2025 - What I did today

General gardening: picked a bag of Victoria plums, they don't taste too bland this year, took a cut of comfrey and stuffed it into my 200L water butt, watered the polytunnel and greenhouse then weeded a section of flower garden.

In the heat of yesterday I decided to attack the strawberry patch. I removed the net, dug out errant plants and bunged them in a bucket of water for future transplanting, dug round and tidied (titied?) the edges. Dug out masses of bindweed. That was a major achievement considering the brick hard soil. Watered the centre plants ready for sorting them out today.

More Montbretia clearance. During a "too hot to be outside" spell I found all my old flower seeds (names beginning with A) and emptied the seeds into a jar (35 different types). This motley lot will be scattered where the montbretia is/was. Because I'm an eternal optimist, I'm keeping the empty packets so that I can identify all the flowers next year. They were all at least 5 years past their sow by date but, if we don't tell them, they won't know. .

My first batch of aquilegia, Mckana Giants, that I thought I had baked to oblivion, have germinated. If the second batch I sowed to replace those, I'll be well over aquilegia'd. I made up some compost to prick out pansies, lupins and these aquilegia into. I sowed up some MFBs, as instructed.

We’ve just taken down one of the big tunnels. It won’t be going back up anytime soon. Got a lot of ground work to do first. But it’s now down and safe ready for winter. All its timbers were in less than ideal condition. It wouldn’t have survived another winter like that.

Had another crack at the "Non-bretia" bed. Its a long time since I've seen bare earth there. Mr Robin kept me company. Is it just me or does everyone carry on a conversation with their robin? I just hope that nobody can hear me. Once, I asked him if he was ready for Christmas and the stupidity of the question still makes me giggle!

Also walked back down the road with the wheelbarrow to collect a load of stuff that Bob (for some reason) couldn’t fit in the back of the vehicle. And didn’t want to leave to get wet or blown around the garden. And shelled all the DFBs that I’ve picked so far.