Monday 25 February 2019

Monday

Good morning, everyone, welcome to Monday!  After the early mist and slight frost yesterday, the sun soon warmed everything up and it ended up a glorious day again.   Not quite warm enough to eat in the garden but quite warm enough to have the windows open to freshen everything up nicely!  There's another frost right now but BBC weather shows bright sunshine all day with a possible high of 15 degrees so fingers crossed!

Yesterday, I spent the day at home, doing this, that and the other.  When I went to B&Q on Saturday to get some granular salt, I took a look outside, as you do, and also came away with some bedding flowers; very pretty pink primulas which I planted out the front yesterday.  I'm pleased with my efforts round the front - now the bulbs have some light, they have greened up nicely (good old photosynthesis) and have grown noticeably while the new bedding adds colour.  I seem to have a colour theme in my garden as it's mostly green (obviously), pink and bluey/purple shades.  I find them very restful colours.

Round the back I set to with scrubbing brush, spray and cloths and gave my lovely little garden arbour a good going over and swept up all the autumn and winter debris from that quarter of the garden.  That corner now looks inviting again and, if the sun shines today, I will put out the cushions for a while, just because it all looks so pleasant!

There's still more to do - the strawberry bed needs tidying up and all the old leaves removed while I properly plant the runners, the blueberries need pruning and there's still plenty of leaves, etc to sweep up.  I've filled my brown bin, finished filling the bin from one neighbour and am now using the brown bin from my neighbour on the other side (with their permissions, obviously!) and must remember to put them all out on Wednesday evening for Thursday's collection.  Don't I have nice neighbours?
But I've broken the back of it all now, the rest is really bits and bobs!

And talking of backs, what with all the bending and brushing, digging and weeding, lugging heavy bins about and carrying heavy granular salt bags to the garage, my back is now killing me so I will take it a bit easier for the next few days.  After all, just ten minutes here and there will help; one bite at a time, slow and steady wins the race and so on.

One thing I definitely will do today is this.  I have an empty planter (apart from soil) near the house and I bought a little pack of summer flowering bulbs in Aldi.  They are  Triteleia Queen Fabiola, also known as wild hyacinth (yes, I did have to look it up!), need a sunny and sheltered spot and are supposed to flower from July to September so that particular planter will be a perfect spot.  We will see!
This photo is from Google Images and you might well recognise it.


Apart from that, today is quite busy - well, all week is quite busy, in fact.  Now that half term is over, I have knitter knatter club, helping out in FS and tuition, for which I think I have enough prepared but need to check over it all.  It should keep me out of trouble and off any illegitimate nibbling!  I'm determined to show a bit of a loss this Thursday after last week's small gain!


11 comments:

  1. I see I am not the only one with spring planting fever The bulbs look lovely

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    1. No, you're not. It's the sun - it stirs the blood!
      xx

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  2. We have the same colour scheme, although I have quite a lot of white flowers as well. I never think of Aldi for bulbs so may pop in later in the week to see what's available.

    I hope your back recovers soon x

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    1. They had quite a lot in ours so well worth a look, I should think. I don't have much white - I think maybe I should as a sort of toning contrast!
      xx

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  3. Great idea with the summer flowering bulbs. Think I might buy some!

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    1. There's plenty in the shops at the moment; it's the time to plant them. I like stuff that comes up year after year with minimal effort on my part!
      xx

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    2. I am a hopeless gardener and have not ever really had time to do much due to work and family commitments. The children were happy with grass to play on and to be honest as a single mum I didn't have the money to spend on plants and flowers that would not survive the footballs and cricket balls lol. When the children grew up and left home I suffered an illness which meant that the gardens were left to run wild whilst I struggled to keep working. My husband is not at all interested in gardening and until we got together he never had one as he lived in the city. Recently though my garden is being whipped into shape and is getting to the stage where some easy to grow plants would be very welcome. I am still working full time so minimum effort is desirable indeed so any tips are gratefully received.

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    3. My biggest (and least helpful) tip would be get someone to do it for you. Do you know any nice teenagers who would like an hour or so each week?
      xx

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    4. Lol. I have been employing someone to tidy and cut the grass for a while now (couldn't afford to before). The choice and purchase of plants though is up to me.

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  4. I think after all that exercise you will do quite well at Slimming World this week!

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