I had visions of having a wall (or bank) of different types of sunflowers to disguise one of the less than attractive fences.
Hmmmm. Well, after all that wind and rain last week, my sunflowers got a bit of a battering. Most of the tall ones THAT I’D EVEN TAKEN THE TIME TO STAKE got blown over. And then carried on growing for a bit, so they’re all wiggy and wonky. Oh well. That just speaks volumes about me. I’m a bit wiggly and wonky and things never go to plan but you’ve just got to make the most of what you have.
Oh they’ll still bloom. I’m sure of that. It just won’t be the picture-perfect magazine-worthy sight. It won’t have much of a ‘wow’ factor, but at least I’ll enjoy the wonkiness, the bees will like the pollen, and eventually the birds will enjoy the seeds.
Rich and I were also super-busy at the weekend. Ignoring the jungle of plants, weeds and grass that’s growing all around us (we can’t mow, it’s just been too wet), we decided to tackle up near the back of the house. It’s a gravelled area, partly for aesthetic reasons and partly for functional reasons – mainly, to aid rain drainage. The gravel has been down for probably over 15 years, and is looking really tired. But because the sunshine streams into that area in the morning, we’ve always fancied making it into an al fresco eating area. So on Saturday, we firstly set about giving Rich’s hand-built gate a going over with ‘country cream’ stain and preservative.
It looks pretty posh now. Well, posh for us, at least. Rich also had a spasm at the garden centre and decided to buy a pretty well established bay tree to put by the back door. That looks VERY nice. We’ve decided that we’re going to put the ashes of our beloved late cat ‘Tubby’ in there. He was a gorgeous boy and I still miss him, even now, two and a half years after we lost him suddenly.
So now we’ve only got to find a nice plant to put the hens’ ashes in, and then there’s Smudge my rabbit’s ashes. Good grief. The last two years were crap for losing my animals.
Anyway – not dwelling on that at the moment! I haven’t finished bleating on about what Rich and I managed to do. You see, there was also a large double portion of trellis that was completely overgrown with ivy – it was strangling the pyracantha and honeysuckle. I felt a bit bad about it, because I don’t like ripping out established plants, but it had to go. It was just too dark there, too much work to keep in check, and we wanted to open up the view from the back door.
So we spent (what felt like) hours cutting and sawing, loading the car, pulling, digging, swearing, sweating… and eventually got there. It was SO satisfying. The trellis slide out of the ground and the area just opened up. We must have gained a good 6 square metres at least. Not much in smallholding terms, but in smallest smallholding terms that’s a fair amount of space!
After completing that job, and being peed on from the heavens for the duration, we felt pretty pleased with ourselves. We’d always talked about taking out this thicket of ivy, but it had always seemed like a really big, difficult task. But we just thought sod it, did it, and shock horror, it all turned out OK.
The only thing is, we’re left with a concrete path an two steps down to a well that’s been hidden under the lawn for a few decades. Mum tried digging out the well years ago, but got bored, tired and fed up with it, so filled it in. Don’t think I fancy a well. I can just imagine I’d end up falling down it or something.
