Shed love

I have to admit to being a bit of a shed lover.  There's nothing I like better than to visit a garden and peer into the shed to see how it's all set out. I love to see how other people use their sheds. Sheds have all sorts of uses these days, for offices, studies, hobbies rooms, places to write, rest, retreat to etc.

One of our local bishops when he was first appointed and moved into his Bishop's house had a shed put in the garden to use as a chapel. He needed a quiet space away from the distractions of the telephone which he could use for his regular morning and evening prayer.  I had the privilege of seeing his shed once. Fitted out with a small altar and a few chairs, icons and christian symbols, the shed had a quiet, prayerful atmosphere, it was a very special place.

At our allotments there are some 'interesting' sheds made out of old doors, windows, fence panels, corrugated sheets. They are really ramshackle looking places, but great examples of recycling.  They are places to store garden stuff, sit and drink tea, shelter from the rain, but they are also well loved places.

At the RHS garden Harlow Carr there is a shed which I drool over whenever we go there. It's a lovely old fashioned Victorian gardener's shed. I'd love a shed like it, but, it's probably a bit too showy, too neat and tidy for me. My shed could never be so tidy.

 

This is a quirky sort of shed we spotted on a walk whilst visiting our daughter in Bedfordshire.

It's often said that men love their sheds and it seems to have started at an early age in our family because our 6 year old grandson, ever since he could walk, has had a thing about our shed.  Whenever we were out in the garden he would (and still does) make a beeline for the shed and would emerge brandishing mine or grandad's tools, much to our horror! Now he has his own tools in there and is a bit safer.

So what about my shed?  It's not very big and we have a lot of stuff to store in there, so it can get untidy.  But it fulfills all my organising dreams with hooks to hang tools on, shelves to store garden stuff and a bench to work on.   It gets an annual clean up in the autumn and then it's ready for winter projects, like making Christmas wreaths. 

I would love to have a big enough shed to be able to sit in and use for other things, like reading gardening magazines and drinking tea.  I think I really need a summer house!

Because it's not so big, outside of my shed is also a very special area.  That's where my potting bench is. It's home made by my husband out of an old kitchen table and it's perfect.  It's where I sow seeds, transplant seedlings, pot things on. But it's also a place where I can escape to. I can sit there in the sunshine with a mug of tea, listening to the birds singing, looking at the garden.

Are you a shed lover? What's your shed like?

                         

Loads of lettuce

I've had a few ups and downs with my salad growing this month. The wet weather has brought out all the slugs. Well you'll know that of course, everyone is complaining about the slugs. So I am beginning to see holes appearing in my salad leaves.

We went away for the weekend and I came back to find all the mizuna tops nibbled at. The lollo rossa seedlings have disappeared and so has the watercress.

However I am still pleased with the progress of the rocket, red salad bowl, tom thumb and little gem lettuce which were further on than the other stuff so could cope with a bit of slug damage. At the time of planting I thought I may have put too many in for our needs, but at least now I have enough leaves to be able to pick around the slug damaged ones. When I look back on last month's photos of my salad bed I can see how well everything has grown.  I'm still growing pea shoots, those are in a tub by the back door.

I'm so enjoying going out into the garden with a bowl to collect a few salad leaves to go with our lunch or dinner. And I haven't bought any lettuce for weeks now.

I don't seem to be very good at growing radish. I notice every year, that I get some pathetic looking radish, so I think it must be me who can't grow them. I've sown some at the allotment to see if they do any better there.

The herbs I planted in pots are romping away too, I've used the red veined sorrell in salads.

The second lot of outdoor cucumbers seem to be doing fine (the first lot died). I shall pot them into bigger pots before finally planting out into the cold frame

So now I just need to sow more seeds to replace all those slug eaten seedlings.

New allotment--getting started

If you've been following my allotment progress you will know that my daughter and I have had a mini allotment in the form of  a council run scheme of raised beds. The good news is that we now have our own 'proper' allotment. We, along with some other people who were near the top of the allotment waiting list were invited to an evening viewing of the vacant allotments. I have to say that none of them were very inspiring, but the one we finally decided on was plot 10b.

The previous tenant had been keeping chickens on the site. Unfortunately all his chickens had been got at by the fox so he decided to give up. The new plot is L shaped  and has one large stretch of weed filled area. The other bit has chicken sheds on it. There are 3 rather ramshackle looking sheds and one huge metal cabin.

We are still keeping our raised bed plots on until the end of the year because we have planted them up with summer veg. This will give us time to get some growing areas dug over in the new allotment to plant up with winter veg.

Last weekend we started work. We cleared out the rubbish from the best of the sheds, swept, cleaned and disinfected it. Then we started clearing some of the areas in which  we want to grow things.  There are a lot of stones as well as huge weeds.

We worked really hard, even the grandchildren, who seemed to enjoy themselves. Our grandson likes to help grandad so he (assisted?) him as he attempted to build a compost bin area using wood which had been kindly dumped nearby for any of the allotment people to use.  

