A year of blogs

I notice that  it's my blogging birthday today. I have been blogging for exactly one year. When I started my blog last year I wondered how long it would last. I really thought I would run out of steam, or words, to be more precise, after a while. But no I'm still here.

I don't know if when I started off I intended my blog to be about anything in particular, more of an online diary of my life, thoughts, feelings etc.  As I look back on a year's worth of blogs I can see that I tend to blog mainly about what I'm doing in the garden and allotment or anything related to those subjects, because that's my main interest. But I've also blogged about family, baking and places we've been to on holiday or days out. I sometimes feel that my life is a bit boring, but if people what to read about it they are very welcome to.

I suppose if you're blogging about the same subject like gardening all the time, you're in danger of repeating yourself as you go from one year to the next. I hope I don't do that, but if I do I apologise.

So I look forward to a second year of blogging and you're welcome to join me to have a glimpse of what's going on in my life and the things I enjoy doing. Thank you for reading my blog and for all your comments.

Days like this

Being retired, you would think (and I know many people do think this) that I have all day to do just what I want. Like gardening. Gardening being the thing that I like to do a lot.  But my time gets taken up with lots of other  things most days. Looking after grandchildren, cleaning the house, washing, ironing, shopping, cooking, church commitments and more. All very important things. So I try to have some days in the week when I don't do any of those things.   I call them commitment free days, which is what yesterday was.

I was looking forward to spending time in the garden, there was lots to do. I sowed some radish and rocket seeds in one of the raised beds at the top of the garden. Now we have gained more allotment space I'm not going to grow as much veg at home. But I will continue to grow salad here.

Then I got down to work on  the borders. There's a lot of work to be done still on clearing away the winter debris, hoeing and putting down a mulch on the soil.  I've been using the old compost from the bags we grew potatoes in last year and also some strawberry tubs, tomato containers and any pots which had summer bedding plants in. I mixed it with our own leaf mould and some newly bought peat free compost.

The borders I've done so far are looking good.  I love that freshly turned over look they have as they wait for the new growth of the dormant plants to emerge and spread out.  It's like doing a spring clean. It's at this time that I have to restrain myself as I am often tempted to fill those gaps with more plants. That's why I'm so glad I now take photographs of the borders throughout the year, as it reminds me of how they fill out. I did plant some tete a tete daffodils, but those will have gone over before any bigger plants start to grow

Clearing up all the mess of dead plant material and leaves reveals some hidden gems and today was no exception. I found pink and blue pulmonaria, some chionodoxas just coming into flower and a lovely blue vinca flowering under the hedge.  The sulphur yellow of the euphorbia under the holly tree looks good in the shady border too.

I love days like this when I can be on my own with my thoughts, listening to the chatter of the birds and generally just feeling calm and peaceful.

Making lists

I have to admit to being an obsessive lists person. When my mind is all jumbled up and I need to feel organised, I like to sit down with a notebook and pen and make a list. Whether it's making a shopping list , working out how I'm going to do a job, or making plans, it always helps to calm me down.

I make lists for everything, shopping,  jobs to do, holidays, Christmas.  And Christmas has sub lists, like cleaning jobs, things to make, things to bake, things to buy, who to send cards to.  I also do gardening lists.  That's another one with sub lists. There are allotment jobs lists, garden jobs lists, things I need to buy. I even made a list recently of jobs for my husband to do. He didn't mind and he's already done some of them.

When I'm reading garden blogs and magazines, I love the bits which say 'jobs to do this month'. I do find them helpful, especially when they appear the same as my list. Then I can see that I'm doing all the right things. But  sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work which needs doing. That's especially so at this time of year as the growing season gets underway.

This week I've been working on the flower borders, tidying up the dead foliage and fallen leaves, weeding and mulching with compost.  I thought I was doing really well until I remembered there were still all the other borders yet to sort and then there's the front garden too. *Sigh*. And as I worked I could see other jobs which would need doing like perennial clumps which need digging up and dividing, roses which need pruning,  the vegetable plot and seeds which I needed to get on with sowing. 

You never really get to the end of a gardening list. The list grows and grows. As you cross jobs off there are others added to it.  Ah well, I'll plod on, but first I'll update my garden jobs list.

