bunn

The weather is warming up! I've planted three Agapanthus Northern Star and three nerine bulbs in a strange triangle of soil that I suspect exists because the previous owner of this house didn't have quite enough concrete to cover it.

It's a very sunny exposed spot that also gets a lot of wind, since it's only about 20 feet from the water, so rather than plant it all up with something that might not be able to handle the location, I'm doing a test plant. I can always add more bulbs if they seem to like it there.

The young rowan trees that I'm training along the fence look like they might actually manage more than a couple of flowers this year, though they may still be too young to actually have berries.

None of the three citrus trees in pots seem terribly happy. The lemon had one flower: the kumquat and orange, none at all. I think maybe I should have fed them more last year. They have now moved off their special citrus winter food onto summer food and I'm going to start watering them more generously too.

The very bottom tiny lawn which I sowed with wildflower seed in November had already started to look pretty shaggy, so I decided to gamble that my seeds would have started to root, but not be tall enough yet to have the tops chopped off, and mowed it. With luck this should let some light in to the seedlings and not just hoover up all the seeds I planted. Hope this wasn't Too Much Management.

The sedum lawn that I laid optimistically directly onto concrete seems to be doing OK. I think, given how little soil it has, it actually appreciates the occasional watering it gets from the dogs, it needs the nutrients.

The larger-leaved sedums seem to have died right back making black patches this winter, but the centre of the plants are full of small shoots, so I'm hopeful they will come bouncing back in the spring.

The three bare root rowan trees that I bought as a late offer in April 2021, shoved roughly in pots for a year, then planted in (I think) 2022, seem to have settled in well in their large containers and I pruned them back and have trained them along the anti-Theo fencing. I would have sworn I bought those from Hedgesdirect, but I didn't, it was Beeches Nursery via ebay. Oh well.

The Chinese quinces, however, are not happy. I think the summer heat and sea-winds were too much for them. One of them that's in a rather more sheltered position is hanging on in there, but the other two have died.

Anyway, I've bought several more bare root rowans and also some sea buckthorn saplings from Hedgesdirect, which specialises in selling meters of hedge and is thus much less expensive per-plant than anywhere that sells individual trees. I think the rowans were something like 1.29 each. The sea buckthorn should endure the gales better than quinces, and they are already happily starting to unfurl leaves. I hope they might even fruit: I've had some delicious sea buckthorn flavoured desserts recently, so I thought I'd give them a try.

1. Developed an excellent technique for getting medication into Theo's giant floppy ears. For some reason, it's fine if I put the medicine on my finger and then my finger into his ears. Ears are now sorted.

We forgot to buy bread for the Easter weekend, so instead, yesterday, I made some cheese and bacon scones. Mine had some home-grown chives in too. (Pp does not like chives, probably fearing they might contain vitamins...)

Last week, Lidl was selling Kumquat bushes with actual kumquats on them, so Pp bought me one. Today I went and bought a pot for it, so it can join the lemon bush and the blood orange.

This year my Mum announced firmly that she would really prefer to spend Christmas at home with her cat Pudding and no other company, so after we had popped down to visit for a couple of days beforehand then came back to Wales. It was very nice and relaxing and the quick visit to Devon was handy for going to the Cheese Shop in Tavistock to buy Christmas Cheese.

We had a nice lunch at the Bearslake Inn before we went home. I think my mother enjoyed it:

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The dogs were quite insistent that they could not possibly go anywhere or do anything due to their extreme levels of Woe, but must remain on their princess-and-the-pea layers of comfy beds. They basically stayed in bed apart from brief pee breaks for an entire day yesterday, and most of today too. I was really quite worried about them yesterday, but not quite worried enough to call on the emergency vet on New Years Day and they are much brighter today. Theo has had a little outing to the beach, and Rosie managed to run up the stairs this afternoon.

