June Garden Vignettes

Hi there everyone 😀

Whilst I’ve shared our June garden visits with you … it’s been a little while since I’ve let you know what’s been happening in our own garden at Number 27.

You will know that we started off strong back in the spring and, I’m pleased to say, we’ve managed to keep up the momentum …

The reseeded grass area is doing very well, we’ve painted one of the raised beds, the majority of the fencing and one of the sheds and the majority of the patio area has been jet washed. We’ve also dismantled and waved good bye to the old arbour … which was very much past its best …

There has been a lot of planting and organising of pots and we have started to try and tame the crazy amounts of wild violets that have completely taken over one of the borders and even seem to have managed to find their way into the newly seeded grass.

June has been glorious here and we really have been able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour … with lots of lazy afternoons just sitting and chilling in the sunshine, or a shady spot when it’s just been too hot. 

There really has been plenty to catch the eye and here are a few of my favourite ‘vignettes’ …

BBQ Ready …

The Raised Bed … 

The Generous Gardener …

Hemerocallis …

The Brick Planter …

The View from my Shady Spot …

The Plantstand …

Self Seeded Poppies to come …

The Tin Bath …

Another Rose …

We’ve definitely come a way from when the only colour in the garden appeared in May … then it was just all green for the rest of the year. 

I’m looking forward to seeing what July brings 💜

🌺🌷🌹🌺🌷🌹🌺🌷🌹🌺🌷🌹🌺🌷🌹🌺🌷

PS … the other poppies have now started to flower and were not what I was expecting at all …

I just love a garden surprise 😃

🌹💐🌺🌷🥀🌼🪻🌹💐🌺🌷🥀🌼🪻🌹💐🌺

The Raised Bed

Hi there everyone 😀

Whilst there was plenty of rain in June there was also some sunshine and we made the absolute best of it while we were at home … putting in a fair few hours in the garden.

We’ve finally managed to replace the raised bed … and it has been a real labour of love.

Just as a reminder … this was the raised bed at its heyday … just bursting with colour …

… and you may remember a while ago I shared photos of it awaiting some major attention and looking decidedly worse for wear …

Our first step was to empty it of the plants we wanted to save … mainly foxgloves and verbena … everything else having been relocated a few years ago when we starting to get ready to replace it …

Next … we emptied it of soil …

… which we bagged up for reusing later …

… and broke it down and disposed of the old rotten wood …

Then the real hard work started. A full day, with the help of our good friend Tom, along with his saw, measuring, lifting and cutting and then cutting again …

The build was not without issues … poor quality sleepers which had to be replaced, measurements of the sleepers not being quite as they should be, wonky edging bricks and screws which didn’t screw as screws should …

Finally we got it all together …

… with just three screws that just would not go in any further and neither would they come out. Martin did a fabulous job dowelling the rest of the joints …

… and ended up having to grind off the heads of the screws that didn’t behave as they should.

Yay … we were done and very pleased with ourselves.

It rained overnight and the following morning this is what we found 🙈🙈🙈

Fortunately we were planning on painting it … but oak was certainly showing us that it can be tricky to work with.

We were now on the home straight and the next step was treating and painting. Two coats of wood preserver and two more of Cuprinol Garden Shades in Wild Thyme …

Then we were on to lining … we have literally done everything we can think of to try and make this bed last for the rest of our lives … I don’t want to have to replace it again …

We thought that was it … just refilling and planting left to do … but we had an idea … we’d both been inspired by the pillared climbing roses we’d seen on a recent visit to Powis Castle …

Back home, sitting in the garden in the sunshine … Martin said … we could put a pillar in one of the corners. Straight away I was sold on the idea. We had been planning on an obelisk of some description to give a bit of height … but they do take up quite a lot of space. A pillar sounded like a great idea. 

Even better … we knew another of our good friends had been hanging on to a couple of old pergola posts for us … in case we needed them to help rebuild the bed. One of them would be perfect for what we needed. I do love a bit of reusing and recycling. 

It was soon topped and tailed and painted … ready for fitting. We even managed to find the perfect cap to top it with …

We decided on the corner where we wanted to place it …

… and all that was left to do was to attach plenty of ‘u’ shaped pins to tie the stems into, before attaching the cap and fitting it to the bed …

I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. The next step is to fill it with soil and then I can start planting … I can’t wait 😛 

I already know what rose I think I want … just need to find a nice specimen …

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Just in Case …

Hi there everyone 😀

Martin had some big wins on the ‘just in case’ philosophy at the weekend. 

You know what I mean … the random stuff that gets squirrelled away for another day … just in case. 

Whilst I don’t like chucking useful stuff out I really don’t like waste … or the idea of having to buy something when something you threw out would have done the job just as well. 

Jackie and Phil popped round at the weekend. Phil was giving us a hand with grinding out some mortar around the raised bed. Actually … when I say he was giving us a hand what I really mean is that he did it for us. 

