 |
| marsh marigold |
|
Our new wildlife pond is starting to look good. I have planted a marsh marigold an iris and a white forget me not. I just love the marsh marigold, it seems to have more flowers every time we visit the plot and it's such a lovely bright, cheerful yellow. We can't plant up the boggy area around the pond yet as there are lots of weeds to be cleared away and it's quite a messy job which will take some time too. It's a job which has to take second place to other allotment work. So in the meantime I have been looking around my garden to see what moisture loving plants I have which can be divided, potted up and then planted when we have finished clearing and preparing the ground. I have astilbe, hostas, rodgersia, teasels and more irises.
I have to resist the temptation to go to the garden centre and buy more, I must wait until I can see properly how much planting space there is. I really can't wait to get started on the bog garden and get our wildlife area sorted.
 |
| the pond planted up |
|
Richard has been clearing the old pond and redirecting the drainage pipes so that they go alongside the fence, that's another very messy, muddy job. We now have a muddy hole where the pond used to be which needs filling in. When this area is sorted we want to gravel it and put up a greenhouse or small polytunnel.
 |
| the old pond is now a muddy hole | | |
| |
We encountered problems over the weekend with the high winds. With all the weeding and digging we have obviously disturbed the roots of a conifer tree which is next to the fence bordering ours and the next plot and noticed that the root ball was lifting every time there was a big gust of wind. The only thing stopping the tree from falling over was the fence. Another job now is to cut the tree down, but to add to our problems, when Richard started cutting out some of the branches, he discovered a pigeon sitting on a nest at the top of the tree looking down at him! We hope the pigeon isn't too upset, although we're not sure if it really was the pigeon's nest or whether it was just sitting there for a rest or maybe it was eyeing up the purple sprouting brocolli plants in the bed adjacent to the pond. They've already been attacked by pigeons. The nest doesn't look big enough for a pigeon so we are going to watch for a while before any more tree cutting is done.
 |
| the wobbly conifer partly cut down | |
