We bought; felt for the chicken house, small wire fence to finish off the new border, wood chip, compost, bell cloches, a few bedding/pots/hanging basket starter plants, 3 grow bags, 2 grow bag trays and 6 strawberry plants. Not bad for 40 minutes of shopping at a total of £175.00 after discount. After picking ourselves back up off the floor and being complemented by the guy on the till about the fact that Noel and I work very well as a team (wasn’t that nice of him to say), we piled it all into the car – just and set off for home.
The result of newly cleaned out and nearly planted pots; and instead of over crowding the patio with all the pots, like I did last year. I have placed them around the garden, partly to stop Buddy running through the shrubs and also to brighten up dull/dark areas with colour.
A couple of the many pots
The new border all planted and finished off; Noel had to do a lot of hard digging through the very wet clay to turn it all over before any planting could be done. He is very patient with me; because I am so fussy on the positioning of the plants, which we had bought last month and had been test placed and moved and moved and moved again before the planting actually took place.
New Border
Strawberry Plants
These tomato plants were grown from seed by Llew and he gave them to me last Friday, his have already doubled in size since planting out.
Now I will explain my title; after having a fantastic weekend sat in the sun and generally getting the garden back up to scratch, we needed to do a dump run, of thick clay with bits of sad tufty, ‘never (has yet, after 4 years) going to grow properly’ grass. I was dreading the wait at the recycling depot, however as luck would have it there were just 10 cars in front, so only a comparatively short wait – great. We even got a space just 2 away from the particular container we needed to throw the green or as it was and very embarrassing we got shouted at: "‘soil’ bin". Then this happened, I am sure you can picture this; two parking spaces away a car pulled up with a 'tall' Japanese man, who parked his car. I watched him take from his boot (trunk) and throw away two
Photmiums and two Fatsia Japonica’s, I stood in the middle of the path, with my ‘scardy cat hat’ on, my mouth wide open watching him throw these plants away, they were perfect, the leaves were all immaculate, the root balls, clean and tidy. He must of been a gardener, he had to be ... Then out of his boot came a 5 foot (1.5 meters) bamboo, now I knew this was over a £100.00 ($200.00) from the garden centre, at this point I plucked up the courage and asked “are you throwing thatttt awwayyyy”, “yes” he said, “I have 3 altogether”. “Please may I have them”, “of course, you should have said earlier, you could of had it all” – I let out a GROAN (but my insides were screaming), “why are you throwing all this away, you could sell it”, “my garden is to small and the plants to large”, he replied, no reason given for just throwing them away, perhaps I should not have asked.I gave one of bamboo plants to another man who saw what I was doing and very politely asked if I wanted all three, I just couldn’t be that greedy. So that particular bamboo was placed in the front seat of a open top sports car, never did manage to see where his partner sat, but that plant was taking priorty, I was more lucky ours fitted in from the back of the car and I just had to keep the ends from tickling Noel's face as he was driving! But all the way home I could have spit at what I let go in the ‘green’ container. I hate going to the dump, I hate what people throw away, it really gets to me, however if I hadn’t of gone I would not have come home with over £200.00 worth of bamboo.
We put one each side of the new chicken house. The chicken house now looks very different since it has left the workshop. It has has had two coats of creosote; one on all sides before being assembled properly and then the outside again. I looked like I had an amazing tan, why is it, I manage to paint me as well as the thing I am suppose to be painting. I even had a big boiler suit on to protect me. The roof has been felted, which Noel has done an excellent job off. With the help of Toby we laid 7 paving slabs, which we were given my our neighbour who has just had their garden 85% paved over, leaving a lovely shrub/flower border round one edge. They have decided to do this because the grass is so poor and soggy and always looked a mess. The bricks are a left over from a small wall being built a few years ago. So at a very low cost we think the chicken area is looking very posh.
However the next day I was retelling my sad story to my boss and workshop manager and would you believe this; Llew (Workshop Manager), had gone to the dump on Saturday and he just missed a guy tipping away over half a dustbin of Lego away – LEGO how could he.
Chicken House
The nest box is at the rear and there is ladder that fits into the door way. With a perch inside. Just need to make a dust bath and place down the drinker and feeder.
