Up the garden path - here comes the sun - designing the blog - the revenge of the daffodils

Hello there, a wonderful Wednesday to you all, the weather today reminds me of a certain song...

“Here comes the sun” by the beatles. 

It’s like a miracle! Two days of gorgeous weather, light breezes... almost like a spring day. I said in my first up the garden path that March was the start of the gardening year, and the last two days has certainly been great weather wise.

It has been warm, and weeding has been... less of a chore than normal.

So what is the garden like at the moment? Well, one true sign of spring is that the grass is growing at a faster rate than lightning. And of course we did our first proper lawn mow of the year. Or would have, if the lawn mower hadn’t died with much over the top Shakespearean bad acting.

In fact, I don’t think we can morn for departed lawn mower, having cut through its power cord (twice) ,  dropped it (regularly) and asked it to cut 1 foot high grass one time more than we should have... it has perished after doing its duty.

So I guess at some stage soon we will have to buy a new one.

I was walking down to the sheep today, and there is a path of daffodils which I planted last year. Bulbs are funny things; you never know how well you did until months later. Well, I can confirm that not all of them came up... but enough did that in a few weeks down it is going to be a delight to see them when they are in flower.

So far we are at five daffodils in flower... I can’t wait until we get to see something more like this...

We’ve been trying to get a wider variety of them, so they flower at different times. In theory that should work, but in practice last year they all got bunched together due to snow. So we got all our spring in one go. Hope we don’t repeat that this year.

It always feels like an act of hope, planting bulbs in the autumn. It’s fun remembering back to how deep you were digging,  on a bright autumn day, as the sun was starting to go down and it was already starting to turn cold. The leaves were starting to fall from the trees. And, there you are... putting flowers in the bank for the spring. Sometimes you get very little from it. A few years ago we planted 1000 snowdrops, and got only around 50 back. Almost nothing at all. This time, we have been lucky.

But... even the patch of snowdrops that we planted has slowly started to spread.

Planting daffodils is always an odd experience. People seem to think you should use some weird bulb planter. I have always found just lifting the grass with a shovel works best. The bulb planters are useless in our garden. None of the soil has had enough improvement yet.

Although, even though it is not a gardener’s world flower bed, the plants still grow vigorously.

Catkins are starting to come out, and I noticed a few leaves on several bushes... I find that smaller bushes often start first, and then you get a progression. In our garden, the hawthorn and elder are the last of the main tree flowers. 

I am looking forward to the pear blossom, it won’t be long now.

There are rumours of bad weather appearing in the weather forecast... and we had a hard frost yesterday. So maybe winter hasn’t finished with us yet. But hope springs eternal.

So... what have I been doing?  Apart from cut grass, there have been ample weeding opportunities to be had for all. And of course you might have noticed it has been change central on the blog. It took me a while to get it sorted out... I am not good at graphics programs. But I hope that at least everything is easy to read.

Starting a new blog is always a strange experience... I noticed that we have only just been indexed by Google, and it hasn’t adjusted to our posting schedule yet. Which, admittedly, is because it has been a little random.  I hope that it starts to crawl the site more regularly.

But, even if it doesn’t I know that every post I write is another seed in the ground...

Oh, did I mention another cool thing? The rhubarb is coming up... now I have to decide whether to force or not. In fact, i think I won’t force it. We grew the bed from seed... which is unusual. The best way to do it is to buy a plant from a garden centre. But, we wanted to see if the old fashioned ways work. Well... yes they do, but it is slower, and the plants take longer to establish. I get the impression we planted them in the wrong place too, they needed a bit more shade.

Sometimes gardens are like that, you make a few minor mistakes... but everything is a learning experience.

Up the Garden Path – the gardeners new year – weeding - objectives

Today is a cloudy day. The first day of spring, by tradition. In a few days the clocks will be changing, and there are now a lot of crocuses out in flower. Every single plant is starting to come alive. We have had the long days of winter, with three foot of snow, and there is the hope of a new year.

Some people thing that the new year starts on January the first.

But for a gardener, today is the start of the year. Already, the first weeds are thrusting out of the soil, demented evil glowing from them, as they plan an evil rampage against the forces of good. And, although the soil is not yet workable...

This is it.

The start of the new gardening year.

And with it, the start of a new gardening blog which I hope will be a hardy perennial, going deep into the soil, and bringing up nutrients. But, maybe not. This blog will be a gardening blog, covering all kinds of details about my life and times in gardening.

One spade at a time.

Today will be the first time in a week that I have had the chance to get weeding. I find weeding at this time of year – in spring – more difficult than any other time of year. It is hard to recognise what is weed and what is plant.  Most of the garden is covered in the debre of winter too... old leaves, bits of string, stalks left on to keep plants warm over winter. So it is bleak in some ways.

But full of hope too. Because at this time of year, you really do see the gardens heart and soul. It is time for some serious work too. Just to get it into order so that you can see the very best of the plants available.

And so, my mind wanders a little, and I consider what I need to do for the following month.

I think the aim is to start the weeding process off, this month. We need to get entire beds weed free and happy. At the moment the weeds are winning just like they do normally at this time of year. So that is this months objective... weeding. That is all. It is too soon yet to do the vegetable planting or sowing of seeds, which I am thinking about.

So how do I go about weeding? There is a difference here between annual and perennial weeds. With annual weeds, I just decapitate at this point in the year. The perennial weeds are more of a problem, and you try to dig out as much of the root as you can. But sometimes that doesn’t work. All you can do is try to get everything.

In the meantime, I’m watching a little blackbird from the window of this room, looking at the garden lawn. The year is good. There is hope. It is time to add some action to that hope, so I will see you again... tomorrow.