Erm....Oooops!

Erm.....oooops indeed. I'm not quite sure where the summer went, except in a frenzy of gardening, but I certainly didn't quite get round to blogging - but here we are now, ready for another except from the delayed tales of how to build a Japanese garden!

Some of you with sharp eyes and long memories might remember that in the early days of the garden, oh so long ago now, there was a fruit cage behind the the tea house....frequently complete with a football care of the son of Mrs. AnotherBloodyEyesore! This photo is from May 2011 - oh how things change! ;-)

Anyway, that summer we had Big Bud Mite on the blackcurrant bushes in the cage and the only rememdy was to dig the fruit bushes up and burn them ...incurring the wrath of Mrs. A.B.E yet again because she had some laundry out! BUT given that my magic eyes aren't quite strong enough to see through a 6ft high, 3ft wide thick holly boundary hedge and it appears that she always has laundry out so that she has an excuse to shout at people, it was a risk I had to take! 

Anyway, I burnt the bushes, survived the verbal mauling from our delightful neighbour and resisted the urge to get drawn into pointing out how often their footballs had damaged our plants, landed in the pond, nearly hit us on the head, etc.etc.etc before realising that I couldn't replant new bushes in the same place in case of recontamination from mites in the soil. 

Relocating the fruit cage meant that suddenly there would soon be all this unclaimed land up for grabs! .....Now what could I possibly do with that eh?!

I have to confess that I was never particularly happy with having the fruit cage directly behind the tea house as I felt it detracted from Himself's work of art, but as the fruit cage was there first, I'd never come up with a strong enough reason to shift it - until now!

But it was summer and the redcurrant and gooseberry bushes were still in fruit so moving the cage had to be an autumn job if we didn't want the birds, squirrels, foxes and badgers to get to the fruit before we did! However, having got rid of the blackcurrant bushes, there was space inside the cage to work! I laid out my trusty bit of old hosepipe to form the route for a new path I'd envisaged and Himself kindly offered to dig it for me - and who was I to refuse?!

 It was hot, hard work ...glad it wasn't me that was digging! I was nice - I kept the pints of water coming!

Once the path was dug to a  depth suitable for motorway foundations, Himself raided our sandstone store up the garden (which was created with what we'd dug out of the pond years ago!) and used that as hardcore foundations. I got him to pile all the topsoil up to create a 'mountain' for the path to curve round and to give that very flat area some topological interest (Ooh er, there's posh!)

 The mountain in the background.

And, as usual, the new bit stayed like that for quite some time! Well, actually, that's not quite true! Being me, I couldn't resist a bit of instant gardening, so I pinched various grasses and ferns from other parts of the garden to use purely as temporary fillers, planted the Killmarnock Willow that our lovely neighbour, Tony, had bought us as a Silver Wedding anniversary present.......

Found a few Hebes going for a song on the 'Rescue' table at the local nursery....unlike the Twisted Beech, which was also at the local nursery, but wasn't exactly going for a song!

I then bought some Irish Moss as ground cover.

And I left it to get on with its own devices for 3 years until this spring!

I wanted to join up the now-not-so-new path to the veranda, so Himself had to move the huge rock that had acted as a retaining rock when the fruit cage had been behind the tea house, from its original upright position to a horizontal position to make a step from the veranda to the path.....no mean feat given the size and weight of the rock and we bent the scaffold pole lever - again!

 You can see here that the grasses have become too dominant and need to be moved - fortunately I appear to have got myself involved in the after-school gardening club at one of the primary schools we teach tai chi at, so the grasses have found a new home as part of the redesign of their raised beds in the playground ....quite useful that I was doing the redesign really! ;-)

Anyway, the next few photos were taken yesterday - and our trusty bent scaffold pole makes a very good netting support to keep the leaves out of the pond. A bit over-engineered (as ever!), but it keeps Himself happy!

The grasses have gone, the hebes have grown, box balls have found a new home and the Irish moss, which worked well in the very wet summer of 2012, didn't like the direct sunlight of 2013 and died, so has been replaced by a creeping ground cover that I don't know the name of and don't have a photo of either!

I've finally made a start on doing the path edgings - bought a load of old  roof tiles from the local reclaim yard for 35 pence each - bargain! The path, which will soon be covered in weed repellant matting and a thick layer of pea gravel to match the other paths, now joins the veranda step at one end.....

goes up to curve round past the twisted beech on the mountain.....

and has currently got as far as my lovely Buddha statue, which was a Christmas present from our best friends - they know me so well!

There is still a way to go yet though - but I'm hoping to get it finished off during the half term holiday next week if the weather is kind to me!

The sharp-eyed amongst you may have spotted a certain final bit of annexation! There was a metre (or so) beyond the back wall of the fruit cage that went up as far as the concrete path just behind the maple tree. This area was originally planted up with rhubarb and blackberries which appear to have moved themselves to the other side of the garden to be with the rest of the soft fruit ;-P

Various other bamboos, cornus, pieris, hebes and an acer have somehow appeared in the empty soil ...don't know how it happened! 

I have now had very strict instructions from Himself that I am not allowed to annexe any more of the garden :-D

*Happy Dance* Time

YAY! At last!
After one of the weirdest, mildest winters in ages - and a vastly different one to last year, we've finally got some snow! It was a bitterly cold minus 9 yesterday morning and the snow arrived bang on the time predicted by the weathermen....so they can get it right sometimes then!

