i don't want to kill them........i just want them to not eat my plants. i thought that getting rid of the ivy might reduce their numbers, but there were thousands of them chomping up the Hemerocallis after the rain..........Bob Flowerdew's book suggests making a "snail farm" out of an old washing basket filled with lettuce leaves.......might be worth a try.....because so far they've proved immune to all the snail repellents. coca shell....glass......ash.......eggshells.......nothing seems to put them off. they're strangely selective though.....preferring to wait until things that have been carefully nurtured get to just the right size..........my lovely Tradescantia "Sweet Kate", growing away beautifully and untouched, then I came out one morning....gone. I've put the dahlia "Bishop of Llandaff" in a pot this time, with snail-repelling granules round it and death threats on a plant label, don't know if they can read but it's worth a try.......so far they haven't touched it but they may be just biding their time........then there's the copper tape which apparently gives them little electric shocks if they touch it.....I suspect my snails won't be too bothered by that and will just regard it as a little extra thrill on the way to a nice dinner out..my snails seem to be able to fly, or abseil down the walls because they certainly don't have any trouble crawling over all the things that are supposed to stop them. I was right about the lupins...........stumps. as for the hostas....well, we'll see, Paul next door has constructed a "hosta cage" at the front with wire netting, raised sides, everything but an electrified fence and so far his hostas seem to be intact......the lilies-of-the-valley seem to be doing nothing and maybe i just have to accept that they're one of those things i just can't grow.........
.....same with sweet peas. i love sweet peas but i've never managed to grow them, they either get eaten by the gastropods or sucked to death by the aphids. but i'm very excited..........got a raised bed to grow veggies. i've never had any desire to grow veggies but it must be from reading all these organic gardening magazines.......what i want is for the area by the back door to be the kitchen garden, with herbs and small veg, so i thought i'd try the raised bed and see what happens........i don't know if there's any point trying to grow lettuce etc with the snail problem, so i'm putting in runner beans, onions and maybe courgettes if they sprout.....no point in growing things i don't like or won't eat. the freezer is filling up with organic veg from the boxes.....what i need to do is spend part of Saturdays sorting out the veg from the box, preparing it so it can go in the freezer and be ready to use, otherwise it just goes to waste. should probably harvest the herbs as well.......all that lovage and salad burnet, apparently it does it good to be cut, so i'll cut it......
..........so the raised bed has been filled with a mixture of commercial compost and home-made.....and watered with the special comfrey feed........covered with cocoa shell mulch and protected with copper tape......and if the snails still manage to eat the sweet peas in spite of all that then i guess they'll at least have worked up an appetite.........
......day lilies now out, at least the old one is, the new "Zebra" that i put in last year doesn't have any flowers yet but if i remember rightly the "Catherine Woodbury" took a while to establish...
.....Oriental poppies have suddenly burst out in full blaze of vulgarity, pity they don't last long....all the roses blooming as well, that organic rose has been marvellous, it gets bigger every year and flowers like mad, it's the first to come out and the flowers have a lovely lemony scent........what with that the the dwarf lilac it's a wonderful time of year for perfume....
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
flowers
hey! the first Oriental poppy is out!! whoop-de-do........loads of flowers on the pondside Diascia too.........so much for being an annual, it made it through the winter.......so did the Chilean glory vine which is also flowering away merrily........
.....this year's big thrill has to be the paeonies.........i moved them from Ye Darke Hole under the tree at the front, one refused to leave but the others sat sullenly in their new abode for a couple of years putting up the odd grudging leaf.......this year for some reason they have decided to flower, since sulking was not getting them anywhere. or maybe it was the chicken manure........anyway i was quite excited, never having seen the flowers......they turn out to be a fantastic deep blood-red.........they're in the Spicey-grave area, the mini-rose has given up but i think the paeonies kind of make up for it.......
........took some lilac into work today from that so-called dwarf lilac which is now 6ft tall, i wouldn't like to see the giant lilac.......the perfume filled the whole office, it was lovely...
.....this year's big thrill has to be the paeonies.........i moved them from Ye Darke Hole under the tree at the front, one refused to leave but the others sat sullenly in their new abode for a couple of years putting up the odd grudging leaf.......this year for some reason they have decided to flower, since sulking was not getting them anywhere. or maybe it was the chicken manure........anyway i was quite excited, never having seen the flowers......they turn out to be a fantastic deep blood-red.........they're in the Spicey-grave area, the mini-rose has given up but i think the paeonies kind of make up for it.......
........took some lilac into work today from that so-called dwarf lilac which is now 6ft tall, i wouldn't like to see the giant lilac.......the perfume filled the whole office, it was lovely...
the checkerboard.......it was a good idea for brightening up that miserable grey concrete until i could afford to get it relaid and it worked really well.......some of the carpeters have been moved now and are still going strong but that evergreen bush has died and been replaced by a new pot clematis at the front...
