It’s been a while, but things have been changing in the garden, so although this blog has been neglected, our little patch most certainly hasn’t. There’s a new shed base, new path, and we’ve done some weeding. We’re very happy to have got everything done as we have a new arrival – baby Thomas was born a week ago today! Here are some photos to enjoy…
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The arrival of the chickens and establishment of a pond have dominated activity in the garden of late. We’ve had some useful crops from the raised beds: a few toms; potatoes, onions, peas and loads of courgettes. We’ve even managed to get a few baby sweetcorn grown. Unfortunately the cabbages and sprouts have been decimated by hungry caterpillars! Hey-ho, plenty to go around!
But Summer is cooling off, and hols are over with money paying work starting up again so the window for further garden activities is closing. Phase 3 of SLUG consists of getting a main gravel path installed, and then raising the shed – a monster job that I’m not looking forward to! But beyond that there’s not a huge amount left to do. Further work on Lyn’s secret garden is required, so that will be a lovely job picking out some pleasant scented plants for that area. We sat in the secret garden on Sunday morning/afternoon and it gets an excellent dose of sunshine at this time of year even though it seems to be surrounded on all sides by tall things – great for hiding from curtain twitchers.
The hens (residents of what has now been dubbed ‘Henmore Lodge’) have been roaming free range under supervision and they’re all getting on with Toby. All is great.
Trudy had a cough so she has gone back to be looked after properly. Welcome to Rhoda (rhode island red), the new addition to the flock. Hannah is now called Mabel. They all seem to like the run, and they’ve started to eat sweetcorn from Lyn’s hand. Super! The Urban Hen Keeper project will be keeping track of the chicken’s progress.
It’s so sunny today I thought I’d just go out to take a couple of photos of the pond. It’s now really getting established and we have all sorts of wildlife in there. Plenty of pond beetles, skaters and a mysterious inch-long fish-like tadpole thing. We’ve only seen it the once, so it will be interesting to see if it turns into a frog or newt.
We’ve spent the last few days mostly in the garden sawing up wood under the budget gazebo. No, I’ve not gone into business as a joiner, we’ve been building a chicken run, and today it opened its doors to its first residents. Lyn has been hankering after some chucks for some time, and having persuaded me by pitching the fantastic ‘eglu‘ – design brilliance IMO – construction finally began on Tuesday. Luckily we had the gazebo up during the many showers and one thunderstorm of the past week, but its meant we’ve got it done. We’ve been to a lady in Kirkby Stephen this morning to pick up three 20 week old hens – Trudy, Hannah and Beatrix. Pics below telling the tale of the construction, and of the hens here. Eggs due in the next few weeks with a bit of luck!
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Doubled up a weekend pond digging party with Eurovision. (Lyn had £2 on Germany – £7.50 return would have been superb if she hadn’t also had £2 on Norway, Belgium and some other random east european country) Anyway, Des and Steve were over for the Saturday morning equipped with spades whilst the wags went to Workington to get Helen’s wedding dress. Lots of pictures here, but you get the idea. We had the hole dug out by half 9 in the morning. Thanks to Dawn for the underlay/carpet for protecting the pond liner from sharp stuff! It took a bit longer to fill it and would have taken forever had we gone with my ‘Plan A’ of filling it using watering cans (we don’t have an outdoor tap). But half a roll of gaffer tape later and we’d got the hose hooked up to the kitchen faucet and were off. Added some pond plants kindly donated from the Lawton pond and even spotted the first residents – some sort of little beetle, a skating thing and a leech. Nice.
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Thankfully there are no photos of us dancing to the Greek’s Eurovision entry later on in the evening. OPA!!!!
Busy busy busy. We’ve spent quite a bit of time dodging rain showers (hail at one point) construting more formwork this weekend, filling it all in with the rest of the bark chippings. Water butt has gone in, built a trough for the herbs, stuck up trellises, and sorted the strawberry patch. Loads of photos… and apparently Toby does like the bark chippings. No number twos in there so far though!!!