So, since there were no walks needed yesterday, I planted some rose bushes that I have had heeled in waiting for me to get around to them, and mulched the roses I planted last year with well rotted manure. The new roses are GHISLAINE DE FÉLIGONDE musk roses. They grow to a theoretical height of 12 feet, so should help to clad the wire fences I erected in a great hurry when we moved here and I urgently needed dog containment solutions. In a perfect world I would replace them with 6 foot fences, but I'm not sure I can endure further infestations of builders at the moment. We had enough of them in 2022.

Today I went and did a new thing: I went swimming in the sea in the winter! I had been swimming with a local sea-swimming group a few times in the summer (I am not brave enough to swim in the sea alone) but November and December were terribly busy and I fell out of the habit. But today someone I met in the summer asked if I would like to go along, and I thought 'WHY NOT' so I did.

It was terribly cold - not too bad on the legs or body, but my hands took one look at the temperature and burst into frozen pain. I've now ordered a pair of neoprene gloves. They will be handy for kayaking, even if I don't make a regular thing of sea-swimming in the cold.

There were a few apples that had got past their best in the fridge, so I have just chopped them up, retrieved the seeds and got rid of the rest. There were 11 seeds from some very small French Gala apples, and 10 seeds from some Worcesters.
I have planted them around the edges of some big planters which will eventually be full of Chinese Quinces, but are mostly currently full of compost. If they germinate I'll put them into their own pots later.
Apples from seed are supposed to take about 8 years to get to fruiting size (though I can't find much information on that, the usual way to get an apple tree is definitely to buy one, but I would like to know how it works!) We will see.

There is not a lot of soil in this garden for trees, but there were a couple of spots where I really wanted to plant an apple tree - partly because apple trees are so nice to have with the blossom AND the fruit, but also to provide a bit of screening. I have already planted a Cornish variety, and now I have planted a Bardsey Island apple. I am hoping that this tree, coming from a windy small Welsh island, will be OK with the thin sandy soil and fierce winds here. The mat thing is a coir mat, used instead of digging up the grass, it seems to work quite well to convert a grassy area to a well-mulched area of soil. A bit dull at the moment with just basically a stick in it, so I've added the boots that I wore holes in and planted up with pansies, plus the little metal duck that belonged to Pp's Mum.

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A bug's eye view of the sedum carpet. I was a bit concerned that the bees were flying over it to get to the chive flowers beyond, but yesterday the sedum flowers really started opening in numbers, and the bees were definitely enjoying them. So that's good.

My fig cutting that I took from our Cornwall fig (the one that was originally a 50p label fell off special from a garden centre bargain area) lost all its leaves when I planted it out here this spring. Probably too early, since the poor thing had been indoors over the winter and was not accustomed to wild winds from the sea. But it has now regrouped and is leafing up again. I doubt I shall get a fig from it this year, but maybe next, now it's getting used to the place.

I forgot to take photos of two of the Garden Features : the anchors. These were discovered on the estuary floor by the previous owner of the house, who was a diving instructor. I've taken those rather ugly plastic pots away and filled them with pelargoniums now.

the smaller anchor

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This is what we started with on the lower side of the house. It's rough concrete, a bit cracked, and with no fence or gate onto the lane on the right-hand side.

I strung some wire across the driveway so I could at least let the hounds out without them running for the hills, and put down a roll of sheeps-wool garden felt — I was intending to put some compost under it and plant things into it, but the winds here are fierce, and even when wet, the garden felt won't stay put! I still intend to use it, but will need to put some rocks on it to keep it still. The wind also knocked the wire fencing over a lot.

view from above. Those bird feeders attract a lot of birds, including a woodpecker!

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I keep vaguely thinking 'I should do a post about that' and not doing it. So to get back in the swing I shall just do a bulleted list of Things in no order.

Today we went to Lawrenny Quay, which is a lovely place some distance up the Cleddau river, looking out onto the resoundingly named Black Mixen Pool. There's a nice cafe, but rather a lot of signs of all kinds — some of them helpful signs about crab sandwiches and toilets, but also so very many 'don't do this!' signs. We watched a man very determinedly attempting to make a verge flatter using a road roller. It was a fair battle, but I think the verge won.

