popular What have you done today in the Garden?

I did not get anything much done today, except I watered a little bit. I do volunteer work at church on Tuesdays, and did not do much this afternoon.

Yesterday, I had to do some fixing in my chicken coop. Some big animal had tunneled into the henhouse, but it was under the nest boxes. I had them down low on an old ladder thing and could not get at that. I also saw a snake going down a rodent hole and he got away. I took out that old ladder thing--that was a big job--and got rid of it. I had a couple of 2x4s leftover from another job, so I put them up about waist high and cleaned out the coop.



I am out of straw and will get more straw soon. I need to make repairs on the old rabbit hutch that I keep it in also, so the straw will stay dry in wet weather. The 2x4s are fastened down with screws so they wont go anywhere. I can add a few more nest boxes if I get more hens. That thing on the left is another piece of that old ladder, it holds a wooden bar for them to roost on. I guess you can see it okay in the 2d picture. I do have a few large clumps of pampas grass that I will use for straw also after freezing weather. That was here when I moved here. I have given some away. I wouldn't mind giving it all away though. This is my chicken coop that I built a few years ago with recycled materials. Those plastic bins are nice nest boxes, you can take them out to the spigot and wash them clean whenever you want. I will get more sulfur when I go to town later this week to put down and discourage the snakes and maybe the sapper. That snake was a speckled king snake, aka a salt and pepper snake around here. He is harmless but greedy when it comes to my eggs. They do kill copperheads, BUT he steals all my eggs. If I get a chance he will be dealt with. Maybe he will leave when I put down more sulfur?

That job took most of the day yesterday.

 

Out most of yesterday morning but did mange to get a great afternoon session out in the garden, the weather was really lovely too

Cut back a lot of unruly shrubs and plants ,pulled up some spent summer bedding ,harvesting some of their seeds as I did so.
Did another acorn sweep of the patios.
Cut back ( had planned on pulling them up but although on the tatty side now they still have a lot of blooms) the Petunias in the bigger tubs. They have a few weeks left in then....if you squint your eyes and block out their worn out look!!

Made a feeble show of willingness to carry on with sorting out the big lean too but my heart wasn't in it.. ....ended up with just dumping even more pots and seed trays on the shelves!
I will definitely do some today as we had planned on going out for the day but have now decided to make the most of this fine weather and crack on with the post summer season tidy up.......welll that is the plan at this moment in time

 

Oreti sounds like a good plan . Take her easy.. use mindfulness with every step.

Yesterday evening managed to clip back the shrub roses to see the area of the garden dedicated to the ‘Horse’. For all the horse luvers out there..

Today I’m taking a break … unless the rain slows down. At least that’s my story for now and I’m sticken to it. She says with a slight intention to do more seasonal trimming/clipping clean up. This morning the fall leaves of deciduous tree’s have covered the landscape from the wind/rain storm all night. If there is a chance of a cloud break maybe I will sneak out for a quick trim or two and run the leaf blower. .

 

Haven't done much today we both had to go and have our flu jab in arm. But i did manage to pot up 75 purple crocuses and 25 snakes head fritillaries in pots before we went, run out of compost. Also yesterday helped hubby with the hedge at the back, I swept up all of the cuttings, the council should do it but never know when.

 

Had a good session today from 9:30 until 5:45 ( 45 mins for lunch of course ).

How did I get so many flowerpots and seed trays.....I think they've been sneakily propagating themselves whilst being dumped in the coldframe for the summer !!!
Most have now been cleaned and placed in bin sacks and stored in the small coldframe in size order ready for potting up plants that will need overwintering and for potting up seed sown new plants next Spring ( oh how I love that word..it's my most favourite ).
Still have a handful left to do...probably on Friday.
Discarded quite a few pots that housed brown, shrivelled up and dead as a Dodo ' cuttings' that were taken back in the Spring with good intentions of lavishing them with tlc....but then forgot about them. They were totally unrecognisable so couldn't even tell you what I placed my high hopes on.

