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!