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Roasted masses of tomatoes, the house smells like a pizzeria.

Sunday bottled four litres of passata, half roasted, the rest plain.
Monday sorted out compost and did the weekly sow list. Fed and watered tomatoes, chillies, aubergines, peppers, squash and the last surviving melon.
Today shearing day - the bay tree, fedge in the meadow and Japanese quince. Deadheaded dahlias and roses. Brought the trailing arms of the passion flower back onto their tripod and chopped off a load.

More preparatory work on the bigger, better shop at the end of the garden.
Removed a lot of ivy from an apple tree stump which is going to be a corner post for the Shop enclosure. Its going to be L shaped and the stump is at the inside corner. Hoping to take down some fencing tomorrow and move it to its new position. The aim is to keep the dogs & chicken off the beds as they think its great fun to charge around and dig holes everywhere!

Went fishing!

Rain stopped midday so was able to do some work on the shop renovations. Cut through the pig & chicken wire fence that separated 2 of the shop aisles and used the wire to close off an entrance. The shop is now dog-proof. The dogs aren't impressed.
Lots of brambles & nettles to dig up but that'll be tomorrow's job.
To give you an idea about what I'm doing :-

[attachment=5217]

Imagine a fence from the dogs to the chicken. The part beyond the fence is the new "Shop", as is the area to the left of the fence beside the dogs.  

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This overgrown bit is also going to be part of the Shop. The fence that was cut through today, separated this bit from the patch beyond the dogs. Don't worry if you're lost, I'll find you eventually.

Planted a tub with Bijou mangetout for the GH. Will plant the rest in the garden shop.
Filled 2 wheelie bins with holly, brambles and ivy from the garden clearance. Hopefully, the council will collect them tomorrow and I can refill them with more spiky stuff - plenty more to go!!.

Need to get the chainsaw out and chop up some of my scrounged wood into lumps big enough for woodburner. Quite a bit of it is decent timber (old fencing etc) and I have a couple of ptojects in mind (buildig another woodstore and raising my settee in the back room up about 6 inches to save my weary legs wen getting up and down. It will also allow me to get the hoover under settee!)

I've emptied a pot of compost over the tomatoes in the greenhouse and watered, that's it. Long day.

Still doing à daily rain dance!
Today planted out some more lettuces, pricked out the next batch, (and the next germinated this morning).
Planted out basil.
Bottled 2.5 litres of passata and put more tomatoes in the Renault Captur déshydrater.
Hoed weeds from the pathetic leek patch. Of 280 planted less than 100 survived the heat and drought. I just didn't get enough water to them.

More clearance of grass and weeds in the new veg shop.
Dug up a rhubarb root as I'm going to move all the rhubarb to make one big rhubarb room instead of having it dotted about in 3 different spots.
Stripped the passion flower off the roof of the pond (next year's netted fruit bed) as it was too heavy for the netting.