NOVEMBER DIARY 1

Is this a new way of doing things? Yes, well a bit - longer blogs less often.

Sunday 2nd - Out with trailer and mower first time but garden very boggy after the rain. We will need a new bridge over the stream higher up where it is drier.

R chopping back old montbretia, I pruned back the rosa rugosa by the car park and cut back the perovskia and blue shrubby clematis. The latter is getting big, the former suckering which is ok because it will give me some new plants for the banking.

I write as Mrs Mills (R) hammers out Go down Moses on the piano in the hall.

Tuesday 4th - It poured in the night and water is flooding into the pond. The lawns are sodden so it is keep of 'em time. The miscanthus, weighed down by water, is hanging over the top path so I have fixed it back with a willow bean pole.

It is chilly this morning but the sun has come out and the air is washed so clean it is crystal bright.
We were just saying yesterday that we had not seen a grey squirrel for ages an I have just looked out at the bird feeders and Voila!
Will not be much gardening today then - anyway I am being dragged out to the gym and then joining good friends for the rest of the day. I hope they have some rubbing alcohol for my aches and pains (post gym).

I am being haunted by a friendly robin. He/she, cannot tell) (hope they can) was even with me in the shed the other day, just sitting proud as punch on the edge of a cupboard. Of course it is waiting for me to garden and turn over soil/disturb undergrowth. Gutsy little bird in more ways than one.

Just got back and it is dark - what a shame!

Wednesday 5th - Bonfires and stuff - beautiful if cold morning, good for gardening so I am playing golf!

The brain amazes me - last night had a surreal dream. It was the World Cup Final. I was on the right wing and I had to make the winning score against Germany by slotting a piece of sausage roll into a corner by the post of a goal full of German sausages. I ran to the by line and crept up unseen by the goalie. Sneakily I pushed my bit of sausage roll in a small space beside the near post and we had won! Then I woke and went to the bathroom.

Gardening - I have unpotted all the garden pots and then repotted with fresh compost and a mixture of tulips, iris reticulata, paperweight daffs and tete-a-tetes. Contents like old lilies and so on have been put around the garden wherever I can almost find a space. I had a lot of small tulips I saved from last year and as they are unlikely to flower I have bunged them in the old sink.
The garden is sodden with the rain so though I have made a rough new crossing of the stream above the heaps it is still too wet to go there. Water seems to be coming up all over the place - sort of spring in autumn.



To the left is the strawberry bed. to the right the cleared rhubarb patch with the asparagus bed in the distance.



Fireworks are a-going off now as dark falls.

The good news is that I have washed the kitchen floor. The bad news - I have bust the Dyson cleaner - it no longer goes.

The weather forecast for the next two days is wet again. I expect the whole garden to become liquid and slide away down the stream bed towards the sea. Time for a (not a cuppa) - a shower.

So this is Thursday, and what have I one, lunch is over etc etc.

This morning was -

But I went to town as is my wont and bought a dozen winter pansies and a bag of wallflowers off the market.

This afternoon is dark and windy but the rain has eased. So I put them In. And this is what I did.

Each planter had a few inches of compost in the bottom (drainage hole covered by crocks or polystyrene) and then bulbs placed in a layer spaced evenly. more compost and repeat layer pf bulbs. It does not matter too much if one bulb is on top of another as the shoots will find a way past. Then the pots are topped off with final compost and pansies.
For L and G - I have just mentioned compost three times.

Today is Friday and very wet weather is coming. Went weeding in the bottom corner below the pond trying to eradicate the pendulous sedge. Not finished - yet more to do.

The garden has developed new springs all along the banking line. One was bubbling raucously in the grass and when I cleared it the water was churning forth like boiling water.

Talking of squirrels - here we are again.

Just noticed that we have berries on the holly in the bottom hedge - the first time to have many. So, nearer Christmas, if they have not been eaten, it will be a ladder and prickle job.

Winifred Atwell is playing Greensleeves now. Henry VIII would be pleased.

It is Saturday and on my Facebook is the following - Millions of bees dropped dead after GMO corn was planted few weeks ago in Ontario, Canada. The local bee keeper, Dave Schuit who produces honey in Elmwood lost about 37 million bees which are about 600 hives.

It does make me wonder if the large numbers of men with prostate cancer, women with breast cancer,  might have something to do with the use pesticides like DDT when were young. One looks at what might have changed over the last 60 years - Mmm - the use of plastic also springs to mind?

So to Sunday and here is the first longblog.

I need a coffee as I have just got knotted up over the Dyson vacuum cleaner. I ordered a new one when we can get the old one serviced and repaired much cheaper so I can afford a biscuit now as well - if it wasn't for THE DIET!