Spring Once Again

We've got the waterfall in the ponds working now, and moved in some of the fish from the waterwheel pond. Millions of tadpoles now inhabit the wildlife pond which give the children endless hours of interest. Further around the garden the hellebores and daffodils planted last year are in full bloom and very colourful. My bargain £5 camellias have flowered their socks off above the ponds.

The new raised circle is almost completed (notice M'spouse busy working), when it is I'll be able to transfer the turf from the waiting bed (to the right of the new steps) up into the circle and then get on with planting out grasses and late flowering herbaceous plants to finish off the autumn colouring.
I've also nearly completed digging over the bed above the pond, where the summerhouse is going to be sited, this was the first area we planted in the garden, but it got neglected and grass soon infested it, so its really pleasing to get it dug over.
I'm just waiting for some more of the bog garden plants to start shooting in the herbaceous gardens so I can transplant them into the boggy area around the pond, hopefully I won't have to buy anything it is already here.




The woodland walk is progressing well, this area is the newly cleared area, in last months photo it was still covered in dense trees. This next area has many uprooted trees, the conifers don't seem to send a tap root down and so are very shallow rooted and I think a combination of winds and high water has brought these down, so there is still loads of clearing to do. The newly exposed bank with some bluebells already established, I'm going to transplant some native foxgloves from another part of the woods into the banks, I also found a large colony of wood anemones which I'm very pleased about.




The herbaceous borders are still being tackled. They've been rather neglected for the last year or two, so need dividing, pruning and weeding well, so progress is slow. The hellebore beds are looking stunning and have increased in size enormously, there are lots of seedlings I need to collect and grow on in the woodland gardens at the back....

Under Water

Yesterday after heavy rains the herbaceous garden has flooded in parts, the worst since moving here nearly 5 years ago . Our usual fast flowing brook rose by about 1m during the day. We also have rivers flowing through the woodland gardens down the slope. During the night the river has risen even further resulting with it bursting its banks into the garden, most of the debris is sand and bark chippings from the seating area on the right, easily cleaned up. It came to within an inch of the gate by the bridge where I store all my seedlings and nursery plants, so I fell very luckly that they were untouched.



The woodland walk which we started last year, we are now attempting to get some more of it finished so the bluebells can be enjoyed in May. The picture on the left is of the clearance we have already completed about 200m into the woods. The leat has been unused for over 50 years, and now has numerous self seeded trees rooted in it, we hope to remove most of these and continue clearing to the sluice gate in the brook. We hope to place a bench in the area of the middle photo to stop and watch the brook, we will have several along the way. The picture on the right is the clearance we still have to do, the bluebells are erupting from the ground already so we're hoping to work on this before we cause too much damage to them. Allowing more light into the banks will hopefully allow more native plants to seed there too. We already have foxgloves, primroses and bluebells.



The early flowering daffodils are in full swing, with primroses, pulmonaria and hellebores creating more colour. Its hard to believe the circle area is less than a year old, its matured wonderfully. The pond area is finished apart from the electrics for the pump and the planting....we've got frogspawn already in the large wildlife area. The higher circle is still under construction, the grass covering it has come from the area to the right where the last bed will be located, this will hopefully be grasses and late flowering perennials. Then the garden will be complete - for now.

Even More Snow.

We've had even more snow today, totally un-forcast(whats new)! We had more than yesterday, about 10" in all. Traffic has been very slow moving on the main road.

It started snowing at 7.20am and continued until about 5pm. Of course the children were delighted, 2 days off to play in the snow.They've managed to make a roof for their igloo, so thats kept them busy for the best part of the day.

They Got it Right for a Change !

The snow fell as predicted overnight and by the morning was about 6" deep, the most we've seen in our 5 years here. The children have the day off school so are busy building an igloo in the field. The pond that has been frozen for the past 5 days is the only clear area.



