How does your garden grow?

[Sits]

Look at my new boy racer toy!

Not bad, but I was cutting my teeth on an ATCO in the seventies:

[Sits]

Actually it was crap, the fully charged battery wouldn’t make it round Dad’s lawn.

[slackster]

Ha ha. The ATCO brand has been around yonks. There’s YouTube videos of people trying to spark up ancient models...

Meanwhile, in actual plant news, I came across a patch of these in boggy ground near a sloping ditch:


Quite attractive, I thought. Bit like a lily, I thought. Then I looked it up and saw that it’s Skunk Cabbage (thanks, America), a highly invasive and unwanted super-spreader that crowds out native bog plants and, er, stinks.

It can stay there for now as I’ve loads to be getting on with, but now I’ve clocked it, its days are numbered.

Keeping an eye out for other problem plants, too. No sign of knotweed or marestail yet, but a patch of young hogweed has emerged on a path, so that’ll have to be carefully blitzed before it gets to highly toxic giant-size . No doubt the usual ground elder and bindweed will be out soon and need sorting, and the type of bamboo that spreads by runners will require a good seeing to along with most of the brambles (leaving some patches for wildlife and berries).

Also did a closer recce of the woodland trees. Only a couple look dead/diseases, but there’s lot’s of Ash in there, which might be a (costly) worry if the dieback fungus rips through (The Council are currently felling all affected Ash trees on the A40 verges round here - it’s a huge and expensive operation).

[Sits]

Those look like our lettuces.

[slackster]

Spent a few hours hoeing off the hundreds of giant hogweed menace youngsters (that had grown from baby gem lettuce to oversized Savoy cabbage size in just a few days), and was just about to put this to the sword, when I realised it was emerging Gunnera:

[slackster]

A satisfying but stinky day sparking up 8 big bonfires with all the brambles, fallen branches and other debris.

From this


To this


Clothes all in the wash now. Smelt like I’d had a session in a 70s pub....

[slackster]

We have got a nice carpet of “Glory of the Snow”, a perennial I’ve not seen before.

[Levin]

Ah, I was feeling quite pleased for weeding between the slabs in my fully paved 6x6m back yard. And I planted some sweet peas and sunflowers.

[S. aureus]

Slackster, earlier today;

[slackster]

I real rotten job today: clearing grass clumps and assorted weeds, that have taken root over the last 5 (unoccupied) years, from the driveway, which is composed of small (10mm) black granite/basalt stones. Hunched over and down on the knees for hours, prising the obstinate little blighters out. At least another day’s worth of this to go...but I’m not sure my back or mental health can face it tomorrow.

[Sporting]

Take the day off, mate.

[DPDPDPDP]

The blossoms putting on a majestic show a couple of weeks ago.

[DPDPDPDP]

Pots strategically placed so that daffs and tulips can be sent by looking out the window in the front door. Always cheers me up when I look out. Since the photo was taken last week more pink tulips have come through.

[Wouter D]

Our front yard cherry trees are declaring that Spring has begun.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Four years back I planted a few Miniature Pansies under our (now deceased Japanese Maple) in a front bed. One or two have come up every year since, but this years the little buggers are out in force. Scores of them. At the rate they're going they'll fill almost the entire 10' diameter area. I've done nothing to encourage this florescence, aside from replacing the Maple with a Persian Ironwood sapling. There's a bit more light I guess so maybe that's it, but the bed has South and East exposure so never lacked sun. I don't understand plants at all, we're just not on the same wavelength.

[Gangster Octopus]

the entire 10' diameter area.

Are you allowed to use feet in Canada?

[ursus arctos]

[Amor de Cosmos]

Are you allowed to use feet in Canada?

If you're over sixty. But people under forty have no idea what you're talking about.

[slackster]

Bluebells breaking into a flower carpet in our sloping woodland


Thrilled to see a few Blue Butcher orchids dotted along our lower woodland path

[Nefertiti2]

Are you allowed to use feet in Canada?

you have to use one of those new fangled electric scooters. Or a snowmobile in the winter.

[slackster]

Having completed the first fix clearance of paths, removing the brambles and clearing up the larger items of debris, now turned my attention to deweeding the borders surfaces. Lots of ivy runners and the usual array of unwanted weeds and nettles that are motoring away again. Won’t be giving the soil a proper digging over just yet, cos I want to see what other perennials might pop their heads up over summer - though I suspect the answer will be not many. Too many invasive undesirables will have crowded them out, especially the thuggish pendulous sedge that’s seeded itself all over the place.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

We did a night ramble in our garden last night, and found three adult chameleons (one looking heavily pregnant) in our coffee plants - and four newly hatched baby chameleons. It was a cool ramble. That's not my finger.

[Sits]

That’s lovely VT.

[lambers]

Delayed a few weeks due to incessant rain, but we've finally finished our tidy up of the right-side of the garden, from open patch of ground to raised veg beds with weed control around them.

Still to do: cut back the bloody great shrub that's threatening to invade the patio; and move the orange flowers that are creeping across the path.

[Sits]

Very nice.