Tag: in the cottage garden

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dear diary ~ time is going quickly now…

We are almost at the end of our time here and winding down on the task list.  There has been rain but mainly overnight and the weather looks set to hold although I think the temperature has dropped a few degrees.

Today I really must prune the apple tree – a job I have kept putting off as I confess I really do not know what I am doing.  I have read up on plenty of pruning advice and watched one or two videos but none of the trees in their pictures look quite like mine and I feel rather daunted by it all.  It is a Braeburn and I have no idea how it is getting pollinated as ideally it says they need two other apple trees and all we have is the large Bramley apple tree nearby.  Surprisingly then, we had a lovely little crop last year.  Now I am worried I might prune off the wrong branches and be left with a framework that produces fewer apples.

We managed the tip run yesterday and the lovely men that work there helped us with unloading the old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling and then even swept out the trailer – we would not have had that service at home.  They keep the place swept and clean and carefully signed so you know that you are not going to risk getting a puncture there from old nails and broken glass.  Our tip down at home is quite badly run and by people that really couldn’t care less – I am not sure they ever sweep up.

Thankfully, now we have the brown garden waste bin at home to take the stuff we can’t compost we don’t have to visit our tip very often.  When I can I always find homes for any unwanted items rather than take them to the tip, even bits of wood and old tools – there is often a charity that will take odd things or Freecycle. It makes me feel quite ill to see people unloading some quite good stuff from their car into the skips.  It seems criminal to me to see bikes, toys, cabinets etc. being thrown away.  I even saw someone throw away a large plastic dog basket….what would have been wrong about washing it well and passing it on? In Stranraer you can take all these items to the big shed next to the tip where they will sell them on (I believe they repair bikes too).

The snowdrops are spreading around the woodland walk quite nicely now but not as quickly as I would like so I will be transplanting some of them to places new as they are just on the turn and will be over by the time we come again.

We have noticed this week that we seem to have acquired a flock of crows at the cottage – they are being fed indirectly by someone in the village who believes he is feeding the smaller garden birds but the crows are muscling in on the food he puts out and steadily growing in number.  At the moment they are just using our tall trees in the wood to perch on when they are circling overhead but I am a bit worried about them starting to nest there and take up residence.  One of the villages not too far from here suffer with a rather large nesting crow colony and the continual noise they make gets to quite a pitch… and it goes on all day like the Chinese water torture.

I made a large pan of lentil and leek stew yesterday so there is still plenty for today’s evening meal and it means we can garden for that bit longer ……and we certainly need to….I can hear the weeds growing!

Have a great day x

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dear diary ~ rest, relax…repeat

At last some good weather – though it is odd that I have to come all the way to Scotland for it.

There have been changes whilst we have been away we expected it of course as the new owner of the pub, restaurant and caravan site is continually making changes even for change sake, unfortunately, most of them involve planning or licensing applications and he has obviously not applied for any otherwise we would have received notification of them in case we wanted to object.  It appears he has no time to abide by any rules.

The last few days have been so nice we had breakfast and then went straight out into the garden…..whilst the sun shines, make….. full use of it! 

I usually start by going over this little border outside our garden gate that runs along by the upper part of the lane.  I removed a rather large overgrown clump of wild yellow irises to make way for some ground covering plants like geranium and valerian. The hollies, which are all self-seeded and then transplanted, are doing well now and filling out quite nicely – I don’t want huge trees but will keep them pruned to a nice rounded shrub sized plant.  It is so easy at this time of year to dig up some of the dormant plants along with the weeds so I have to take extra care.  DH tackled the Rosa rugosa hedge that runs down along the lane side from the gate – the one that the new owner of the pub and caravan site massacred a couple of years ago – luckily it is hard to kill and has regenerated quite nicely but we always make sure nothing is growing out into the lane so he doesn’t feel he has the need to chop it down again.

We had a rest day yesterday to protect our backs or else we will get little else done for the week.  Instead I used the time to stay indoors and do a little more planning and some digital detox on my computer.

Of course it was too much to hope that mum would be OK during the time both me and my sister are away and we wouldn’t have a crisis on our hands.  It was only a small drama really but to her a major crisis and I wasn’t able to help very much only be on the other end of the phone.  It happened on Sunday evening.  She was waiting for her carers to go and put her to bed.  Her time slot is for 6pm, their previous visit ends at 4 pm so before they put her to bed for the night they usually make her some toast for her tea/supper and a final hot drink.  At 6.45pm she rang me to say they had not come and she couldn’t get through to the office as the answer phone was on. She was clearly agitated as she does not like to go out of routine.  She said she would ring them again to make sure someone was coming.  At 7pm, 7.15pm, 7.30pm, 7.45pm, 8pm, 8.15pm, 8.30pm she rang me again and again to say they still had not shown.  She had spoken to someone at the office, quite aggressively as she does now, and they said a carer was on their way but no explanation was offered as to why they were so late.  Finally at 8.45pm someone arrived – of course mum was hungry, thirsty but most of all cold as she cannot switch the fire on by herself now and the flat had got quite chilly.  She was also dog tired and very angry – I didn’t know whether to feel sorrier for the poor carer or my mum!