The view from the field across the river. The chinchilla's seem to be absolutely fine in their avairy. We put some clear plastic on one side to protect them from the rain and they were bounding around their cage this morning when I went out to feed them.
We had over 14 long tailed tits on the feeders this morning. They are regular visitors to the garden and we had over 30 at one time last summer.
The conifer woods looked impressive with the snow too, although great lumps of snow were regularly falling off the branches on to us below.

Sunny days in the garden

I didn't think I had done much out on the raised circle, but judging by the photo I reckon I've worked quite hard..good job the weather is so nice at the momment, I've been working in a t-shirt for a couple of days. I've filled in too much of the circle with poor soil from other parts of the garden, so the back area that I'm still digging out will be going down to raise some of the beds back up to a respectable level. I've got some more bargain daffodils from the GC recently so will be planting them in some of the new beds.

Another view of the circle with the new ponds at the bottom. I tried the new pump out again because the top pond has leaked and I'd had a go at sorting out the problem but hadn't filled it back up again. Hopefully it will work this time, I have to wait 24hrs to see though. I've now got 5 levels in the garden, the top one by the lane is planted with daffodils, but I'm hoping to level it out a little bit and try and get the mower up there in the summer so we can use it.

This is the veg plot !! Well it will be next year, perhaps it might even get started this, as I'd really like to start growing our own. I'm going to move the nursery beds from the gravel area and add to them round here. I might move the polytunnel too as it doesn't make a nice entrance to the garden for those coming in over the stream, but I'll then have to get a new cover for it, so it all adds up in money and work, but perhaps I'll save a lot by growing our own veg ?? I'd obviously then have to do something with the entrance to the garden, so I think that can be on next winters list of things to do.

Early Spring, this Year ?

This stunning sunset really was this colour, we woke up one morning with the bedroom clouded in pink, it was quite spectacular, it went within 10 minutes to be replaced by a much paler version.
The temperature today reached 13degrees, rather warm for this time of year. I noticed 2 butterflies on the Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill', it smelt wonderful too, luckily I was working in the bed just below and spent all afternoon with its lovely smell.
The herbaceous borders are looking a tad untidy now, hopefully I'll be able to spend some time in them in the coming weeks, I've 15 tons of horse manure to spread .



The grass has already started to green up, this didn't happen until March last year, so we're about 4 weeks ahead at the momment, but I'm sure we will be in for some snow before April, its usually about March around here.
The 3rd pond at last has been dug, carpeted, lined and filled. I've had to do a few adjustments on the waterfall as it seemed to be leaking, but several expanding foam cans later I hope to have fixed it. We tried the pump the other week, its a 10,000 gallon fully submersible sump pump and it works brilliantly, we could even hear the flow of the waterfall above the sound of the river in flood !
Progress has been slow with the new raised circle area, but we are now hopefull to get it finished. M'spouse has managed to cut & sink logs for nearly half of the exposed circle, I've filled most of it with soil from the pond, beds etc and now need to cut away the top half of the circle and level it all off, at the same time remove the turf from the top to lay on the bottom and then cut some more turf from the surrounding area's that are now being turned into beds.

Quick update

This is the view from our bedroom window, towards the woodlands. We get a good view of the pond, and the dining area, and usually see what the children are up to.

I quite often spend time looking out over the garden, making plans of what I'd like to do next. Its a good exercise in disipline, as I always make far too many plans, and have to reduce all the ideas in line with the space I have available.

The pond has progressed a little, I've started putting hessian bags filled with soil around the outside to disguise the edges. I'll be using plants from the bog gardens, divided and plant them into the sacks, hopefully they will fill out and hide them by the spring. The weather is still too wet to do an awful lot outside, but every available minute is spent out there.

The herbaceous gardens are starting to go over at last, they seem to have kept hold of their leaves longer than usual, perhaps as they were delayed at the beginning of the season. Once things start to die down naturally, I'll think about clearing up, although I don't usually start until after Christmas. I find the dead and decaying leaves act as a good mulch and its much easier to clear the garden in Jan & Feb.