......you get the general idea........the old table that the people before us left, painted silver..the rubbish heap cleared of all the things that shouldn't have been in it and made into a proper compost heap......don't know how i thought that fluorescent light fitting from the kitchen was going to rot down into compost but of course it hadn't, so a few things went to the "bulky refuse" collection........what a sense of satisfaction though, even better when the compost bins arrived.....
last summer. this must have been just after i'd cut down the clematis and taken down that partition, you can see it lying against the front wall of the house. it was extremely hard work and i ended up scratched to bits but i just started by pruning it and kind of got on a roll....it made a huge difference at once to the patio and kitchen-door area, loads more light......
the pond
it probably does help to water things. i used to just let everything take its chances, which may be why some things didn't make it.............but i've taken to going out with the hose during this dry spell and it does make a difference. novelties this year include the parrot-feather thing in the pond flowering.....one anemone is also forcing its way up in the "hot bed"...........just the one, don't know what happened to the rest but maybe they're on their way.........the ginger mint and eau-de-cologne mint were not at all happy in the pot so i've moved them to the herb garden......the roots still looked alive so we'll see if they reappear......it would help if les chats did't use it as a litter tray but i guess they have to go somewhere and it's all organic.........the comfrey feed looks murky and smells foul so i've started trying it on things to see what happens....the messy bit where all the daff vegetation is will probably need some cheapo anuuals or such, i know it's good for the daffs to let it die down naturally etc but it looks such a mess while it's doing it.....
maybe more phloxes for the pondside bank as well.....
this weekend's project may be the raised veggie bed.......i've never had any huge desire to grow vegetables but it gives me a massive feeling of satisfaction to pull fresh herbs from the herb garden and my simple herb pasta is just wonderful.....plain pasta dressed with olive oil and chopped herbs........so it's off to Hopetoun again this weekend i hope.......
i built the pond two years ago. i thought about it for yonks..........knew where i wanted it to be and put carpet down to kill the grass..........read the garden book to find out how to do it........then one day rushed out and just started digging a great big hole. i dug until i couldn't physically lift the spade any more......then on the Sunday finished the hole, bought the liner, and filled it with water. it was a sign of progress in that i did actually read up on it and took advice from the books........i fully expected it to leak but it hasn't, it's now quite established with its own load of pondweed.....
i bought a water-lily kit......a little plastic basket with aquatic soil and a bulb.......put it all together and dropped it in, it sank like a stone and a huge cloud of mud came up, and i thought oh, well, that's that then.........but to my huge delight, a few months later a leaf appeared..........it grew five leaves in its first year......flowers came up but didn't open so i probably do need to clear the pondweed. the solar fountain worked great the first year but the panel was really obtrusive, it was enormous, and it didn't survive the winter.........
i don't like the fact that the liner still shows a bit especially when the water is low, but considering i'd never built a pond before i'm rather proud of it......
maybe more phloxes for the pondside bank as well.....
this weekend's project may be the raised veggie bed.......i've never had any huge desire to grow vegetables but it gives me a massive feeling of satisfaction to pull fresh herbs from the herb garden and my simple herb pasta is just wonderful.....plain pasta dressed with olive oil and chopped herbs........so it's off to Hopetoun again this weekend i hope.......
i built the pond two years ago. i thought about it for yonks..........knew where i wanted it to be and put carpet down to kill the grass..........read the garden book to find out how to do it........then one day rushed out and just started digging a great big hole. i dug until i couldn't physically lift the spade any more......then on the Sunday finished the hole, bought the liner, and filled it with water. it was a sign of progress in that i did actually read up on it and took advice from the books........i fully expected it to leak but it hasn't, it's now quite established with its own load of pondweed.....
i bought a water-lily kit......a little plastic basket with aquatic soil and a bulb.......put it all together and dropped it in, it sank like a stone and a huge cloud of mud came up, and i thought oh, well, that's that then.........but to my huge delight, a few months later a leaf appeared..........it grew five leaves in its first year......flowers came up but didn't open so i probably do need to clear the pondweed. the solar fountain worked great the first year but the panel was really obtrusive, it was enormous, and it didn't survive the winter.........
i don't like the fact that the liner still shows a bit especially when the water is low, but considering i'd never built a pond before i'm rather proud of it......
Monday, May 24, 2004
the beginning
i've been meaning to keep a proper garden journal for some time.......so far there are just a few jottings in my notebook but they don't really give a picture of how profoundly this garden has changed. and not just the garden. i know that this house chose me...........i felt it as soon as i stepped in the door. we nearly didn't even come to look at it............but i knew at once. the lilac tree....the fireplace.........but more than that, the "something"......friendly ghosts perhaps.....who knows.we moved in 100 years and one month after the original owners, after a mad fortnight of decorating...........the house had been on the market for six months, the owners were getting desperate.........lots of people had looked, nobody had offered.....it was waiting for us.