Wally the Tenby Walrus has reportedly taken off to Cornwall, and was seen some distance off Padstow. I imagine the Tenby tourist industry is weeping, but at least the pubs are open again so they can weep into their beer.

In a desperate attempt to stifle some of the rather ugly concrete driveway here, I have covered it with a sedum carpet, the kind they sell for green roofs. So far this seems to be working pretty well.

This garden, or 'concrete and tarmac pad' as you might call it, is very much the opposite of my Cornwall garden. It has practically no soil, is very sunny and extremely windy!

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Posting this for my own reference, really.
Most of what I have planted here is staying, but there are a few plants I want to bring along.

This blue campanula spreads like crazy, so with luck if I bring one plant it will do the same at the other end. Also in this pot, Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus) although annoyingly this is a white-flowered version. I must try to see if I can get hold of the default pink-and-white, which is much prettier, and wonderful when it seeds itself into a wall. Also a stonecrop that I picked up that had fallen off a wall in Gunnislake, and was happy to root into this pot though it would be happier if it had one of its own.

The pot on the right, the red daisy can come too, though I only acquired that this year, I like that it has such a long flowering season, it's still powering away now!

( More garden maunderings )

I don't seem to have posted for ages. A month ago, we had just put our house up for sale : this Friday, the painters finished painting it, and today we have (I hope!) sold it. It does look good with the sun shining and the paint all new!

So, with luck we will soon be on our way to Pembrokeshire. This is all very alarming but I'm sure we will get used to it. I had not expected to move again, not least because when we bought this house it was in a very unpopular area where houses took forever to sell. But I guess that's the Plague Year for you.

I've just been wandering around the garden, eating the figs and apples and strawberries for nearly-the-last time. I shall not be too sorry to say goodbye to the garden though. It is a source of good things, but it is also rather a strain, the size of it and the way it just GROWs with the least provocation.

I tried to take cuttings of the fig and the grape vine in the garden that I planted years ago, but the cuttings got mould. Have just taken some more cuttings and treated them with very-dilute bleach. We'll see if that helps at all! I'd quite like to plant a new clone of the fig tree, because it's very productive, and although *probably* it's just plain old Ficus Brown Turkey, I don't know for sure because I originally bought it for 50p after the label fell off.

It's been a stressful few weeks, and the stress isn't over yet, but things are happening and that's much better than NOT happening and feeling on edge because the owners of the house we are buying understandably would like us to buy it so they can get on with their lives. Bit worried that the cats won't like the move, but hey.

Rosie is currently barking loudly at Theo, because I gave them each a turkey leg and Theo ate his and then stole hers. Otherwise, all is well in the land of the hounds. I've just bought Rosie a new house collar, because her old purple velvet one is looking very tired. I went for red polkadot this time, after much agonising.

What else has happened? Oh yes, I finished the two Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang fics I was writing:
Lands, Lords and Ladies, lost beyond the Sea.
which is a crossover of Tolkien's Fall of Arthur with The Silmarillion, plus my idea of a world where the land of Elves and Valinor lies not very far away, and sometimes Elves wander through and have adventures. On this occasion, Fingon is the adventurer. Oh, and it also has the concept of Corrigans, from Breton legend via Tolkien's version of Aotrou and Itroun.

The other story I wrote was:
Sea Longing which is about the legend of the Took Fairy Wife. I'm convinced that a long way back, one of the Took family married a small and unimportant Elf, and this is how.

So far, no motion from any of the seeds I'm trying to sprout. Possibly they are all Too Old.( Cut for art )
In other creative news, I randomly picked up my bamboo flute and played it a bit today, and then, feeling inspired, dug out my ancient clarinet and music books. It's SO LONG since I played, I had almost forgotten how to read music, and to begin with I couldn't get the top notes, but once I had played for a bit, it started coming back. I think I'll try it again tomorrow.