Had the brilliant idea ( or so I thought at the start) of using the big play sand lidded activity container ( from my days working in early years childcare) to store the spent compost in. l will mix in sackfulls of leaf mould to use as mulch on borders in a month's time.
This resulted in creating another job for me as the container was full to overflowing with children's buckets, spades, forks , sieves, toy cars, dumper trucks and moulds for creating sand shapes...and some ginormous spiders!! All of which had to be collected up and disposed of.That took me an extra hour and a half to do. On the plus side it was a job that I had been meaning to get round to doing since I closed my business 7 years ago!!!!

I think I ended up with more dead spiders and other deceased insects on me and in my hair than what I found in the pots.

I think it will only take me the morning on Friday to complete the job, but it will be weather dependent as we are due for stormy weather and strong winds apparently, and I definitely could do without chasing flying flowerpots around the garden !!

Depending on the outcome I might post some before and after pics....that's if it actually ends up looking significantly tidier.





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I hope you took it easy today too Pac.

What a lovely idea having the dedicated Horse Rose Garden. Love the statue, it must be very beautiful when all the Roses are in bloom.

 

Oreti thank you for liking the horse and when the roses are in bloom it looks very nice.
Also you certainly did roll up your sleeves and did a fantastic job cleaning up the plants , pots, spiders, and everything that tends to build up in a gardeners buzy life. It’s such a feeling of relief like a huge weight lifted from our physique.
Lots of spare room in your brain menu now to list new tasks that will become highly productive for your fav word …wait for it…“Spring” planting season. A huge congrats for getting a huge job completed spiders and all. Your a brave gal…

We did have a late afternoon sun break which gave me the opportunity to manage the golden tinted driveway before the next rain. Not many can say they have a gold driveway . In the bright sunshine all the needles that were blown from the pine trees really did look like gold lining the driveway. I wish that wasn’t the case clearing needles is a daily task.

 

Thanks Pac.
Omg ...and I moan about the bloomin Acorns!!!
Your golden driveway does look stunning and must say that your ( pain in the butt) problem looks a lot prettier than ours. I bet you have a constant supply of leaf mould. Now that I am extremely envious of

 

Nothing much today, but if it stays dry I may mow the lawn.

I've ordered this rack on eBay. I've two similar in the garage. But they're lengthways for polystyrene boxes of "stuff."

It's for the "freezer room" I created in the back of the garage, originally the koi pool filter room. Or possibly the tea-house. I'm hoping to use it to over-winter the plants in the troughs on the patio and the begonias. If it doesn't work, I can use it for other stuff.
They have mdf shelves, which I may put in bin bags and seal them up, as mdf doesn't like any damp, as there could be some condensation.


It's 180cms high x 120cms x 40cms It was only £40.

 

Today we have decided to split and transplant some Hosta’s that were growing out of their plots.

Up front, the Hosta stand was removed and a couple of Rudbe Kia triloba’s were planted in their place. There may be too much yellow and orange in that plot but the purple and red Herfstasters will balance it a bit hopefully.

Then over at the side of the garden house, along the chip path, we planted the Hosta’s.
Before:


After:


Today was the last day for the Food Bank pick-ups. We had eight crates of veg and fruit. It was a good way to close.

We are also cleaning out the greenhouse. All the toms are out and carted off. Next we will weed and make it ready for the winter. It can chug along until the spring when the soil will have to be removed and replaced.

Here are some of the roots. These were the stems of my tom plantlets. As you may recall, When I plant my toms, I lie them horizontal in a bully to plant them. This is why— more surface roots (feeding roots) to take-up more food for the making of fruit.



Perhaps you can see that there is a sort of ball at one end— this was the lowest part of the plant and was for water uptake.

So, the deep root ball was for water uptake and the roots along the superficial portion was for feeding up-take.

All our quadrants are now winter-ready and we are adding dead plant debris. The green manure we will eventually pull-up and lie down on the beds as winter mulch.

We are catching up. Soon though, I will begin the pruning-back of Clematis, trees and shrubs to avoid damage from the winter wind storms.

 

No gardening today, as it was "laundry day" this morning and in the afternoon I had my annual diabetes eye exam. I say annual, but this is only the second one since I was diagnosed. No problem, a nice Polish girl did it. They put drops in your eye to make the pupils dilate, then you sit outside the surgery for ten minutes, then you go back in and she took photos of my eyes. That was it. Of course I'm then having to drive home with dilated pupils! "But I didn't hit anything."

