DIY Plant supports

It's been a strange day today weather wise. Yesterday was probably the warmest day so far this year and then today we were working away amid snow flurries - yet it didn't actually feel that cold.
Much has been done outside though and despite me promising myself not to I'm still milling about from garden to greenhouse to polytunnel, but at least jobs are getting done.
Have to say though when we get gorgeous days it is kinda difficult to not stop and stare every few minutes at the scenery around us. This field will be full of Spring lambs soon but we are very close to the sea and unfortunately I have always found the Ocean to be mesmerising

I had an idea the other day, one of those ideas that blindsides you at 4am. I'd been thinking about making some plant supports for some of my garden flowers (thinking waaaaaay ahead here) and I've always found bamboo canes to be the best and most resilient supports but let's face it - dey ugly man! Plus I always have this vision of me falling on the end and skewering an eyeball or one of the dogs getting impaled on them so I needed some end caps that wouldn't cost anything (totally hate buying what can be made). I have hundreds of wine corks (I'm not a drinker they were donated, I honestly haven't gotten through hundreds of bottles of wine - honest) but lets face it they're about as appealing as the bamboo canes - stick a boring wine cork on top of a boring cane and what do you have ...... boring plant supports.
So that 4am idea that woke me up (It honestly did happen like that too ) was to spray the canes with whatever spray I already have and then paint the wine corks with nail varnish.
For ages I'd been contemplating what to paint the corks with because it had to be durable and weather resistant so Nail varnish made complete sense ......... at 4am.
Armed with canes, silver sparkle spray and various colours of nail varnish I headed to the greenhouse / workshop and put my funky plan into action. Here are various colours waiting for approval (or not as the case turned out to be)

The best colour by far was the bottom greeny one, it looked quite fabulous against the silver of the cane. The Pink one just looked too washed out and was discarded. At this point I've only used the greeny one, the navy blue and the deep red (top left that looks black) plus some gold ones as I found an old can of Xmas gold spray.

I've made quite a few now and at the moment they're keeping the dogs off areas of my garden borders that have been planted up. I had to resort to all kinds of deterrant measures because Huntly the little ........ erm... fecking horror sweetie is determined to dig up every plant I plant and thinks that all the new soil I barrowed over from what seems like 3 miles away is there for him to dig straight back out again. I seriously cannot wait until we have another area for the dogs to play in.

I also decided to finally get round to moving Mahonia 'Winter Sun' to another location. It's been situated under a tree for about 9 years now and has never flourished or flowered. I've been meaning to move it for ages and as the whole area is going to get an overhaul this year (hopefully)  I figured now was a pretty good time to do it

See how cruddy the ground is. I had a fab idea years ago to polythene the ground and gravel it on top cos that would stop weeds right? Nope, not so much. Seems weeds grow in gravel and can puncture thick polythene in the bid to wage war on my garden.
When it's been completely renovated all the gravel will be gone and there'll be fresh soil with bark chippings on top in its place.
Anyway that's where the sickly Mahonia lived and now it lives here

Mahonia 'Winter sun'.

That's its new home with lots more sunshine (I previously believed they needed heavy shade) plus a good prune to encourage it to bush out a little. Now we just wait and see if it responds the way I hope it will.

I'm sharing this at

Tillys Nest 
Savvy Southern Style 
504 Main 
The Thrifty Grove
Common Ground