I feel like I'm sort of standing still a lot of the time. I know that the world for most people has changed fundementally and in very difficult ways, yet here, we have made small accommodations, but life poddles on not very unlike its state before. It feels wrong somehow, though I have no idea what would feel right. On the other hand, I have made some art and a little music, and that's a small achievement at least.

They were wrestling so enthusiastically that they barely noticed us. I can report that voles wrestle rather like humans, standing on their back legs and using their weight to try to throw the adversary and hold him down. The celandines are in full swing, creating shining golden carpets beside the paths. I must remember to bring the camera tomorrow.

No sign of motion from the seeds yet, though the beans have stained the kitchen paper and smell very... beany.

I ventured to the local butcher, where I found that the counters have now been cordoned off with strings of Cornish flags, and everyone was very carefully distancing along the pavement.

Happy Easter!

I don't think I remember a spring quite so consistently warm and sunny. It won't be a good year for bluebells at this rate.

Seed-buying websites are overrun with eager shoppers, stuck at home with nothing to do but grow things.

I had the same thought, but instead have rummaged through the utility room shelf and found a number of dusty seed packets full of all kinds of things, from pansies to parsnips to butternut squash and Morning Glories. I have put them all in plastic boxes on damp kitchen paper, and we'll see what germinates! The oldest packet was from 2002, so I'm not holding my breath, nor wasting compost on them. But they can have a couple of weeks of water and time. At the very least, I've cleared out some junk.

There was a time when I was a very enthusiastic gardener. I don't know whether to blame Time, Dogs or Social Media for the fact that the garden has been sadly neglected in recent years.

Oh god, the garden. The last few years my energy and optimism have been low, and I have pretty much entirely let the garden do its thing, with the expected jungly results. But this year, I seem to be keeping it together better and am beginning to hope that at least a measure of order can be regained.
I was chatting to someone about pansies, and I thought, you know, I could grow pansies. Pansies are simple and forgiving plants. So I bought a box and they are doing pretty well in several baskets and pots now.

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Yesterday it rained. I had planned to garden, but the sudden downpours were too much. Instead we went wandering around Tavistock for several hours with the hounds (and took them to our favorite dog-friendly cafe for lunch). I managed to get some more titanium white acrylic paint and then since the shop had an offer, I bought some silver, buff titanium, and Naples Yellow (which at least in the Windsor and Newton range seems to be quite a muted pinkish shade). Foster Ruggie was quite tired out by town life, and fell fast asleep in the cafe, so Brythen and Rosie got to split a home-made burger and chips between them. Brythen ate all the chips. Chips are not refined enough for Rosie Roo.

( ramble ramble ramble )

Yesterday I went over to Mary Tavy to watch a Shakespeare in the Garden production. ( Read more... )

Oldie foster stole some bubblewrap this morning,( Read more... )
I've downloaded a copy of Synfig, an animation program, to play with. Because apparently I don't already have enough art supplies. I am hoping that it may be possible to use Synfig to produce animations created from pastel drawings, in some way. What could possibly go wrong?

Speaking of which, I am mildly annoyed ( Read more... )

On the other hand, the blackberries are ripening. This morning (on my long non-foster dog walk) I picked blackberries and ate the good ones, and kept the rest to chuck to the three pigs. I feel pigs probably don't mind their blackberries slightly squashed or maggoty.

A camera-related triumph! ( Read more... )

This evening we were just setting off to walk the dogs when we saw a pair of biplanes overhead! I didn't think you still got biplanes.

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bunn

May 2025

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Page generated Jun. 8th, 2025 11:42 pm

Entries tagged with gardening

Plantings

Lawns, lawnesque things, hedges

More Things in May

Scones & Kumquats

2022 DONE.

Apples

Plantings

In The Land of the Red Weed

Another garden-post!

A garden-post

A post of many things

Plants that are coming too

On the move with a fig (I hope)

Things

On this morning's walk we encountered a pair of wrestling voles

The weather continues fine

A garden update

Things done of a weekend

Things done: a rambling update

Random things

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May 2025

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