Anyway … when I asked Jackie what they were doing for the rest of the day she told me they were going to the garden centre as they needed a tree stake. Ooh … I said … I’m sure we have one of those in the shed. And we did … and a tree strap too. So us hanging onto those meant they didn’t have to go to the garden centre and spend some money. 

We then decided that we would need a few bricks or bits of slab to put in each corner of the new bed to help with ‘the levels’. 

Well … a trip round the back of the shed revealed all kinds of bits of masonry that would do the job perfectly. 

I was definitely on dodgy ground with my anti-just in case policy. 

It got worse … we popped to mum’s for something and saw an off cut of a wooden sleeper that she had leftover from a garden project and I thought it would be handy to help us get an idea of how it would look and fit … so it came home with us. 

It served its purpose well. The only problem is … I’m not sure if I like it 🙈🙈🙈

It was green before and I think I’m going to miss the colour … oh dear 😩

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Random Ramblings :: The Beds have arrived!

Hi there everyone 😀

Well, this is exciting news ... although I can fully appreciate that the term 'exciting' may be up for debate 😀

Back in March, at the very beginning of lockdown, with our April and May holidays postponed and some glorious weather, we spent a lot of time in the garden ... to good effect, getting lots of the annual maintenance jobs done.

Before long we’d fallen back in love with the idea of growing our own, having not done that much over the last few years ... just really green beans and a few pretty unsuccessful tomatoes.

Treating myself to a gardening magazine with a stash of free seeds set us off on a bit of a planting spree, which lead to us working out how we could fit some more raised beds in the garden, with not much effort and within the constraints of lockdown.

A spot of 'Googling' and I found something totally different to what we’ve had before and we both started to get excited and before long an order was submitted ... this was back in the middle of April with an expected delivery date of the end of the month.

It was time to start thinking about how we would fill them and we got really lucky as a friend's neighbour had a lot of soil to get rid of and didn’t want to pay for a skip. I have to confess that we did make a few trips that may have been considered non essential to pick up about 48 compost sized bags of soil, which we proceeded to riddle and has been sitting in some huge white bags on the patio ever since.

The original delivery date came and went ... pushed back to early May, then Mid-May ... by when the weather had started to change and we were trying to find other options for planting on our leeks and other bits and bobs that seriously needed getting into the ground.

Martin emailed to find out when they would be due ... with a sob story about our veg being desperate and the wife seriously fed up of looking at bags of dirt on the patio.

Finally ... 3 June they arrived and we were so excited ...

It then pretty much rained non stop for what felt like ages ... but in between the showers we built them up and messed about with different shapes and sizes and different options of how to position them.

Finally we decided on the sizes and the location and, last week, Martin got them fully built up and all of the protective film removed and they started looking a bit more like we were expecting ... 

... A cross between an old tin bath and an Anderson shelter ...

This Sunday we had a small window of opportunity to dig out the turf for the first one ... 

We then had the problem of how to edge it to solve ... our main concern being about Bill, our grass cutting man, strimming right up to them and damaging the paintwork.

We tried lots of options ... could we just have a strip of soil, should we fill it with pebbles, should we brick edge it? Nothing felt quite right ... we wanted something easy and whilst a brick edge to match the rest of the garden will be our long term plan we just want something fairly easy that we can do ourselves and will work for now ... but will look good too.

After a lot of faffing about and chopping and changing I decided to try just positioning a few terra cotta pots on a border of raised bricks, salvaged from round the back of the shed, and all of a sudden it all seemed to feel right ... so right size, right place and right edging ...

We left it there for Sunday ... happy to have a plan in place.

Monday morning we had a quick trip to the garden centre to buy some weed proof membrane and some pebbles to infill the gap between the bricks and the planter. Martin's job for Monday afternoon, whilst I was at food bank, was to level up the bricks ... ready for popping down the weed proof membrane and finally placing the bricks and filling in the pebbles ... before filling with a mixture of some of our donated top soil, farmyard manure and compost ...

Tuesday we made the most of a dry morning trying to get a few bits and pieces planted and have now filled this bed with a courgette, some leeks, iceberg lettuce and beetroot ...

We now need to fill in the turf gap and re-position the stepping stones across the lawn and then repeat with the second bed. Sadly there are no more bricks lurking at the back of the shed so the next job is to try and source something similar.

So ... so far, so good. It's not perfect ... not by a long means ... the bricks are a bit wobbly and we wish we'd put a bit more soil in ... but it's fine and will certainly serve a purpose. It also looks in keeping with the style of the garden and the positioning feels quite balanced. 

I think long term we may opt for a more permanent and professionally finished brick edge, but for now ... we're both looking forward to reaping plenty fresh fruit and veg over the summer 🍅🍒🍓

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