Do you make lists?

Cutting down the tree

We've had some work done this week on a couple of our trees.  The main job was to cut down a leylandii conifer which had grown too tall. We'd been thinking for a while that it needed to go.  It was casting a lot of shade across the top of the garden and was taking moisture from the soil around. Trying to grow plants in this dry shade was proving quite difficult.

I was surprised at how quickly the tree came down. I thought about how long it had been in our garden. We'd planted it about 25 years ago, a few years after we'd moved in to the house. It had become a nuisance in recent years and we knew it had to go. But suddenly I became quite sad to lose it. And what about the space left? Well I would have a new planting area, that would be good, I told myself.  Once it had gone, I could see sky where it had been.  I should have been glad about all that light, but I felt exposed, too open.  That's silly, I know, because I'm sure I will love all that extra light when I get used to it. I will be able to grow so much more.

We knew there was an old bird's nest in there and the tree man showed me after the tree had come down. It had been a magpie's nest and it was made up of masses of bits of wire, probably collected from some nearby building work. They seemed to be all wound up together, those magpies must be very skillful.

The tree man cut up some pieces of the trunk for me. My husband is going to hollow them out a bit for me so that I can grow things like sedums in them.  This is an idea I got from other gardens we've visited.  I also want to use some of the smaller cut up branches to make a bug house and a log pile for wildlife.

The apple tree which you can just about see on the right in this photo was getting a bit squashed by the conifer. It can now be pruned into a better shape, the raspberries will also get more light, so maybe we'll get more fruit from them.

 That's plenty of new projects to keep us busy  for the next few months.

Weekend work

Gardening at the weekend was lovely.  It was hard to believe it's still only February, but it was so spring like. It was mild, there was sunshine and we even had our lunch out in the garden.

There were flowers poking their heads through the the soil and green shoots appearing everywhere.
I planted onion and garlic sets in modules to get them started off. These will be planted at the allotment in a few weeks time when we've got the soil prepared.

My husband made new lids for the cold frame, which for the last few years has been used as a growing area for veg.  Now, because I need more space for seedlings, I can use it to keep them protected. He also fixed a protective wire cover on the woodland wooden boardwalk.  This is an area which gets very slippy in damp weather, so hopefully we can walk safely along there now.

 Next week we are having a conifer cut down and the area around where it is will be having a bit of a redesign afterwards. So I dug up some of the plants from that bed and potted them up to keep them safe from falling branches and trampling boots.

We've been thinking about getting rid of this conifer for a while now and finally made the decision a few weeks ago. Now the big day approaches and I'm getting worried about whether we've made the right decision.  We should have more light and better growing conditions, but I'm wondering if I'll miss the tree.

I'll let you know how I get on.

More salad

I've continued with the 52 week salad challenge and I've been quite pleased with the seeds I've grown for salad this month. I've never thought to eat them as microgreens before and what has amazed me is the intensity of flavour of the little seedlings. I loved the earthy flavour of the beetroot and the peppery radish seedlings. We've had them sprinkled over bought salad leaves, or with a tomato and cucumber salad. Last weekend we had egg sandwiches with radish seedlings and they were delicious.

The younger end of the family have not shared my enthusiasm for this new venture. I gave the grandchildren the red cabbage sprouting seedlings sprinkled over cucumber, celery and tomato. But they were viewed with disdain and I had to carefully remove each one before they would eat their tea!

After reading so much about pea shoots I decided I must have a go at growing these and am really pleased with the results. I had a few mange tout seeds left over from last year.  They germinated really quickly, but are not quite ready to cut yet. I tried one out the other day and was bowled over by the taste of peas. It brought back memories of picking peas at the allotment in the summer and eating them raw. I intend to buy a packet of dried peas so I can continue to grow these.

As we  approach the end of February I am now going to start growing lettuce on the windowsill then once they've germinated, move them out into our porch, where it is cooler and I will grow them as proper salad leaves. I will keep on with the micro greens until the lettuce gets growing properly.  I also want to grow watercress this year which I love.

If you want to know more about growing microgreens click here or try this link too.