Whilst my inner 8 year old was doing the Happy Dance, Nala the kitten was slightly less impressed with her first foray into the big white world!

Sedum heads

A splash of colour from the Cornus

My solar powered Japanese lanterns won't be doing a lot tonight :P

This red bush Acer seemed so much more vibrant this morning than it looks in the photo.

Ceefer cat (who's cool about the snow) inspecting the Acer in the Japanese Garden.

The Tea House and top pond

As I had recently spotted a couple of fish that the heron must have missed, Himself decided to gently break the ice on the pond for them. A fox had had a wander across the pond in the night!

Are you dancing happy?! :D

A quick Autumnal hotchpotch!

It's a jolly good job that I've got that 'Slow Blogger' label on my sidebar or I'd be chucked out of here for my lack of posts of late! Anyway, here's a quick roundup of what's going on in the garden at the moment......

Kale, spinach and rainbow chard are going at full pelt at the moment ...but the salad behind them has bolted somewhat!

No idea what sort of squashes these are as the foxes or badgers broke and nicked the labels when they ate the sweetcorn :(

Yesterday's pick of the crop - and, yes, we have still got a few Autumn raspberries left, but that's the last of the flagelot beans.

The sedum is lovely this year.

A closer look.

One of the Acers in the Japanese garden is begining to turn. It'll be a stunning deep red in about 2 more weeks.

No-one told my new water lily (Nymphaea 'Denver') that it shouldn't be flowering at this time of year. I guess the recent very warm weather confused it!

There are lots of berries everywhere this year - is this a harbinger of another hard winter?


The next post will be interesting - I hope! It's going to be a book review on a new wild flowers book that comes out next month......! :D

Acer, Acer Baby!

Good grief but I detest that irritating ridiculous Halifax Bank advert and the way the tune sticks in my head!
Anyway, moving swiftly on...... I had a very convivial dinner (or lunch as some people prefer to call it!) at the Fat Cat Pub in Sheffield on Friday with Woody and Wilma Woodbury from Allotment 81 (which, if you've not come across it before, is a great read as Woody has a smashing sense of humour!). I've met up with Woody before and thoroughly enjoyed his company, but this was the first time I'd had chance to meet Wilma, who was equally as congenial as Woody. I really enjoyed our meal and conversations, all washed down with a very pleasant half of Pale Rider. Pale Rider Bitter is an extremely good real ale from the Kelham Island Brewery, which is conveniently located next door to the Fat Cat!

Anyway, the reason behind my tale of beer, food and convivial conversation is that as I was driving home along the dual carriageway between Sheffield and Chesterfield I was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of the autumnal colours in the trees. Kicking myself for not having my camera with me, and not sure quite how well "I stopped to take a photo with my phone because the trees were so pretty officer" would go down with the local constabulary, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and I continued homeward to survey my own trees on more legal ground!

My Acers are stunning this year - but it's a lot more by luck than good judgement that they all put their autumn coats on at slightly different times and give us ongoing sparks of colour for about 6-8 weeks!

A. palmatum 'Ornatum'

...which purred as I came up close to it! Odd! Plants don't usually purr....

......except when next door's cat is nestled under it!

I love the way this one is growing to hang slightly over the rock in front of it. (and to give a cat a cosy place to hide!) The radience of the red leaves stands out like a beacon and draws the eye to it from the house. In spring and summer it is a duller deep bronze colour but really comes into its own in the brief flurry of autumn.

A. 'Emerald Lace'.

I love the elongated shape of this one as it mirrors the path alongside it - good planning there I thought! :D It'll get to around one and a half metres tall, which is perfect for walking under along the path but not too tall that it'd dominate the garden.

It's underplanted with Camomile and Ophopogon 'Nigrescens' for textural and colour contrast, plus the camomile will spread as gorgeous, scented ground cover.

A.Conspicuum 'Red Flamingo'

- a striking snakebark maple in shrub form. The red of its bark is quite luminous with the sun on it. New leaves are pink, moving through red to green to brown as the year progresses. This one is next to the top pond so we often benefit from its reflection as well.

A. palmatum 'Kotohime'.

It reminds me of a Triffid for some reason! It didn't photograph well as a whole bush because it's at the back of the Japanese garden up by the fruit cage, so the background behind it was just too busy. Up close and personal you can see that it's begining to change colour.

A. palmatum 'Seiryu'.

This one is the most vibrant green of all the Acers in summer, but will turn fully into red over the coming week. It nestles comfortably under the old flowering cherry outside the tea house and will be lovely to walk under along the stepping stone path down that bed once it gets a bit bigger.

A. palmatum 'Shin Deshojo'.

I moved this one this spring from further down the garden where some idiot (that'd be me then!) had planted it under a Weigela a few years ago. It was loosing the battle for light and not growing well. It's been a lot happier in its new position.

This one is at its best in spring when its leaves are a vivid scarlet, fading to bronzey-scarlet in summer then turning to the plummy-golden tones you can see begining here.

Right. Acer tutorial over - I'm so glad I kept those labels :)

Here are just a few photos of what's going on in the rest of the garden.....

Windfalls of cooking apples.

Heuchera 'Creme Caramel'

The cherry tree we planted in spring.

Yes ..... I know I should have netted the pond by now!

And a final view of the top pond.

Happy autumn.