out the lower branches from this conifer. Much neater and can be left to its' own devices now.
As I was dealing with.. the Buddleja... I was joined now and again by several butterflies and this particular one looks to be a "Comma" (Polygonia c-album). Hello!
This was a simple job, a Buddleja in the middle of the bed needed taking out. Unfortunately when Buddleja was cut down and the soil shifted out of the way, it became clear this was no small problem. In the end it has been left as is, the stump can't be dug out without seriously damaging everything around it so some stump killer will (unfortunately) be needed - all because it was left to go out of control.
Quite seriously this raised veg. bed wasn't being used so I undertook a bit of single digging (trowling) to turn over the soil and get it ready for a whole heap of bulbs.
Ask most gardeners and I suspect there will be really only few tools they use day in day out and this, my weeding knife, is... well... a bit broken. To be honest it didn't surprise me - I knew this would probably be happen but it lasted a year and served me very well. Fortunately I have a spare!
This was one of my clients I look after as a volunteer gardener. Pruning this elder didn't actually take that long although some of the branches were quite long so a bit of care was needed in thinking how they would fall. Then there was the hassle of chopping up all the cuttings.
My client was really keen to have something edible growing in the Autumn and whilst the options are more limited there is still plenty to grow and radishes are a really simple choice. So these were sown toward the beginning of October and this is the seeds, two weeks later.
My new (very inquisitive) apprentice!?
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