The new plot has come complete with a cat.  The previous owners were unable to catch it to take it with them, so we agreed to look after it. It's very elusive, sometimes we see it watching us, then it disappears.  We leave food for it, which gets eaten and there is access into the shed for it to sleep. We hope she will eventually accept us as new owners.

There's a lot of work ahead of us, but we were really pleased with the progress we have made so far.

Coming home

We've just returned from a week away in North Devon and the garden has grown amazingly in that time.  In fact when we arrived home, as we trundled our holiday stuff from the car (in the rain) through the back garden up to the house, I was partly overjoyed to see it all again, with flowers which hadn't been there before we went away, and partly overwhelmed by the work I would need to do to sort it out. It looked like a jungle. There seemed to be too many plants crowded into the borders. I really should remember how big plants grow to.

The following day I saw things differently.  There was no rain, the sun was shining and my husband cut the lawn. The borders looked so much better once the grass was a decent length. Then a neighbour came round and exclaimed how beautiful the garden was looking.  I looked again with fresh eyes and decided  it did look quite good.

The poppies are now flowering. The lovely deep pink 'Raspberry Queen' is my favourite.  The paler pink is 'Victoria Louise'. 'Patty's Plum' has lots of buds but is yet to flower.

 The hardy geraniums are now out. 

Lots of pale pink in the front garden.

 

More blue in the back garden

Also lots of blue from the Iris

It was all so lovely that I cut some flowers for the house.

Time to stand and stare

One of the wonderful things about being retired is to be able to take life slowly.  I don't mean that I drift about all day doing nothing. In fact I'm as busy as I was when I went out to work. I still have commitments, but I have the freedom now to choose how I spend most days. To take in and  enjoy all the little things in life is a great privilege.

There's a poem by William Henry Davies:

'What is this life if full of care 

we have no time to stand and stare'

And as I walk almost the same path each day I so much enjoy the changes I see along the way.

As I passed by the woods the other morning I could smell the wild garlic, which tempted me inside.There I found bluebells, buttercups and old tree stumps.  I was reminded of years ago when we used to walk here with our children and they always played on a massive old tree stump. I found the remains of it, much rotted down now but still there.  There was a little area with lots of old tree stumps and logs and I wondered if this was where my grandson and his school class go when they have their 'woodland classroom'.

Down the lane, where I walk several times a week, everything is changing. The hawthorn blossom is out, reminding me both of the hedges near my childhood home and of our first house when we were married where we planted a hawthorn hedge. I love the delicate scent of the blossom.

 The cow parsley is out too, there is a delicate airy fairyness to it which I love. I would like some in my garden.

'No time to stand beneath the boughs

and stare as long as sheep or cows'

The cows were out in the field being quite inquisitive as I passed by

'A poor life this if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare'

Salad growing

As I  review my salad growing  for this month for the salad challenge, I'm feeling that I'm making progress. I have a raised bed which I am using for growing salad and there are some neat rows of crops coming along nicely. I'm also using the cold frame to grow salad.

There are some  radish  now  ready to pick from the first sowings I made. The tom thumb and little gem lettuce which I transplanted into the raised bed have taken well.  I had so many of the little gem lettuce that I also planted some in between the broad beans and peas. In the cold frame I have some tantan lettuce which is a little gem type. I have planted out the watercress which has been a bit slow to grow, but hopefully the warmer weather will bring it along now.

I have been sowing more crops this week. I sowed  watercress,                              mizuna, and lollo rossa.  I also planted some beetroot seedlings.  We had planted most of them at the allotment and these were left over. Couldn't bear to throw them away.

I bought some herb plants a few weeks ago. There are ginger mint, basil mint and lemon mint, sorrel, hyssop and three sorts of sage. I potted them up into terracotta pots and left them next to the raised bed whilst I decided where to put them. I the end I left them there because I thought they looked quite good. I have other herbs around the garden, different types of mint, thyme, oregano, marjoram and chives. Today I sowed seeds of borage and dill. I have parsley and basil seedlings too.

I've been trying to grow outdoor cucumbers, the seeds germinated but the seedlings eventually died off. I've sown more seeds and if these don't work then I might buy a couple of plants from the garden centre to grow in the cold frame.

There's lots of salad growing, I just can't wait to eat it!

  

     

http://vegplotting.blogspot.co.uk/p/52-week-salad-challenge.html

Making a bug hotel

I've had a few projects planned for the garden recently and one of them was to make an insect hotel.   

We do a lot to encourage wildlife into our garden, so this was just another thing to do and a great way of getting children involved. I got some ideas from Dawn Isaac's book, Garden crafts for Children and also from the Internet.

My husband made the framework from an old bird table and bits of wood he had lying around. He drilled some holes in larger pieces of tree branches and we collected stuff from around the garden, like twigs, leaves and bits of rotting wood. We also used cardboard tubes, drinking straws, pine cones, old plant pots, bits of moss and straw. These are all the sort of materials which bugs like.

Our 8year old granddaughter really enjoyed putting this together, the 6 year old helped a bit, but he prefers to dig up the garden.  We placed it in a little corner of the woodland garden. I think the children will be checking each day to see if any bugs have moved in! We enjoyed making it so much that we plan to make a bigger one at the allotment.