Smartening up the Snicket!

The Easter Holidays were upon us and Charlie and I were keen to get started with our new raised beds! We had one fair day to get some tidying done, then it started raining, and continued raining solidly for 4 days. We British are not to be outdone by rain though, we drank tea, waited patiently and ran out whenever it stopped and the raised beds slowly got done, by the end of the holidays they were finished!

Despite the rain, the temperature in the greenhouse had warmed up sufficiently to get some seeds started. I sowed Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Chillies, Sweet Peppers, Cucumbers and Zucchini, starting then off in the house in the indoor propagater and moving them to the greenhouse when they were established. Sweet Peas, Cosmos and French Marigolds were sowed straight into the greenhouse.

 In the meantime, the second thing on my plan is to smarten up the little snicket at the side of the house. Now, historically, this snicket has been the place where everyone dumps their unwanted crap, and there it stays  awaiting the rubbish fairy to get round to going to the tip. I want to give it a makeover so it’s too pretty to dump stuff in. Job 1 was to clear the passage out.  While I was moving everything  I spotted my redundant Wormery which has been empty for a few years and decided to restart it. There’s a little alcove which is real crap magnet so after all the rubbish was cleared from it (3 trips to the tip later) we hung some trellis in the wall and I finished it with some colourful planters.

This alcove is not visible until you walk past it so it’s a nice little surprise on the way to the garden. However, the rest of the snicket is an alleyway that is visable from the kitchen.  I want to make a pretty view and reflect a bit of light into the house so the next part of the plan is to  paint the wall of the long alley white. I found some great mosaics on Etsy by Jojosara that I thought would look beautiful on that wall so I bought them and Charlie’s going to make some planters on legs to run along that wall. I did a mock up on my computer...

 We have to wait until the summer to paint the wall but hopefully this will  really brightened up the snicket and  it will remain a crap free zone. Still, a good start has been made!

Back to the drawing board

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Life at Minion HQ is good. Minion 1 is now a qualified Doctor, Minion 2 is 6ft and hairy, and Minion 3 has flown the nest and is at University studying Computer Science -so still doesn’t go outside much-. Minions 4, 5 and 6 are 17, 10 and 6. How times flies! 

The garden has taken a bit of a back seat to work and home improvement, but I feel it’s now time to get back on track. Ive always loved gardening, but after the first few years, Charlie’s interest has waned a little and he has been putting his time and energy into his other hobbies. So, the garden has been more and more neglected as I have struggled a bit to maintain our huge raised beds. This year, as the garden will be mainly my domain, with Minion support of course, it needs to be more user friendly.

 Now, raised beds are still the way to go as we have clay soil and live in a country where is rains pretty much all year round, but I do need to be able to dig and weed them comfortably so they need to be less wide. I would also like slabs inbetween the beds to make them more accessible in poor weather, which means a lot of work that is not particularly part of my skill set. Luckily, Charlie has a saying ‘Happy wife, happy life’ so he has agreed to completely rebuild the raised beds for me. That way, I will be free to get back to growing and he will be free to indulge in his leisure pursuits unhindered. So, I got my tape measure out and measured up the garden so I could make a scale drawing of it with my new raised beds. 

As I started planning though, there was one glaring issue. Sadly, try as we might, our fox issue has persisted and we have lost three pairs of chickens. Now we have lost the heart to get more chickens and that means chicken run is unoccupied and therefore, wasted space. The first thing I thought would be a good use of that space was a potting shed as the greenhouse fills up too quickly to work in once the growing season takes off. I also thought that I'd like a couple of dwarf apple trees in the space to replace the one we lost. So, I planned out a -very small - woodland garden at the back. 

So there's lots to do this year. It’s all very exciting, but I still have a little more time to put my feet up with a cup of tea, and dream of all the growing fun I’ll have this year.