Garden centre here I come......

So yesterday was Mothers day here in the UK and I woke up to a fabulous treat, a trip to the garden centre to buy plants - yes!
I should mention that our local garden centre is 2 hours drive away! Oh we do have the garden plant area at the local 'Homebase' and there are a couple of small garden centres within the 2 hour drive to Inverness but they're tiny and seem quite limited in their plant selection - especially this time of year.
So a trip to Inverness it was and we also took the opportunity to take our daughters shopping for their birthday presents (they're 22 on Tuesday) at the same time as we have no decent clothing shops here - 2 birds, 1 stone - cool!
Now back to the 2 hour drive to the garden centre, many people would baulk at the thought of it and tbh I wouldn't blame them but you have to realise that here in the Highlands vehicle traffic is negligible - especially on a Sunday (even Mothering Sunday!) and the scenery all the way down is pretty amazing as it's a coastal road. So you see the journey down and back again is part of the whole package and very enjoyable.

Having forgot to grab my camera I had to make do with the camera on my Ipod but this was taken around 7.30am as the sun was coming up.

I really wish I could have got a picture of the beaches as they're beautiful however the tide was in so all you can see is the seaweed.
This next one was taken on the bridge leading to Tain but my Ipod just couldn't deliver the scenery half as beautifully as we could see it.

But look where we ended up - yay! I was so excited to get to visit an actual purpose built garden centre instead of an addition to a shop - 'Simpsons Garden centre'.

First things first though, people needed feeding and it just so happens that there was a cafe which opened at 9am just as we got there - how convenient.
This was mine

And then - Tada!

Having been without choices for so long I kinda didn't know what to get.

Here's my plant stash:
Sedum: 'Angelina'
Iris: 'Pastel Charm' & 'Langport Storm'.
Roses: Bush: 'Faithfull' & 'Princess of Wales'.
           Climb: 'Compassion'
Aucuba Japonica: 'Crotonifolia'.
Polemonium: 'Stairway to heaven'.
Cotinus: 'Young lady'
Plus a standard Rose and a fern I don't know the name of.

But not only did this Garden Centre have plants, trees, Bulbs etc, it also sold garden tools (I got a rake, long handled garden edge shears and garden swivel shears) and look what else

Various water features, bathbombs that looked edible (in fact my 21 year old daughter tasted one of the sprinkles cos she refused to believe they weren't real) and Yankee Candles! Yankee candles! OMG I could have spent hours just smelling each and every one of them, they're my favourites! I contained my enthusiasm though and only bought a Plug in set.

Basically I had a fabulous day. A whole day with MrTG, both my daughters, a garden centre and a McFlurry - Bliss!
I hope everyone else had such a brilliant Mothers day!

Chickens!

For a long time I hated Chickens! A strong word I know but I honestly detested them and they were the one animal I made clear to MrTG that I would never want to have - EVER!
The reason for this goes right back to my teenage years when I had a pony. You see I would spend hours (at least it seemed like hours) scraping that damn stinky cement aka chicken poop off the walls and stable of my beloved pony.
I grew up believing that Chicken could not fly, at least not like their avian cousins do at any rate. So you can imagine the interest when I finally found out that they indeed could fly (to a degree. OK more like flapping until law of gravity says they have to take off) and the subsequent frustration when I discovered they like to roost.....up high.
Even now the smell of chicken poop brings back awful memories!

Anyway a few years back MrTG bought me a "present". Despite all those years of insisting I would never want Chicken and the cement shit that comes with them he bought home 6 chicks of indiscriminate parentage and unknown sex! And guess who got to look after them!
Thankfully my daughters are animal lovers and obviously not as animalist (is that even a word?) as I was and they'd spend as much time with them as they could.
I admit I got intrigued as they grew and I too placed my bets when the sex of the birds was becoming more evident - out of 6 chicks we had 4 bloomin cockerels.
All 6 birds ended up being very friendly and we eventually rehomed all but one of the Cockerels and kept the hens, by which time I have to admit I was becoming more enamoured of Chickens then I ever thought possible, this was bought home to me when I was getting stressed about finding the right loving home for the Cockerels.

Now we have 13 chicken - 12 hens and 1 cockerel. 11 of the hens are heaven knows what breed (I have no idea of these things) and 1 is a White Silkie, the Cockerel is also a Silkie (and as such is pretty darned scared of the big girls which is quite pathetic).
Several of our current hens were rescued from the local battery farm and arrived quite weak, thin and very bald, today they paint a different picture

No longer scrawny and looking the picture of health.
Apparantly they all have names but they all pretty much look alike to me so unless they have an obvious marking to recognise they're all called Hen to me.


This one is called 'Big Momma'. Big Momma has been on probation for the murder of the poor little hen we rescued (you can read her story here) but she shows no remorse for her actions.

This is 'Hen', another rescue that has recovered all her plumage.

Romeo, the Cockerel. He just doesn't have the substance to keep these hens in place.

Finally the nights are getting lighter and we're at the end of the hens lay off for winter - they are back in production.
We've had the odd one or two eggs over the last few weeks but nothing that would feed a family (at least not a family with an appetite like ours anyways) so I didn't bother to check the laying boxes yesterday. Today though MrTG came in with this bounty

 22 eggs!
Funny thing I noticed while I was washing them is that despite them all being of similar breeding (I think) look at the difference in size and shape

The Silkie isn't laying yet - her eggs are tiny White ones - which is unusual for her but she did stop laying the minute we introduced the new rescue hens, hopefully she'll start again soon.

As for that Chicken shit Who'd a thought I'd learn to appreciate it and covet it for the garden!

Cucumber trellis

The weather here today has done a complete 360 turn compared to the past week or so. It started with a chilly breeze coming in and now we have a bloomin cold wind and rain.
Hopefully the seeds in the propagators will be ok but I may just have made the most common gardening error - sowing too early because the weather was unseasonally warm.

I made a start on the Cucumber trellis though. I've tried many ways of supporting Cucumber over the years from stringing them up to letting them creep along the ground.
The problem I've always found with tieing them upright is that they always seem to bunch back down with the weight of the fruit and if I leave them to grow along the ground the fruit rot, even if I lay them on straw.
This year I have decided to try another tact. I've searched the web and I've created a Cucumber trellis that will support the plant as it grows up at an angle and will allow the fruit to hang which will then allow air to circulate and prevent rotting and other problems - hopefully!

 If this trellis works well next year I will build a more solid structure that can still be removed and stored away.

I got some more help from my garden buddy yesterday too. I'm not sure what he was actually helping with but he did a good job of getting all tangled up

 

Just look at my once lovely garden grass (insert gutted face). It's a good job I love our dogs isn't it!
Crikey look at the state of the garden border behind him, that's how far behind I am on the gardening due to that stupid flu - Grrrrrrr!