Tuesday 24 May 2016

Making progress

There is still plenty to be done in the back garden but I am slowly getting there!  I had a very long day working out there this last Sunday (I will share those photos in another post) but these are the photos I took and forgot to show you from a couple of weeks back ~ a vast improvement from this post and this one LOL  


The raised bed has been rearranged and I am gradually getting it planted up.  Most of the plants have been moved from elsewhere in the garden so there hasn't been much financial outlay at the moment.  As you can see Steve, our handy-dandy handyman, has now replaced all the old fence panels and I have at last got them all stained ~ I am so glad to have finally got that job done!


The houseleeks were planted in this birdcage last year.  They are doing really well but houseleeks are tough little plants aren't they :-)  I have lots in various places in the garden now, all offshoots from just three original plants!  I put the little cherub in the cage to add a little height.


These three pansies were in a pot of "spring bedding" plants, along with some others.  The pot got rather neglected, I'm afraid, and I rather belatedly got round to watering it!  The other plants were too far gone to recover but these three obviously weren't quite ready to give up the fight, so I thought I'd put them into the raised bed.  I don't suppose they will last very long but they look pretty whilst they are still flowering.


My hostas are doing remarkably well ~ for now, at least!  I fully expect them to be attacked by the dreaded slugs any day, and I always feel grateful to open the curtains and see them still in one piece LOL  The forget-me-nots are such pretty plants and look lovely with the hostas.


More hostas and forget-me-nots.  The armeria in this bed are much further behind others I have in another bed but there are lots of buds coming up.


The narcissus were in a pot and I thought they weren't going to throw up any flowers at all, as the compost in the pot was disturbed by something soon after I planted it up.  Then I noticed that there were actually flowers coming up after all!  I'm afraid that I was in a proper "get-the-garden-sorted" mood and unceremoniously tipped the poor things out of the pot and planted them ~ amazingly, they continued to flower!

Do you see the rather poorly-looking fern to the right of the picture?  Well, I'm ashamed to admit that it spent all winter sitting in a pot.....without compost.  Steve had to dig it out when he was paving the bottom of the garden, and I can only assume that it managed to survive because it had quite a lot of soil around its rootball.  Thankfully the winter was quite mild, too, and the pot was in a sheltered position.  I pulled out quite a lot of dead foliage and discovered that there were some tiny new fronds, so decided to give it a second chance.  There are more new fronds now, so it has obviously forgiven me for my unkind treatment of it!  


The ivy has been living in a large pot for a few years but I wanted something with a bit of height to fill this corner of the bed.  The little kissing couple statue has lived with the ivy all the time it was in the pot, so I thought it would be nice for them to stay together LOL


I really should have tackled those weeds when they were still small ~ look at the size of the things here!


Yet more of the dreaded weeds in the borders, too *sigh*


Once the fencing was finished, we were able to move little Martha's house.  This part of the garden doesn't look very attractive but it does make a good place for the chickens to have their homes.


This pot was only here as a temporary measure to stop Matty from hoovering up the food that the chickens manage to scatter everywhere!  As you can see, Adrian has added some wooden panels to keep the food inside their runs so Matty is now a somewhat disappointed doggie LOL  I can't remember what the plant in the centre is called but it is surrounded by sweet woodruff.  I really like the plant but it's not good to be let loose in the garden as it sends out runners all over the place!


I thought it was looking a bit bare and forlorn down near the new shed, so placed this large pot there.  The shrubby plant is a pyracantha that used to be in a planter in the front garden.  I cut it back really hard when I took it out of the planter but it seems happy as it has lots of lovely leaves again.  I will keep it quite small, not least because they are such thorny plants!  I can't remember what colour the berries are on this particular plant, so it will be a nice surprise when it eventually flowers and produces berries again.


Excuse the rubbish pile!  I don't think there will be any more to add to it, so I will arrange for it to be taken away soon.

I wanted to show you the lilac.  My Mum gave me the plant and when I took it out of the pot to put it in the garden, I discovered that it would easily split into two ~ so, two plants for the price of one :-)


This is the larger of the two lilacs ~ I suppose you could say that they are sisters!  I have a lot of tidying and weeding to do in this part of the border, too.


Now that Martha's house has been moved, we finally have somewhere to sit outside.  I love to sit here just looking at the garden, even if there is still such a lot to be done.


The area near the house has been changed, yet again!  This was just a temporary "holding" area ~ I will show you how it's looking now in the next garden post :-)

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