Regular readers of this blog will know all about my overgrown garden - the result of buying a seriously neglected wreck house.  Estate agents call this sort of thing a “project” - a very optimistic-sounding word which, loosely translated, means months of mayhem, mess, disaster and distress.  Oh and with lots of  spending thrown in! Yeah, it’s been a project all right. 

conifers

Recently, 34 overgrown conifers were chopped down.  They formed a 40′ tall barrier at the back of the house, ensuring that any winter sun ( a rarity at the best of times) did not show its face in our garden.  At all. There’s not much point in a south-facing garden when there’s something very tall in between the garden and the sun.

It was with mixed feelings I viewed the aftermath. It’s always sad to chop a tree down, let alone 34 of them.  Even if they are conifers, the Gardener’s World version of the thug. And what blocked sunlight also blocked neighbours’ views of our garden - so the garden is slightly less private now.  Not to worry, it’ll only take maybe 5 or 6 years to grow some shrubbery in place of the conifers!

The other thing that bothered me was this: I didn’t notice any nests in the trees and nor did the men who cut them down.  But after they’d gone, we noticed on the lawn two tiny eggs, sadly broken, and with baby birds, fully formed, inside them.  It was so sad - and I was so upset that we hadn’t seen their nest - by now lying on the lawn too.

pigeons

Last week I was slightly heartened to see the pair of pigeons that had been hanging around looking all forlorn in the nearby leafless plum tree had started building a new nest in the conifer we decided to save - just in front of the condemned conifer which probably contained the nest.  We hadn’t seen the nest because the tree in question was surrounded by other trees on three sides (the fourth side side being the garden border).

I hope the birds will be safe in their new home - I will be looking out for the young pigeons.

The wood from the conifers is still in the garden.

pile of conifers

I didn’t want it all to be wasted - nor to pay a ludicrous sum for the privilege of wasting it.  I wasn’t too happy that the tree-cutters weren’t really very particular about where they dumped the trunks and branches.  This poor baby cherry tree suffered quite a bit.  Buried under conifer trunks, branches and greenery for weeks, I rescued it yesterday.  It will survive

battered baby cherry tree

I’ve been wielding my chainsaw (oh yes, be afraid!!) and managed to cut up lots of the bits of felled trees into logs. 

log pile

I’m hoping to install a woodburner in the studio - there’s got to be at least one winter’s free fuel in various piles around here!  At the moment, there’s just an electric fan heater in the studio: woefully inadequate and frighteningly expensive to run, although I was very glad of it on many a winter’s morning this year.  That and my fingerless gloves, hot drinks and fur-lined boots were what kept me going on those cold, icy days.

For now though, it’s so lovely to be able work in a garden studio when the sun is shining and the doors can be flung open.  A privilege indeed.

What’s happened with the weather?  It’s been glorious these past few days, and I woke up this morning to hear the rain pouring down! 

I took a few pics of the garden yesterday.  Remember, we only moved into this house in March.  The garden was a bit of a jungle (still is, in places)… anyway, here’s the tour!!

baby courgette plants

I made the raised bed for the courgettes from various bits of a felled tree.  Worked pretty well, I thought.

onions in a raised bed

The rased bed for the onions is a folding frame which I found outside our front door when we moved in.  Not sure what its original purpose was, but it works really well as a raised bed.  There are four of them, here’s another housing the potatoes:

potatoes in rased bed

Surrounding the raised beds is an area which was a bit wild - well-established ivy vying for ground space with healthy-looking weeds and dozens of stray cherry tree suckers.  I pulled out what I could, given my limited timescale, and covered the lot with cardboard (we had plenty of it, having just moved in!).

The worms apparently love cardboard, and I’ve used this method of weed suppression before.  It has the advantages of being easy, cheap and environmentally-friendly.  The cardboard will have rotted away in about 12 months, and will improve the soil structure as it does so.  If I get round to it, I will add shredded twigs on top of the cardboard (and there are lots of twigs and leaves under the cardboard too).  The only disadvantages to the cardboard method is the lack of visual appeal.  it does end up looking a bit like an allotment, but it is temporary.  And the autumn leaves will cover it later in the year if I don’t beat them to it with my shredded twigs.

We found a few gems hidden in the garden, such as:

a plum tree

this plum tree, which is laden with baby plums.  There looks to be more plums than one family can reasonably manage to eat, so apart from plums at beakfast, dinner and tea, I think I’ll be looking up recipes for jams and chutneys.  Yum.

There was also:

a pear tree

this pear tree, with lots of tiny baby pears.  I thought it was an apple tree to begin with, but if it is then they are very odd-shaped apples!!  There’s also an apple tree, but it’s looking a bit poorly and doesn’t have much fruit on it.

Before you get jealous of my lovely garden, let me just show you that everything in the garden is not coming up roses:

the nettle patch

Yes, we have a flourishing nettle patch.  I think I may have to look up a recipe for nettle soup, although if I tell Mr 1st Unique that’s what we’re having for tea, he may well decide to go off and find somewhere else to live.  But, hey, credit crunch and all that!  Surely it has to be worth a try?  I think I’d have to call it something more attractive than nettle soup!!

Oh, and look here http://www.nettles.org.uk/ - we’ve just missed “Be nice to nettles week”.  There’s a recipe for nettle soup, too, but it needs half a pound of nettles.  My God, that’s a lot, even for my garden!!

Back to work!!