Is this beginning to look like a garden?
Renovation has been proceeding at a slow pace since January, partly because I have had a heavy workload in my paid jobs, and partly because there’s not much left to do. The garden, however, has been setting its own pace. This is what the newly sown lawn looks like now:
Diagonal Lawn
The lawn still has bare patches in it, partly because of animals digging it up in the night, and partly because of the stupid lawn seed packet which quoted a coverage for reseeding over an existing lawn, rather than for making a lawn from scratch. But it’s coming along.
This is the right hand side of the garden. I haven’t finished the planting, but the things I planted in March are establishing well. The big test of the alpines will be how they do over winter – whether it will be too wet for them. The stepping stones are splattered with soil thrown up by a female blackbird digging for worms. As I’d hoped, I get to see a lot of birds visiting the octagonal pond while I’m doing the washing up.
Right hand side
Here are the raised and shallow ponds. Neither is having much trouble with green slime. They have both been given watercress and a barley log. The octagonal pond, which has just had a barley log and no watercress, has lots of green slime. Given that the watercress didn’t do anything helpful before I put the barley logs in, this suggests that both measures are needed. Or alternatively, that watercress would work on its own if I put more in, or barley logs would work on their own if I put more in, or that whichever measure I apply needs to be given more time to do the job. Whatever. I’m just glad that 67% of my ponds are slime-free at the moment.
Raised and shallow ponds
The left hand side of the garden is getting very enthusiastic. Perhaps too enthusiastic.
Left hand side
And finally, Percy is flowering his heart out. I’m not sure that a creamy-beige flowered rhododendron is such a good idea because that’s the colour my very early-flowering rhododendron goes when the frost gets it. But full marks to Percy for effort and flamboyance.
Rhododendron Percy Wiseman