At last.................Our Garden

Every time I have to take the rubbish to Eco Composting, being a very muddy place most of the time, the van and trailer get covered. The van does get a clean fairly regularly, but alas, the trailer tends to get unhitched and left to one side. As the trailer brakes had started to squeal because of the sheer amount of mud build up over a couple of years, I started the week by giving it a good old jetwash.

Overall, it's been a really nice, sunny and productive week. Daffodils, crocus, snowdrops and tulips are now all out, and giving a beautiful display of cover. The dry weather has also meant that the blooms are lasting longer than usual.

We did however have one day that was so nice that we decided to take it off and make a start on our own garden. Normally by now, our own postage stamp of paradise would be completely up together, and gaps in the borders restocked, but the start to the year has thrown up all sorts of complications that have meant that it has remained pretty much untouched until now, and it WAS a mess!

The jetwashing of the patio had to be finished, and Amanda, having got drenched last time, insisted on getting some new wellies, and wanted to proudly display them for you all, and they are kind of funky I think.

Between us, we filled any spare pots with the left over Primroses from work. Having stood in their trays for a few weeks, they needed a lot of cleaning up and dead heading before we could plant them, but we only ended up throwing about forty five away, which is not bad at all when you consider we had initially purchased well over twelve hundred to start with.

Pruning was done, the borders freshened up with some compost mulching, dead things dug up and the new path partially filled with gravel, awaiting a top up to finish it off.

We have our garden back at last!

It was a long, tiring, but wonderful day. A lovely way for us both to spend it, as we laughed and talked whilst doing the thing that we both love.....gardening. By the end of it all, we were tired but still buzzing, and so took ourselves off to The Porterhouse Pub for a beer. This is just about THE best pub I know. No music, no fruit machines, in fact the only noise allowed is talking, to the extent that a group of businessmen came in, obviously for the first time, and one looked quite taken aback when, upon ignoring his own mobile phone as it gave out one of those childish and annoying loud ringtones, was asked by the barman to either turn it off immediately, or take the ****** thing outside and answer it! As you can see, there is scrabble, trivial pursuit, chess, jenga, dominoes and cards to play if you wish. Newspapers and books abound. All in all, along with some of the best real ales and whiskies, or just coffee if you wish, it really is a haven of humanity. We went with the intention of just having a 'quick one' before returning home for dinner, but found ourselves once again spending in excess of two hours.

Amanda likes porridge for breakfast, nothing wrong in that, but I had to share the following morning experiment. Normally cooked on the stove, porridge can be zapped in the microwave, but one has to keep a very careful eye on it. Amanda didn't, there were several very loud 'pops', and her breakfast now covered the roof of the microwave....yum yum!

Sunday was Mothers Day, and so we took Celia to Kingston Lacy House, after first having lunch at the Weld Arms.

In a previous post, I took you all on a very quick tour of the gardens, and at that time the house was still closed to the public. Now open, the place was alive with visitors, and what a place it is. Views onto the parterre are spectacular, made even better by it being a wonderfully sunny and cold day.

There are several floors to the building, and Celias little legs found it quite a task, but Amandas watchful eye was always there.

The rooms, of which many are open to the public, are magnificent, filled with the furniture etc of the various people who have lived there. We were even rewarded with a demonstration of various old english formal dances. It was far removed from todays rumbas and tangos, instead consisting of delicate hand touching, bowing and nodding. All very civilized.

Yesterday, Monday, 6am,and the morning was once again cold and sunny, just how I like it. We had planned to work in the morning, and then in the afternoon go to see a lady about a dog, get some banking stuff done, and take some things down to the allotment. We got the work done ok, and really enjoyed it, but one by one the other tasks went wrong in the way that these things sometimes do. You all know I'm sure, it's as though there is bad energy flowing about and stuff just becomes too problematic. So we moodily gave up on the last task, the allotment, having now lost that momentum, and instead I cleared out the inside of the van in readiness for the rest of the weeks work.

As I said at the beginning of this last paragraph, it was cold, sunny and 6am, and so I would just like to leave you all with a couple of pictures I took at the time. The first is a Paulownia on the patio, and the second is part of our herb bed.

Thanks for visiting, take care all of you!