popular What have you done today in the Garden?

Thanks, this time i have to buy the fruit filling, i hope that your family can visit.

 

Sorry you are going through that Pac.

I agree with you about contractors. It's really hard to find a good one and even then, there are issues. It's why sone jobs never get done here.

 

I hauled four more wagons of leaves to the vegetable garden area. It's becoming quite the leaf mountain. I there are three more wagons from the horse chestnut. The chestnuts are dropping their leaves now. They are not as distant from the garden, and not where neighbors can see them, so it's OK to wait longer for those.

I cut the remaining two fig trees that were next to the house. That clears the rest of the defensible zone for wildfire risk mitigation. I was waiting until the air layers that I started from them in 2023 became bearing size, and now they are.

I started removing fig trees from the area near the neighbor's easement. They aren't too much trouble but those varieties bear too late to be useful, so three or four fig trees to remove. Less pruning and cleanup in the future, and they encroach slightly onto the easement. Then I will have my three favorites, which are small but still bearing size now, and that will be plenty. The chain saw needs a new chain so I might wait until after I go into town tomorrow, before doing more.

I started cleaning up the rose garden. Next year it will have mowed pathways. It's mostly mint, but that's OK. The challenging part is getting the wild blackberries removed roots and all. Those are mostly the native ones that grow along the ground making long strands like barbed wire. I started cutting the tallest rose bushes. The tallest teas are about 12 feet tall. I cut three back down to 4 feet, and plan to cut them back to 1 or 2 feet when growth resumes in Spring.

The chicken house beckons. It needs cleaning.

 

I bet those fig roots are gonna fight back. They can be tough.

 

As we arrived back home just before 4pm and it was still raining I had time to spruce up some more of the patio pavers.

 

Leaf clean up. It is a nice sunny morning . It’s going to rain later this afternoon. So taking advantage of the sunshine and trimming some of the tree rhodies. I swear some are as big as understory trees. Treachoisly leaning up on the roof blocking the downspouts . Sprayed 3 gallons of bleach up on the roof tiles, hoping to discourage moss developement.

 

Around here, deer eat young fig growth. The trees do grow back, but eventually give up after repeated deer meals. If not the deer, I'll just cut the regrowth off.

The websites I read say deer don't eat fig trees. The deer around here have not read those websites.

In the wildfire defense area, I cut the trunk flush with the ground. Any regrowth can be mowed along with the grass.

 

Daniel— who’s the clever clogs then.

 

That is funny @Daniel W , that the deer have not read the websites...

I have seen websites, even the local news, claim that cicadas do not harm trees, yet they killed several of my cherry trees summer of 2024...My trees were covered in thousands and thousands of cicadas that summer. I guess they also do not read websites. Those trees are still dead and will get cut down when son gets time to do it.

 

If not there is always triclopyr.

 

Not a lot today.
The wind overnight stripped the two acer palmatums of nearly all their leaves.
This has exposed the usual quantity of dead branches under all the new growth. I'll prune these off before the frost comes. They're easy to recognise as they go very grey and some bits completely white. I leave those that are "just a bit grey" until the New Year, when I'll be certain they are dead. They'll get a bit of a tidy at the same time.





The strong wind last night blew these two tree azaleas over, but they came to no harm and their ceramic pots were undamaged as they land on the grass.
The little acer in front of the bamboo also lost most of its leaves. I'll need to collect a lot of leaves next week.



More leaves collected off the patio. I had to get my wet n' dry out to remove two puddles at each end of the border. There are drain holes, between the little wall and the York stone, but if anything water is draining onto the patio from the border as it's higher.
The patio needs to be reasonably dry by tomorrow if I'm going to do any re-pointing.
If it rains overnight, it won't happen.

 

Mainly clean up from the recent rains.

Cut back some more from a couple of thuggy lavender plants ,they had been cut back a couple of months back but decided to have a growth spurt they are the ones I'm considering to either drastically chop in half of dig up completely...their fate has yet to be decided.

Collected up a ton of fallers from the Orange Pipin tree....it smelt like a cider factory!!

Cut back the leaves from a couple of large Hellebores that got missed the other day when I did all the others.

Hubs did some tweaking to the insulation in the greenhouse. Our temps are dipping next week to the more normal ones for this time of year, it will be a shock to the system after enjoying feel like temps of 17C this week to feel like a maximum of 2C!!!!

I'm shivering just from writing the figures down.

 

As forecast, it was dry this morning, so I repointed the main patio.
Fortunately, I'd been able to buy a half bag of bricklaying mortar from B&Q. Otherwise, I'd have had to buy full bags of cement and sand, far too much. I just had to add to a bucket, some yellow powder cement dye, some plasticiser and a drop of water.
I like to make it of "sandcastle mix damp." It means I can brush away the surplus around each joint.


As well as the patio, I had to do the two steps down from the French windows and the two steps up to the rose patio.
It was a three-hour job, mostly on my hands and knees, which fortunately, despite my age, I managed without any problems. I'm now watching sport on TV.





Not every joint needed re-pointing, but I used two, "half buckets" of mortar. I'll keep off the joints for a couple of days, to let the mortar go off.
It will absorb sufficient moisture from the atmosphere in that time.

I've still to jet-wash and re-point where necessary, the path next to the garage, the small patio behind the shed and the path from there down to the tea-house, But I'll probably leave that until the spring.
It says we might get some snow next week.

 

Removed summer bedding from the big planters this morning, it was a shame really as the Petunias were still blooming. As the temps are taking a dip next week it was a job that would need doing sooner rather than later.
Found a few Geraniums that were hiding from me when I went round collecting them up for overwintering a few weeks ago, how safely snuggled up with the rest of their friends.
Just letting dinner settled before heading back out there

 

I cleaned the chicken house. They seem to like that, and I found four fresh eggs in the evening. Now I have a small mountain of chicken bedding, filled with their "contribution", next to the larger tree leaf mountain.

I found the chain saw model number so I can buy a new chain now. The hardware store had three different chains for that brand of chain saw. I can get back to clearing the unwanted fig trees soon.

There is so much work to do this winter. I still haven't started digging out the three mole-accessible raised beds to install hardware cloth. No hurry. Just want to get it over with.