Needless to say they have been on time for the last two days.

We had a lovely walk to the village yesterday afternoon, called at the pub by the harbour for a hot chocolate and took a few photos. 

We spotted quite a few new painted rocks along the low road from the village. It is lovely that anyone in the community can add to this – the idea began when one of the residents secretly placed a few painted rocks along the path one night and it has snowballed over the years to the point where the coaches heading for the Mull often stop for their passengers to get off and go and look at them.

Whilst the light was good I managed to complete the last bit of knitting on the little jacket for baby Chocolate.  Try as I might to make it neat I do struggle with edges and picking up stitches but no doubt I just need more practise. Knitting patterns, I find, often leave you high and dry – I am sure for experienced knitters it is not a problem but I need more instructions.  The pattern says to pick up and knit the contrasting band around the hood and then down the front of the jacket which I have done.  It does not say to do both sides….not knowing if I should or not I decided I would and did in fact knit the band on both edges.

I am not sure of the weather today so have no definite plans. There is always plenty to do in the garden but we also need a trip into town for a bottle of gas and to take in a trailer full of old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling of the cottage. Luckily, the tip here accepts rubble and stuff as not everywhere does. At home you have to get a skip even if you only have a bucketful.

I am starting to feel a litle more relaxed now and am finding the time to sort out one or two tasks off my list which has also helped – things that seem to have been on there for ever and keep getting rolled over each week – you know the ones. It is quite odd that when we are here at the cottage I think about all the jobs I need to do at home and when I am at home I have my mind on what needs doing at the cottage – well mainly in the garden. Perhaps having the distance somehow makes my mind clearer and I feel less overwhelmed. I am sure that life is getting so much busier these days and more stressful and it is not just a matter of being older. Technology was supposed to make things quicker and easier but I find just the opposite…. that you are forever in a queue on the phone or you come up against an answerphone or you get through to some voice telling you to go to their Q&A on their website (don’t they ever think that you have already done that and the answer is not there!

Hope your day is full of promise. x

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beaching ~ homeward bound

Our time at the cottage came to an end, as it inevitably does, all too soon with many gardening tasks left unfinished or not even started but we just have to accept we do what we can in the time available.

Of course in hindsight travelling home on a Bank Holiday Monday was not the best of ideas but one borne out of the fact that our half way overnight stop in Carlisle at the Premier Inn was so much cheaper on the Sunday night.

It was exceptionally busy, both in the hotel and on the roads.

Once I am orientated towards home I suddenly get a longing to be back and reacquainted with all my own things, especially my bed, so we didn’t have a leisurely trip down this time. We left Carlisle at about 10am and as we neared the top of the Lakes the traffic had increased considerably but no queues had formed and we seemed to keep rolling. Our main stop was when we pulled off the M6 at junction 36 (Crooklands Interchange) and headed for Burton in Kendal, hoping to find a cafe for a drink.

A very interesting village with some grand architecture which I thought had quite a French influence in style.

Some interesting street names too.

Sadly, the little village only has a shop with a coffee machine and no tea, the Kings Arms is presently closed for a refurb and the main road through was like a race track and parking non-existent for visitors……I took a few pictures on a quick walk around – it is a long drawn out village and halfway along we decided to cut the exploration short and never made it as far as the church as the noise level of the through traffic drove us back to the car and we moved on ending up at the notorious Lancaster motorway services with a hundred other fellow travellers lunching at Costa. The queue for service was long and the vegetarian selection limited but luckily we managed to grab the very last two mushroom, egg and spinach baps to tide us over – but again with all the noise and grubby tables we didn’t stay long.

Once we arrived home and unpacked I realised how exhausted I was but a quick walk to our village was necessary to pick up some fresh milk and rolls. We came across the end of the village Scarecrow Trail and stopped here and there to admire the ‘Royal’ scarecrows.

The ‘quick walk’ took much longer than we thought and once back home again I prepared a nourishing lentil and leek stew for tea and then relaxed in front of the TV for a while….promptly falling asleep while the tea cooked itself on the hob.