..........a year later we had separated. sobriety had not brought what we had hoped for. things disappeared one by one........we fought over small trifles, pictures, CD's........i was left alone, insane with pain and rage, with a house and garden of my own.......i realise as i type that it's the first ever garden of my own.
the first thing we put in was the Japanese maple, because we buried Khan under it. there are now two more cat graves in the garden..........under the paeonies, Spicey, and under the catmint, Oscar. Spicey had a mini-rose originally but the paeonies have swamped it. i don't really remember what else we planted.......perhaps nothing, we were too busy fighting. the Caryopteris did come from our old house though, and has been in a bed, in a pot, and now back in a bed again. but i can't think of anything else that came from there.......apart from the Stephanotis that i thought was dead until i re-potted it and it climbed away up the wall and along the curtain-rail.........how strange that i had just disentangled it and taken it upstairs to give my passion plant more freedom, and then found out that my ex is moving.....
....and there's the Hoya, which flowers beautifully and massively every year, the books say it doesn't like being moved so it's sat there totally immobile for seven years, it seems to like the bathroom.....
.........some old friends have gone......Heptie the umbrella plant.........Heptie never really recovered from the move, and also didn't much like me forgetting to water him.....my goose-foot plant, grown from a leaf stolen from the one in the medical ward at Ballochmyle Hospital when i was and SHO, the hospital is long gone but the plant lived 17 years.........
...........i found the terrarium my ex made so i cleaned it and re-stocked it and it's thriving........and wonder of wonders, i've actually managed to have a Dizygotheca not die on me for a couple of years......
........then of course there's the spotted begonia and her many progeny.....i've forgotten whether she's the daughter or granddaughter of Mum's original, or possibly even of Sylvia's one that i looked after while she was in Israel, every time another bit fell off i potted it up and made another plant......she hasn't ever flowered in this house but who knows, this might be her year......
........some things didn't make it. the Caladium.....Pip's plant.....the hibiscus.
.........i inherited Aunty Kitty's Christmas cacti, clearly of Orthodox persuasion because they flowered loads but well before Christmas.......they're outside for their summer holiday at the moment along with the scented geraniums and the jasmine.......like most Scottish summer holidays it's proving a bit chilly and they're all shivering on the patio pretending it's fun........
.........i seem to be good at African violets even though i don't really like them........Sita's one had nine flowers while she was in Egypt, and my own one is covered in flowers too, maybe i should get it a friend......
where i am now, the study, is the only room in the house with no plants in it, apart from the top floor which is empty at the moment. i worked out that about 17 people have lived in this house since we bought it, not all at the same time of course.......Katrina, Meggan, Sylvia, Sarah, Tim, Niall, Maureen and Paul, Pip, Ian, Patricia, Bruce and Laura,Anna, Nan, Tamara and Johnny. Plus ourselves of course, and passing guests. At the moment it's me and les chats........which is quite enough....
there are plants in the garden as well of course.....
at first lots of weeds came up. those non-stinging nettly things. i just let them. i don't think i really did anything to the garden for about four years......mowed the grass of course, and had the front landscaped.......the people before us had shoved in a few clemati to make it look as though they'd done something, so those came up. the front was cold and windswept with dense shade under the tree, so i thought nothing would grow there, and it didn't. the back had a wooden partition in the midst of miserable grey concrete, boring grass and weedy beds. there was the yellow rose........and Paul next door's honeysuckle which came over the wall, and John and Fiona on the other side's ivy which poured over the other wall and across the concrete by the kitchen door.
.......the garden provided a few ideas of its own. Aquilegia and feverfew, Alchemilla at the front. some things started to establish and look good.........the sage and rosemary beside the Hebe in the bottom corner..........
.........I had Blair gravel the bottom area by the shed, and threw all the rubbish in a big heap in the very dark bit at the far end under the overhanging tree.
.........i don't know when i started to actually begin to "garden", but my notes start two years ago.........which is probably round about when i came into Alanon. I put in a tree...............a weeping birch, and made a little bed around it. A honeysuckle beside it.......and the spreading yellow thing which i've since moved to beside the pond, which turns out to be called "Brazen Hussy"! - some sort of buttercup i think. i had also attempted to cheer up the patio by chiselling up the slabs, turning them over to make a checkerboard pattern, and painting them. i borrowed my ex's crowbar; it was extremely hard work but it was also when i knew i was getting better from the mysterious illness because i actually had the strength to do it. it was Easter Monday i remember. i planted little spreaders in the mini-beds and it looked quite good for a while, until it didn't.......discovered the wonders of Pratia as a carpeter though!