While I was out my new rack arrived, fortunately the driver carried it in as it was very heavy and my wife wouldn't have been able to manage it.



Why do suppliers make instruction booklets so small? I do know, it saves on paper.

Anyway it was similar to the ones I have in the garage, so it was easy to assemble.
Just lots of bits to slot together. It's very sturdy.

There's not a lot of space in this room but it's enough. The top two shelves will be for "stuff."
The bottom two for plants if I bring them in. There's a small table that I've no Idea why I'm keeping it other than somewhere to put our spare Smeg coffee machine and grinder in a big polystyrene box. As well as the two freezers there's, two golf bags, one with a complete set of spare clubs and a "pull" golf trolley.




The garden furniture, which is rarely used, lives in here during the winter as it'd dry.
I used to keep my golf clubs in the boot of my CRV , but my Honda jazz has only a small boot. So they stay here when I'm not using them. There's still enough room for the acer palmatum Taylor to come in here during the winter, It wouldn't survive on the patio.
The big Apta pot is destined to join the other later, on the other side of the front door.

 

Nothing today we had to take Barley and Berry for their boosters at the vets.
But yesterday i potted up this container with heathers. 3 different flowering ones, winter,
early spring and later spring, they don't need

erecatious compost like the summer ones.

Also i planted up the daffodils.

 

All I did was add some soil to my raised bed planters and added some lime to the ones for the brassicas that will be planted when the temps go down. I filled up my two new raised beds with soil. First I put cardboard on the bottom, then soil conditioner which is compost and mulch mixed, then the garden soil. That will be where I plant my seed in early spring for some cosmos and other annuals and perennials that I have planned to add to the flower beds.

I also watered my hydrangeas and calacarpa and gave the calacarpa some ironite as it's looking a bit piqued.

 

I ran the sprinkler in my veggie garden while I did some of my mowing elsewhere. That friend has not yet come and gotten my riders to repair them. No idea why.

I visited a neighbor's yard sale this morning. That was nice. I got a set of shelves for some of my porch plants when I bring them in for the winter, and some quilt batting.

I have not seen @Daniel W for awhile. Hope he is okay.

 

Today was Repetition Day . All the garden clean up stuff. Ya know a little of this and a little of that and oh yeah that too. Well ya all know the fall clean up routine. It can go on forever. Lots a trimming and mulching and hauling and lifting. Light stuff rolling up miles of soaker hoses.


I have been working hard to eliminate a lot of different ground critters for years. No signs of moles , voles, gophers, or ground squirrels. Yet I still hear the resident hawks scream hunting for food all day. At least I think my efforts over the last few years have really paid off. No holes, mounds, scat or tiny feet prints … anywhere.

And oh remember that deer fence along the perimeter of the property I’ve been working on over the last 3 years ? I finally added all the bamboo that literally bit the dust last year . I’m pretty sure the deer will not be popping up over and around the trees, or scale jump over the width of the bamboo, or under any of the prickly fencing material anytime soon. Haven’t seen any signs of deer snacking in my garden for a few weeks . I haven’t seen any deer scat in the pastures for months. The area is pretty calm and quiet except for the sounds of the geese and ducks flying over to their yearly winter vacation area near by. Knock on Wood.

Out near the dollar eucalyptus tree I also managed to find another new ground bee nest. These bees are called Sweat bees because they go after the sweat on humans (salt). We worked side by side as I cleaned debris around their nest with no problems. They aren’t stingers but are basically solitary bees that seem to be very common here as crop pollinators along the Oregon coast.

Last but not least I found a little time between projects to play a little frisbee with my puppy girl Roxy.

Spotted the sunset to the west and the moon rise up thru a cloud formation to the east. Odd to see both at the same time. They say timing is always important for good surprise photos. It was only 5:00. So time to go inside and send this post off before I fall asleep.. . Just kidding a glass of tea and dinner will wake this oldie but goodie up .

sunset to the west.



moon rising in the east… at the same time…. BAM…!!!