The postman brought us a letter that wasn't for us. It had a postcode on it, not ours, and the name of a road, not the road where we live. The only detail that matched our address was that the house had the same name. I was irritated enough to find a post office website where I could register an official complaint. It happens too often, that we get mail that is clearly addressed to the neighbours, or mail addressed to any other house called the same as ours in the CO postcode area. It is difficult, philosophically speaking, to know what mail we haven't received. I'm currently short two sets of concert tickets, and hoping the LSO really will sort that out on the door as easily as they say they can, and have previously missed a monthly subscription magazine (though to even things out the postman has in the past brought me two of those addressed to other people), but who knows which of my friends, relatives or acquaintances I've offended by failing to reply to something they sent me, which I never received? From now on I am going to complain every time, and if I don't get satisfaction there's always the nuclear option of contacting You and Yours.
Apart from that it was a very beautiful day. The Systems Administrator hadn't heard of Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds, or Beyond The Tower, John Marriott's history of East London (the latter was something of a joint present, but it's traditional we give each other at least one book we want to read ourselves. Anyway, it gives us something to talk about) and seemed pleased with both. Target Tirpitz had featured on the radar, but not to the extent of buying it yet, so that was a mixture of something already on the SA's wish list, and some total surprises. I still think Amazon's search algorithms are marvellous, and the reader comments give a fair idea what a book is like, even if you don't agree with their conclusions. If I had gone into the best independent bookshop in Britain and said that I wanted books for somebody who was interested in cricket, railway history, the visual imagery of twentieth century soviet Russia, the history of London and the second world war, I don't see how they could have come up with recommendations for all of them off the top of their heads. Suggesting the latest Max Hastings doesn't count.
There are so many jobs needing doing in the garden, it was a toss-up where to start, but I settled on Strulching the borders where the bulb foliage is lengthening by the day, while it was still upright enough for me to shake the mulch down between the leaves. I've used nearly six of my 25 bags on the last pallet in two days, which makes me wonder if I should have gone for 50 bags and got a cheaper price per bag. However, when I come to the end of the areas I've recently weeded the rate of application will slow, and the Strulch gradually goes damp and rather solid in its bags if not stored under cover (and I don't have anywhere) and is easier to apply when dry. Also, the bulk bags physically degrade over time. I discovered this empirically when I was using the last of my previous order, which had hung around the end of the house for months. As I dragged it down the stairs by the conservatory the bag disintegrated spectacularly, spilling damp mineralised straw over the steps and my feet.
The Systems Administrator celebrated the beautiful day by letting the chickens out for a yomp in the afternoon. The new little hens didn't want to come out of their run, but as soon as the older hen and the rooster saw the chicken gates go across the way up to the meadow and the back garden, which are there to encourage them to stay in the front garden and make the chicken minder's life easier, they went running to the outside door of the run, ready for their turn in the garden. They haven't been let out since late November, and I could work out the date because it was the day I got the rose thorn in my knuckle. After that it got too cold to sit with them, and then we were both ill, and couldn't face minding them. Today they were very happy, and fussed about the herb bed plucking beakfuls of greenery. We had to buy some eggs, me for my lunch party and the SA for Cheltenham week cooked breakfasts, and the bought ones are anaemic looking things with pale yellow yolks, compared to those produced by our own hens. With fresh parsley and lemon balm in their diet the eggs should now be even better.
Showing posts with label Strulch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strulch. Show all posts
Friday, 23 March 2012
Saturday, 28 May 2011
watering and weeding
I ended up spending today working in the top part of the garden. I had a few plants sitting in their plastic pots that would have been better off in the ground, and their intended site was ready for them, so it seemed sensible to get on and plant them. I had promised that I would start clearing the nettles and weeds in the bottom part of the garden where we are supposed to be building a new deck to make a sheltered, shady place to sit in the summer, but the work in the front took all day. Things planted this spring needed watering, as did things planted last autumn, and some planted longer ago than that.
The Strulch has been proving its worth, as there was a marked contrast in weediness between the areas I'd mulched (a few odd weeds) and the areas left bare pending further planting (a generous crop of groundsel, and sundry fat hen, chickweed, and sow thistle). I pulled these up, and planted the buckets of Muscari armenaicum bulbs that have been sitting in the woodshed since I dug them up a couple of months ago when I was forking the bed over. Some people hate this grape hyacinth, because it is weedy and ineradicable and spreads like hell, but I don't mind it spreading. It is pretty, and this is a self-seeding sort of garden anyway, and frankly I'm grateful to anything that really wants to grow and flower in the arid sand at the top of the slope (apart from the creeping sorrel). I strulched the gaps to avoid a fresh crop of weeds, and will push the mulch aside when I come to plant them up.
