Green, Green, Grass............. not!

My nice neighbour had her lawn treated yesterday, aerated, scarified and fed. Now her lawn is huge, I mean extremely large and the price she was quoted was impressive, so I got the man to pop round and look at our weed patch. He quoted a not bad price so we got it done and this is what it looks like now!




This is all done, scarified aerated etc. It looks alot worse than it is, but will be beautiful, he promised!!




He will call four times a year, at £15 a shot and treat, weed, feed, scarify and reseed if necessary, so hopefully in the end we will have a lawn to be proud of and that should look good, should we ever sell!!!

I have been quite busy in the garden, the fence panels are painted,



the bottom bed is dug



and all is tulips in the garden!



and even better hubby has a weeks holiday next week so I shall have some help as yet again my back is playing up!!

Up & Down the Garden!

On the north side of the house spring is finally springing! This is one of K's pots and to be honest the photo does not do it justice, it is gorgeous!



This is one of my large leaved buys from last year which has come through the winter raring to go. Sorry the name has slipped my mind!!



My window box looking a bit better than last time I showed you!!




The tulip pots have once again excelled themselves...



The view down the garden!



The small greenhouse is bursting at the seems with seed trays full of tomatoes, chillis, peppers, cucumbers, aubergines, peas, french beans and bags of potatoes plus a few of my exotics which need heat mats! I shall have to wrap them all up tonight as a frost has been forecast!










The flower bed at the bottom of the garden needs a total makeover, but I am reluctant to 'have a go' as my back is still not up to major digging! I may very well have to get someone in, which I am also reluctant to do, as they may just dig everything up!!!! Maybe I could persuade K to come back for a workout one weekend!!!!




The bamboo is sending up lots of culms. I shall have to dig up this pot (well hubby will) and pop the bamboo in a large one.



I love the bamboos, never used to but do now!

Sorry just had to pop a pic of my fourlegged friend on!

Spring, Spring, Spring

I think its finely here, lighter evenings, and glorious days with the occasional frost, I love it!!


Anyway down the garden we have winners and losers



Cordyline - could be a loser but we will see, it flowered last year so should now fork although the main bit has lost spears maybe the forked bit will grow!!



The banana is very much mush, goes quite deep as well but this didn't stop it last year from coming back, we shall have to see. They can be wrapped in straw to protect them over winter, but now I don't have the chickens I am not sure what I would do with the straw in the spring?? and to be honest I'm not sure whether it would offer that much protection especially if the straw gets wet prior to a freeze!!

TRex - is looking very dead, the stem seems dry and brittle, but these are prone to pup so you never know!!!



Gunnera - I thought this was less hardy than the TRex, it didn't get well protected over winter at all and to be honest I thought we would lose it, but as you can see it is alive and kicking!!!



Cyanthea Cooperii and Alocasia Calidora have both come through in the green house which I am very pleased about

but when you compare mine to the one on the left in the next picture



I am definately going wrong somewhere. The above pic was taken by Dave Brown of the Hardy Tropical Forum



Bromelaids came through in a very cool enviroment, I think due to luck than good management. Will Giles mentions in his blog that he over winters his dry, which I did cos I basically just didn't water them!!!!!!!!




Hubby and I took the bananas and planted them into fresh compost yesterday. I store them dry in the greenhouse over winter and as you can see they had already started growing. This hopefully will give them a head start in the garden, they will go out sometime in May!




The tulips as you can see are just about to open, which is bizarre as they are usually a good few weeks behind the daffs. The daffs where definately very late but the tulips seem to be ontime?????

Thats all for the mo, apologies for the lack of blogging, but a new four legged friend has sort of taken over my life a bit!!


Irrisistable hey!!