Permanent removal of slugs and snails from your garden

I'm hardening off some bedding plants on the decking area prior to planting them out next week. I put them out during the day and bring them back into the greenhouse at night to gradually acclimatise them.

How to keep them safe from slugs and snails is always a headache for the gardener. I have discovered a way of permanently excluding slugs and snails. It's organic and cruelty-free, no chemicals are necessary, all you need is a reasonable aim.

Instead of chucking them over the fence into your neighbour's garden, chuck them onto the other side of the river instead ... get back from there you little bleepers!

Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend!

Garden progresses ... really close to getting that greenhouse!

It finally feels like I'm doing some real gardening instead of just working on the structure of the garden. Vegetable seedlings have been popping up but I noticed they were getting pulled out by the birds (pigeons I think) and so I've had to put some makeshift netting over them and the second lot of seeds are doing much better without the birds over-thinning!

However, there's still a little way to go before the greenhouse can be put up. Last weekend I was sealing two garden walls and then painting them with masonry paint. The colour was supposed to be sea green but looks more turquoise; it's much bluer than I imagined from the shade card but I've decided it can stay as it looks so nice with the brown of the sleepers.

MTM has put up some trellis against the wall. The wall actually goes all the way up to the top of the trellis but I decided not to paint it all, too much ladder work! The top will be covered with climbers I'm going to put in the raised bit under the trellis. 

Once the greenhouse is put up, the raised bed won't have much space around it for maintenance so I shall have an incentive to keep trim! The soil was some that got displaced when MTM built the base and has since got contaminated with chunks of limestone and rubble in it which needs to be picked out (job for me!) Bloody builders! ;-) Luckily the soil is quite good, not too clayey or too sandy. Dig in some compost and it'll be good to go. 

The scabby fence at the top is going to be replaced. Although the retaining wall is really quite high on the garden side, it's only three or four feet tall where it fronts the road and sometimes people peer over which I find disconcerting (and they're usually embarrassed when I spot them!) So that's going to be replaced with something taller. We did discuss putting the greenhouse up before the fence but you just know that a hammer or nail gun will get dropped onto it if we do it that way round so there's still a little time to wait! 

As long as it's up before the first frosts so I can overwinter cuttings, I shall be a happy little gardener! 

Last weekend and next weekend

This tidy pile of materials arrived on our driveway on Friday morning.

We live on a bit of a thoroughfare through the village so they couldn't stay there, worried they might go walkies so the weekend's priority was getting them shifted round the back. I'm still on my "nothing too strenuous" orders so Geoff did most of it on his own but those big 9x3 "sleepers" were a bit too bulky for him on his own. Slow and steady it wasn't too tiring for me to grab one end and MTM on the other, we got them round without any retinal incidence.

Those will be used to form two more terraces for growing vegetables underneath the block retaining wall which is where the greenhouse is going. After the terraces are formed .... that's the bank holiday weekend's job ... there will be a delivery of topsoil directly onto the greenhouse base, over the top like the limestone last Autumn, that can then be shovelled into the new beds and then .... then .... we can put up the greenhouse. 

So, after a bit of a lay off over winter to allow finances to recover and the weather to improve, we're back to work on renovating the house and garden. Hoping for good bank holiday weather!

Back to work ... or is it?

Like many people do, I tagged on a few extra days to the Easter bank holiday and was lucky with some really lovely weather to do some gardening tidying up. I managed to catch some kind of cold lurgy which took the edge off it a bit but now MTM has caught it, I've recovered! Get well soon dear!

But this week I'm back to work, beadmaking in my studio. Here's the view from my "office", bird feeding stations with sunflower seeds, thistle seeds and peanuts. The robins, chaffinchs, thrushes, blackbirds and tits all visit regularly and I love to watch them.

I got the radio tuned to Planet Rock and I sing along to the tunes I know, it has to be said that sometimes this does scare the birds off.

On nice days, Missy keeps me company outdoors, she has a cushion outside the studio which she lays on when she's feeling lazy, sometimes she has a chew, but quite often she goes exploring in the garden, sniffing the sniffs and chasing off squirrels and pigeons.

I don't think this can really be classed as work but as people pay me money for the beads I make, I've come to realise, I am a very lucky lady!

Gardening surprises

The received wisdom when you move into a new home with an established garden is to wait 12 months before doing anything drastic to it, mow the lawn, remove obvious weeds (leaving unidentified seedlings) and see what comes up/sprouts into life.

I wasn't terribly hopeful of anything wonderful appearing in my new garden, it's not been particularly well maintained and consists mainly of big trees and a lawn like a field (Spike loves all the weeds though and having a weedy lawn is always on our list of desirables for him!) But I have had some surprises already!

Mint is springing up through the gravel where I put my patio furniture set. Have to keep an eye on that, mint is so vigorous, it really needs restricting in a pot to stop it spreading out of control. That might become one of the on-going battles of this garden.

Some surprises are nicer than others ... this very shady rockery was growing nothing more than moss, cleavers, and a silver leaved rockery plant I can't remember the name of but everyone has it (someone help me out with the name!) I just noticed yesterday that it's got all these little shoots all over the place. I am hopeful that it's Lily of the Valley. The rockery is right next to some steps going down into the garden and would smell wonderful if it is.

This surprise - the retaining wall on the lowest of the existing terraces collapsing when DH sat on it (no injuries except to his dignity), well we could've done without that one! As you can possibly see from the photograph, it was obvious that this will need rebuilding in the long term as it's leaning over quite a bit, we had hoped to leave this til after the work in the house was finished (to give us time to save up a bit!)

This made me jump when I came across it under one of the overgrown conifer trees ... it's completely hidden until you get under the canopy. I'm not quite sure what it is, it's made of painted terracotta I think. I have decided it's a Japanese lion (with broken legs poor thing). I've found one of the legs, if I come across the other I may attempt a repair and bring him out into the sun.

The best surprise though was spotting a fish for the first time in the river from the jetty! The Inspector from the Environment Agency who came round last week confirmed what the previous owner had told us, that there are brown trout and crayfish in the river. This fish was only little, a couple of inches or so and had vertical bands on its side, we only got fleeting glimpses of it as it went about its business in and amongst the stones and weed on the bottom.

I didn't get a photo of it but here's one from the jetty where we spotted it from anyway; I could've watched it for hours!

New premises

This morning I made beads for the first time for what seems like absolutely ages. Here is the new beadmaking studio, those are leaves from an ash tree (so I haven't escaped the big Autumn clear up after all but it is a little smaller than the one at Gardener's Cottage so maybe it won't take as long!) Even on a damp and grey November day, the stone looks lovely.

Here's the interior taken from the window end

And here is the reverse angle

I'm going to put up a couple of large pinboards with some posters on so I can get a similar look and feel to my old studio which I have missed so much. I also have an idea to disguise the rafters and bring the ceiling level down to make it feel more cosy. Note our old fridge freezer is sharing the space with me (I can't be without prawns or icecream for long!)

Whilst I had DH and his camera outdoors, I got him to take a couple of shots of the pretty stream which runs along the bottom of the garden, here it is looking towards the West

and here it is looking towards the East

We're very happily settled in now, all the boxes are empty and the cartons returned to the removal company, some pictures have yet to be put on the wall but to all intents and purposes, everything is back to normal again. I even found somewhere for the sundial ...