Flowerbed edging.

Planting trees.

Nine new fruit trees planted which completes the two lines of trees on either side of the long pond.

The best kind of snow.

Bright and sunny here but snow on the hills - perfick!

Wet wet wet.

So much water that the platform holding the rainwater butts has collapsed.

Bella's bulbs

Bella helped plant these bulbs which are growing in the edges of the grass below the terrace.

Catching up

I seem to have missed a few days!
Strawberry bed inside the fruit cage.








Door on the fruit cage.




More fruit trees and bushes. The trees will complete the avenues on both sides of the long pond.








And the first of two covers for the strawberry beds outside the fruit cage - I had used the same plastic netting on these and everybody just ate through it. So now I have used the off cuts from the fruitcage wire netting.

Proper job.

Doing the fruitcage, again!

I used a nylon netting when I covered the fruitcage and it did not stand up well to attacks from squirrels and other vermin. They nibbled holes then birds followed them in. So this time I am using 1/2" chicken netting.

More gardening and wildlife

This is the robin that hangs around the back door and is quite tame now.


Digging marsh marigolds from the bottom stream and moving them to the long pond.


The three raspberries at this end died so I planted three more. They died too. Now I have dug down and found that I didn't do it properly and the holes weren't draining so the plants were drowning. This time I have dug a very deep hole and put drainage at the bottom


Pressure washing the polytunnel and the greenhouse and the red tractor got a wash too.

A gardening day

Dabbling ducks.

A wet day....

So a chance for a day out. We went to Cardiff to see the museum and art gallery. Wonderful collection with many impressionist and pre-raphaelite paintings.


This is a wonderful Burne-Jones - with beautiful use of metals.



A Monet, with no water lilies in sight.






Easy to love Vincent.


This guy was a complete surprise. Johan Jones. Beautiful blend of calligraphy and watercolour.



And this piece of green turned holly.
And we shopped at M&S as well!

Among other things......

I have cleaned up the long pond and it is filling up again.
The next job is creating a flower bed in the middle of the pig field. This acts as a sump for the field too and has a drainage pipe running out to the ditch. I dug the hole last year when I needed some soil for a flower bed.








Next job will be to build a pebble wall around it before filling it with compost.

Goose pond clean up.

This section is done. Lots of frogs and spawn in there. And goldfish too now - when I drained the long pond into this section I rescued about a dozen goldfish and moved them to the goose pond. They might eat some of the frogspawn but there is so much there will be plenty of survivors.
Working in the long pond tomorrow.

Working on the Goose pond

Spring cleaning in the pond

We have a pair of Mallards feeding on the pond regularly so we need to keep it clean for them!

Spending the day on the bench (ha, ha)

Making a bench

The four legs may not match exactly!

Plants in exchange for IT work

Chamomile