2025 - What I did today

Yesterday decorators were in at 8am, so I had to get up early to be ready for them
The upside was that there was far more time to do things. Into the garden by 10ish rather that 12ish. Planted out 2 courgettes before the rain set in then decamped and continued planting gh borders. It's a bit cramped in there with overgrown toms and cucs together me wielding trowels and spades. The staging I have in there is an aluminium frame that slatted trays sit in on the top, so it means much contortioning to get inside the frame to dig holes. Quite amusing for an onlooker. Anyway I planted 3 toms and 1 cuc before escaping out with my pal.

Today I ordered some fine mesh 10m X 2m to cover my brassicas when I plant them out. Amazon Prime so will get it tomorrow!

Stacked logs while MrB split them.

Planted out some pansies, sweet William. Dead headed lupins and iris, made up some chilli food that finally arrived yesterday. Fed the chillies. Dug a new little bed next to the fence for the ever lasting sweet peas. Picked up a few stems of phlox that had snapped in the wind and made 25 cuttings out of them. No idea if they’ll take. Put eggshell around tromb and courgette as slugs were still getting to them over the thick layers of fleece.

Weeded a patch near the wire netting and planted some Winterkefe mangetout and sweetpeas,
Cut down lots of brambles and hog weed for the green waste collection.
Fed the worms as its Wormy Wednesday.
Spotted a ripe red and a yellow raspberry so I test-tasted them. They passed.
Spotted plums on a plum tree that I had considered getting rid of. Its been reprieved.
Checked the gooseberries - not long now.

Carried on planting the gh borders and finished planting courgettes. Put some gazanias out the front because I was feeling guilty concentrating on the veg patch. Picked off the leaves of chard that had leaf miner. Noticed the pigeons had started pecking at them so moved the net cloches off the broccoli to the chard and put enviromesh over the carrots and brassicas. Finally dug up last years kale.

I received my garden mesh netting today from Amazon. I bought three packs of canes, some gaffer tape and twisty wire today from poundland. Weather permitting I hope  to go to allotment tomorrow to hopefully plant out brassicas, build a frame and cover them with mesh?

Cut down a buddleia - well, actually, I snapped it down as the branches were too thick for my secateurs so pulled the branches down until they snapped. Then I could cut through the broken bit. Bunged it in the garden waste bin. Lots of weeds added to fill the bin. Always a sense of satisfaction when two wheelie bins are full of weeds in time for collection tomorrow. They used to be collected from March to October but there's been a change of policy and they're going to be collected fortnightly all year round. Probably a sop to compensate for the rise in Council tax!

Completed planting the 3rd gh border, only one more to go. Planted out some tubs in the front. Watered the courgettes planted yesterday.

Spent my extra 2 hours weeding, for a change! I now have 12 dustbins full of weeds that need adding to the drying area (back end of the plots).

Although I am finding it rewarding, it does get a little tedious. I will take some pictures the weekend to show progress.