Friday 21 February 2014

Abreak in the weather

Crikey, almost 10 days since my last post! What can I say, the weather has continued to be naff and although I've managed the odd hour of pottering outside nothing has been worth recording. I've used my time to craft inside instead but I have another blog for all that.
The other day we did have a break in the weather though and it was lovely blue skies and absolutely no wind - it seems like we've had gale force winds every day since about December.
At first I found myself getting all fraught as I tried to decide what to do on this one nice day - so many jobs needed tackling outside, eventually I had to take stock and work out what was the  most important jobs to get done.
So the Onions 'Stuttgarter' are now nestled nicely in their beds in the polytunnel and I finally got started on clearing the garden of the dead plant matter - and it was just a start because there's so much of it.
Despite the bad weather there is plant life errupting all over the garden, though there have been some casulaties too and this Fatsia is one of the worst


It's survived the cold but the wind has decimated it. I had this happen to another Fatsia a few years ago and I left it outside thinking it would recover - it didn't, so I dug this one up and put it in the PT where it sits next to its bushy, healthy brother.

A few days ago I was reading another blog where the owner had rather bravely posted the 'less tidy' areas of her garden. At the time I couldn't think of any areas where I had mess other than the area where I dump garden plants that don't get composted (it's actually lovely to look at in the summer as the plants I dumped there to rot away have flourished - sods law), however my eyes were opened to quite a few areas the other day that I think I must have just been blinded to as they're right in view. The pallet area I cannot control just now but this little mess is right on my back garden


Look how pathetic that pond looks! This photo was taken from the upstairs window so you can't actually appreciate how bad and humpy that ground is and the worst of it is that the ground there is clay and stone.
As for the compost bin, words fail me! Even the stacks of turf to the left aren't rotting like I hoped they would, some of them look like they'd be reuseable!
This is supposed to be one of the areas I'm to clear this year as it has to be decked but I know how hard that ground is going to be to level - insert sad face.

On a brighter note I got flowers for Valentines. Usually we don't bother with Valentines as we both see it as a commercialised con and just another day - for 24 years we've been happy not to bother. So I was quite surprised when Mr TG decided to buy me gifts - he buys me flowers sporadically throughout the year anyway but I didn't get him a bean - oops!







Anyone know what the pink flower is as I want to grow some?

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Nothing doing whatsoever.

There is literally nothing doing outside at the moment. On the days that are relatively calm the temperature drops so much it's just way too cold to be comfortable out there.
I'm in desperate need to clear the flower borders on the garden but the winds would make the whole task pointless - though thankfully we are not suffering any of the flooding that England is suffering, nor are we likely to.
Snow is forecast for tomorrow though - yay, not!!

With nothing doing outside I decided to take a look at my blog posts from this time last year and see what difference there is. Well that depressed me cos the blog is full of lovely images of Jamaican flora as we'd just come back from our hols. So then I went forward by a couple of weeks and that fared no better because I'd been ill with flu so couldn't get out there.

With no images of current gardening projects I decided to leave you with a couple of pix of the wind battering the sea wall up at Wick



Now I'm off to find something to blog about if the gardening doesn't pick up. I'm also going to panic because the lights are flashing due to the wind and if we get a power cut I'm not sure how the tropical fish tank is going to fare.

Sunday 2 February 2014

Polytunnel growing and Dahlia offers

Soggy, soggy, soggy is the theme outside at the moment backed up by gale force winds that have created a fair few hair raising moments of late.
The polytunnel was supposed to be my safe haven that meant I could get outside during wet weather but I have to say that being in a PT while the wind is threatening to lift it 'OZ' style does nothing for the nerves and the only way I can stand it is to put the headphones in and play my Ipod at full blast drowning out the racket.
The PT is looking good and ready for the start of veggie season though


I finally received my Dahlia tubers in the post - yay! I got them from the 'Gardeners world' magazine offer a couple of months ago. They arrived well packaged and labelled


I'm supposed to have 1 of each variety - 6 in total - however I opened one bag up just to check the tuber quality (which seems fine) and I found 3 seperate pieces in the one bag. I'm assuming that all 3 can be planted seperately?? (I have no knowledge of Dahlia).


These are the wonderful Dahlias I should get from these beauties

Dahlia 'Duet'





Dahlia 'Tsuki yori no shisa'




Dahlia 'Lilac time'




Dahlia 'Tropical'




Dahlia 'Colour spectacle'




Dahlia 'Arabian night'





Here's hoping I can actually get these plants to grow.