...........the first really major thing, though, was the pond. of which more anon.......
..........a year later we had separated. sobriety had not brought what we had hoped for. things disappeared one by one........we fought over small trifles, pictures, CD's........i was left alone, insane with pain and rage, with a house and garden of my own.......i realise as i type that it's the first ever garden of my own.
the first thing we put in was the Japanese maple, because we buried Khan under it. there are now two more cat graves in the garden..........under the paeonies, Spicey, and under the catmint, Oscar. Spicey had a mini-rose originally but the paeonies have swamped it. i don't really remember what else we planted.......perhaps nothing, we were too busy fighting. the Caryopteris did come from our old house though, and has been in a bed, in a pot, and now back in a bed again. but i can't think of anything else that came from there.......apart from the Stephanotis that i thought was dead until i re-potted it and it climbed away up the wall and along the curtain-rail.........how strange that i had just disentangled it and taken it upstairs to give my passion plant more freedom, and then found out that my ex is moving.....
....and there's the Hoya, which flowers beautifully and massively every year, the books say it doesn't like being moved so it's sat there totally immobile for seven years, it seems to like the bathroom.....
.........some old friends have gone......Heptie the umbrella plant.........Heptie never really recovered from the move, and also didn't much like me forgetting to water him.....my goose-foot plant, grown from a leaf stolen from the one in the medical ward at Ballochmyle Hospital when i was and SHO, the hospital is long gone but the plant lived 17 years.........
...........i found the terrarium my ex made so i cleaned it and re-stocked it and it's thriving........and wonder of wonders, i've actually managed to have a Dizygotheca not die on me for a couple of years......
........then of course there's the spotted begonia and her many progeny.....i've forgotten whether she's the daughter or granddaughter of Mum's original, or possibly even of Sylvia's one that i looked after while she was in Israel, every time another bit fell off i potted it up and made another plant......she hasn't ever flowered in this house but who knows, this might be her year......
........some things didn't make it. the Caladium.....Pip's plant.....the hibiscus.
.........i inherited Aunty Kitty's Christmas cacti, clearly of Orthodox persuasion because they flowered loads but well before Christmas.......they're outside for their summer holiday at the moment along with the scented geraniums and the jasmine.......like most Scottish summer holidays it's proving a bit chilly and they're all shivering on the patio pretending it's fun........
.........i seem to be good at African violets even though i don't really like them........Sita's one had nine flowers while she was in Egypt, and my own one is covered in flowers too, maybe i should get it a friend......
where i am now, the study, is the only room in the house with no plants in it, apart from the top floor which is empty at the moment. i worked out that about 17 people have lived in this house since we bought it, not all at the same time of course.......Katrina, Meggan, Sylvia, Sarah, Tim, Niall, Maureen and Paul, Pip, Ian, Patricia, Bruce and Laura,Anna, Nan, Tamara and Johnny. Plus ourselves of course, and passing guests. At the moment it's me and les chats........which is quite enough....
there are plants in the garden as well of course.....
at first lots of weeds came up. those non-stinging nettly things. i just let them. i don't think i really did anything to the garden for about four years......mowed the grass of course, and had the front landscaped.......the people before us had shoved in a few clemati to make it look as though they'd done something, so those came up. the front was cold and windswept with dense shade under the tree, so i thought nothing would grow there, and it didn't. the back had a wooden partition in the midst of miserable grey concrete, boring grass and weedy beds. there was the yellow rose........and Paul next door's honeysuckle which came over the wall, and John and Fiona on the other side's ivy which poured over the other wall and across the concrete by the kitchen door.
.......the garden provided a few ideas of its own. Aquilegia and feverfew, Alchemilla at the front. some things started to establish and look good.........the sage and rosemary beside the Hebe in the bottom corner..........
.........I had Blair gravel the bottom area by the shed, and threw all the rubbish in a big heap in the very dark bit at the far end under the overhanging tree.
.........i don't know when i started to actually begin to "garden", but my notes start two years ago.........which is probably round about when i came into Alanon. I put in a tree...............a weeping birch, and made a little bed around it. A honeysuckle beside it.......and the spreading yellow thing which i've since moved to beside the pond, which turns out to be called "Brazen Hussy"! - some sort of buttercup i think. i had also attempted to cheer up the patio by chiselling up the slabs, turning them over to make a checkerboard pattern, and painting them. i borrowed my ex's crowbar; it was extremely hard work but it was also when i knew i was getting better from the mysterious illness because i actually had the strength to do it. it was Easter Monday i remember. i planted little spreaders in the mini-beds and it looked quite good for a while, until it didn't.......discovered the wonders of Pratia as a carpeter though!
...........the first really major thing, though, was the pond. of which more anon.......
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