Friday, 15 February 2019
Weather in the low forties almost kept me indoors…but I decided to work on a mission I had started two days before.
Old rolls of bamboo fencing that has fallen apart because the weak and thin wiring had broken could be threaded in individual slats through our wire fence in the spots where I haven’t yet gotten good privacy hedging. I believe in stopping the eye at the edge of the garden unless one has a glorious view.
Before, in dark and gloomy weather…
Some progress:
My hands hurt so much from the cold that I announced to Allan, who had come to check out my project, that I was retreating to my garden show watching.
But when I walked past the pond, I soon warmed up with a different project. Meanwhile, Allan got interested in the fencing. Way to delegate! Honestly, I did not plan it that way.
I has realized that the pond liner having overlapped a bit onto the lawn was going to create an edging problem later. My project was to dig out the sod under that edge, quickly replacing it with brown sand and some rocks to shore up the edge and create a planting verge. Frogs will like lots of foliage to hide in.
Before….
I realized I could put bits of pond liner in the trench to make a boggy strip for marginal plants.
Do you think in complete sentences or do you get just a visual image of what you will do next? My thoughts are complete sentences, like a child talking to herself while playing. “Now I will get some pond liner from the wheelbarrow and put it in the trench…Now I will take my pot of corkscrew rush and dump it out and get the axe and chop it into bits…”
I raided the front garden for more river rock, some fairly large, and found more broken green and blue pottery to add for “waves” and frog shelters. As I played with plants and rocks and water, I remembered how pleased I was yesterday to see Alan Titchmarsh in Love Your Garden tinkering with rocks to hide a pond liner. Like me, he sorely disapproves of any liner showing. I was also pleased, in my favourite water feature so far, to see him mixing chunky rocks with round rocks.
After, in my much more rustic pond…
Above: I also added another window box planter submerged on the edge shelf, with Allan’s help (not Titchmarsh), so there were no soil dumping disasters today.
An hour before dark with darkening, rainy, and chillier weather, I retreated to my shows while Allan worked on his fence project till dark.
Saturday, 16 February 2019
Two of our many hellebores….
Once upon a time, I read about a spring “hellebore walk” event in a Seattle area garden and since have always wanted to do one. Both my gardens in Ilwaco have been much too boggy during hellebore time to offer a pleasant tour of the hellebores for visitors.
I tried, during a sun break, to do a garden project of making a hollow stump into a small water feature. It has been planted up with pulmonaria for the last couple of years. Just as I got the plants dug out of it, a hailstorm drove me back to my shows…
I wasn’t sorry of the excuse because I was working my way through season one of Love Your Garden, back when it was a short how-to show, set mostly in a different beautiful garden each week, rather than the garden creation do-good show that it became in season two.
Later, I had just switched to Carol Klein’s delectable Life in a Cottage Garden when I decided I must write two blog posts….because, shocking thought, we may go to work tomorrow.
Allan has spent part of this chilly day on the project that became his. Here are his photos of great progress:
Now back to Carol Klein. I’ve found the show (rather blurry, but beggars and choosers…) on youtube. In this episode about winter gardening, you can see her at age age 65 or 66–older than me!–working vigorously in her winter garden. How to lay a hedge is explained, much to my joy, because I have read about laid hedges but never seen so clearly just what it means.
So glad you’ve discovered Love Your Garden and Carol’s Show about her cottage garden. We’ve watched them all too on Youtube. Allan did a great job on that fence. I’m very much a verbal thinker. In fact, I often do the verbal thinking out loud to myself even though I’m all alone (which I’m sure contributes to my rep as a bit of a crazy woman if my neighbors hear me).
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I don’t think I am talking out loud. But I might be.
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Very good!
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I’m impressed by your industry! Lookin’ good! Alan Titchmarsh may have demonstrated a tidier pond as you show here, but yours has more character!
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Thank you.
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In one Life in a Cottage Garden ep Carol gathered her primrose seed pods and potted up the seeds, proclaiming how quickly they grow. I was instantly inspired, and look forward to doing this rather than only letting them self seed.
I “talk to myself” in the garden all the time. The sentences may not always be complete, but they are instructional!
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I have been deeply inspired by all the sowing of seeds and striking of cuttings by both Monty and Carol.
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Being in stone wall country here, we don’t get much call for hedge laying but I have seen it being done.
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I love your mossy stone walls and I bet little critters live in them
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That fence looks terrific, and the progress on the pond is obvious…I was side-trekked by your link to the winter gardening with Carol Klein such that I never came back to your post…Sorry!
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:-D. She is wonderful!
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I’m really impressed with how quickly you completed the pond project. I’m looking forward to seeing it in summer -it really turned out nice !
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Thank you. It was a sudden whim turned obsession.
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I’ve enjoyed watching you go about all the Winter projects. Sorry you have to return to work but I’m also missing seeing all your town jobs and look forward to seeing Spring on the peninsula through your blog. The repurposing of the bamboo for the fence was brilliant!
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