I promised pictures of the cottage garden. As we left many plants had grown over the fortnight we had stayed there and were just about to bloom. The ferns had grown so much in height unfurling as they go.

I was surprised at how many primulas had sneaked up around the pond as I thought we had lost a lot under the heavy leaf fall from the sycamore it lies beneath – they might be a spectacular sight that we will miss by our next visit.

Looking down from the lane it all looks under control but believe me in a garden like this with the wild flowers like red campion and blue alkanet poised and ready to invade nothing is under my control….we only manage it.

This is the view from below looking up toward the lane – doesn’t look so good now from this view does it!!

DH has still to finish the staging – but it was never going to be this visit and I had to content myself by removing as many of the overgrown wild planting of campion, buttercups, alkanet, some extremely viscious nettles and the straggling goosegrass, as I could – uncovering the few actual plants that had not been nudged out or given up. It was a place I didn’t get to weed last year and the results are always the same – the invaders move in swiftly.

These old terracotta drainage pipes I use for herbs. I had to clear them of the old ones as they had become huge and woody. The rosemary had reached 5 feet with a four foot root and had lost the will to live – probably through exhaustion a couple of years ago and no amount of pruning back encouraged it back to its former state. It is a sheltered and sunny and spot by the conservatory and the open ended drainage pipes act as a deep rooted bed and the soil here is very fertile so I will set some herb seeds at home and plant fresh ones again this year.

The solomon’s seal is one of my favourite plants in the lower wood and they continue to spread and march along quietly interspersed now with the bluebells – well, unfortunately they are the Spanish variety set by the previous owner and there is no hope of ever getting rid of them to replant with the English variety so I just have to tolerate them – but they look equally as beautiful at this time of year covering the wood floor.

I left a little patriotic contribution to the Coronation celebrations next week.

The dicentras are spreading nicely again and the white have now merged with the pink.

The cherry tree keeps going – it needs attention too but we keep thinking it will not survive much longer – it must be getting on for 50 years old, has some form of hard fungus at the bottom of the trunk and has had to undergo some rather extreme pruning in its time but it merrily carries on flowering each year although the striking pink candyfloss that looms up over the weeping larch is not as abundant as it once was.

The tale of our latest confrontations with the new site owner will be told another day. As always it tainted our visit somewhat – my head says to leave but my heart is still drawn to our little tumble down cottage with its wild garden looking out over the sea.

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beaching ~ guess where I am?

Sun, sea, sand….it can only be one place. Yes, we have arrived and it is glorious…so good it reminds me of why we bought the cottage and why many moons ago we planned to retire here.

The two guys who now cut our grass, and are doing a good job of it, had been yesterday and so the place looked quite tidy though on further inspection every border needs a good sort out. We woke early with the sun this morning and after a leisurely breakfast and a few household jobs we were straight out into the garden. It feels so good to be outside.

The only border I managed to weed on our last visit is not too bad and the hydrangea has not suffered from the cold.

DH has been collecting up the endless goosegrass that has sprung up everywhere and removing the dead leaves of the ostrich, royal and harts tongue ferns.

Not the evergreen Japanese tassel fern (Polystichum polyblepharum) in the fernery though, which has gone a bit rampant and taken over my little bench seat by the cherry tree.

This is a job for another day…in fact it can take a couple of days as I usually cut this down to ground level each year or two so that fresh new growth springs up.

The hosta I planted at the back of the pond has formed a nice clump which can now be divided.

The large overgrown pink rhododendron that I cut back almost to ground level two years ago is growing well (you can just see it emerging at the back right of the picture) – I am not expecting any flowers this year but at least I didn’t kill it and it is looking healthy.

I concentrated on pruning down the rosa rugosa hedge running beside the lane (the one that our new neighbour decided to cut hack the front half to the ground last year).

There was a lot of dead wood that had to be cut away and I reduced the height considerably from 6′ down to about half. Once I throw a bucketful of manure around the roots it should sprout new growth and thicken up quite nicely and I bet by the end of the summer it will be looking much healthier.

Thankfully it is difficult to kill and where it had been hacked to the ground there are new shoots appearing and if I can prevent them from being damaged by his strimmer then we might have a chance of resurecting the hedge and regaining our privacy.

After a morning of working, many cups of tea and a few idle moments sitting in the sunshine we down tools and made lunch. Afterwards we had a stroll to the village and called in at one of the local pubs down by the harbour for a hot chocolate.

So overall a very pleasant day and now we are retiring to eat a mushroom lasagne and then perhaps watch a DVD or read (no TV here).