The olive tree still shows no signs of making new leaves, but is green under the bark, and has about two green leaves hanging on in the middle. I'll tidy up the thin twigs at some point soon which I'm sure are dead, but I cling to hope that there might be life further down. I have run the hose on it a couple of times. Something that has pleasantly surprised me by shooting from the base is the Colletia paradoxa. This is a strange shrub. The branchlets are reduced to flat, extremely sharp, triangular spines. The plant is greyish green, and carries sweetly scented small white flowers in autumn. Hillier's manual of trees and shrubs describes it as being rather slow growing, and it is, although mine speeded up appreciably after being put on a diet of 6X, fish blood and bone, and very occassional irrigation in dry spells, which make me think that despite its gaunt appearance it enjoys good living. By the end of winter the whole plant was burned and brown, and I though I had lost it, but today I found green shoots coming from below soil level. They were a fresh shade of green with little leaves, not very like the mature branches, and at first I wondered if they were some new weed, but identical shoots were growing from the base of the stem, just above ground level, so unless the plant was originally grafted, which I don't think it was, these must be the immature shoots. I haven't chopped off the dead top yet, partly because I was busy doing other things, and partly to protect the new shoots from accidents, principally me treading on them. The frail new shoots of a white Lespedeza, that had made it up to a few cm tall, seem to have disappeared without trace in the droughty vastness.
The wind had got quite a nip in it when the sun went in, and I stomped around the hall, garage and greenhouse searching for my fleece hat, and worrying that I must have left it in the garden somewhere, before finding it in the kitchen full of lumps of white quartz that I carried up from the conservatory in it about two weeks ago in order to wash them. It is fortunate that I share a house with somebody who thinks it's OK to keep a hat full of stones on the kitchen worktop for a fortnight.
The Strulch has been proving its worth, as there was a marked contrast in weediness between the areas I'd mulched (a few odd weeds) and the areas left bare pending further planting (a generous crop of groundsel, and sundry fat hen, chickweed, and sow thistle). I pulled these up, and planted the buckets of Muscari armenaicum bulbs that have been sitting in the woodshed since I dug them up a couple of months ago when I was forking the bed over. Some people hate this grape hyacinth, because it is weedy and ineradicable and spreads like hell, but I don't mind it spreading. It is pretty, and this is a self-seeding sort of garden anyway, and frankly I'm grateful to anything that really wants to grow and flower in the arid sand at the top of the slope (apart from the creeping sorrel). I strulched the gaps to avoid a fresh crop of weeds, and will push the mulch aside when I come to plant them up.
The olive tree still shows no signs of making new leaves, but is green under the bark, and has about two green leaves hanging on in the middle. I'll tidy up the thin twigs at some point soon which I'm sure are dead, but I cling to hope that there might be life further down. I have run the hose on it a couple of times. Something that has pleasantly surprised me by shooting from the base is the Colletia paradoxa. This is a strange shrub. The branchlets are reduced to flat, extremely sharp, triangular spines. The plant is greyish green, and carries sweetly scented small white flowers in autumn. Hillier's manual of trees and shrubs describes it as being rather slow growing, and it is, although mine speeded up appreciably after being put on a diet of 6X, fish blood and bone, and very occassional irrigation in dry spells, which make me think that despite its gaunt appearance it enjoys good living. By the end of winter the whole plant was burned and brown, and I though I had lost it, but today I found green shoots coming from below soil level. They were a fresh shade of green with little leaves, not very like the mature branches, and at first I wondered if they were some new weed, but identical shoots were growing from the base of the stem, just above ground level, so unless the plant was originally grafted, which I don't think it was, these must be the immature shoots. I haven't chopped off the dead top yet, partly because I was busy doing other things, and partly to protect the new shoots from accidents, principally me treading on them. The frail new shoots of a white Lespedeza, that had made it up to a few cm tall, seem to have disappeared without trace in the droughty vastness.
The wind had got quite a nip in it when the sun went in, and I stomped around the hall, garage and greenhouse searching for my fleece hat, and worrying that I must have left it in the garden somewhere, before finding it in the kitchen full of lumps of white quartz that I carried up from the conservatory in it about two weeks ago in order to wash them. It is fortunate that I share a house with somebody who thinks it's OK to keep a hat full of stones on the kitchen worktop for a fortnight.
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