Gardening within liMitS: August over before you know it

August Enjoyment

Summer holidays took over and gardening was reduced to weeding and grass cutting. But we did enjoy the fruits of the hard work as we enjoyed time in the garden, as well as visits to gardens while on holiday in Norfolk - Felbrigg Estate was one stunning garden visited - we completed some amazing walks through different Broads and 10 different beaches were visited in a week.

Reeds on Blickling Broad

Schools In, September 6th September 2017

And another month slipped in and we are facing the builders coming in to add to the house. Added to the builder’s tasks are hard landscaping, or the removal of serious amounts of concrete. My architect liked my ideas of ponds to try and stop the flow of water from the housing estate behind and above our house straight through the garden along the concrete and eroding the surfaces as it goes. However as the levels are higher it would need to be a sunken pool, so I started to envisage a sunken seating area too. I dug a pond before preMS: it would be great exercise!

Planting in my wooden planters have been a mixture of unforeseen pests and great success! I pulled out three carrots yesterday, which we were never able to grow in St Albans (which I was told was an allotment bugbear). The ones we pulled yesterday were chunky and sweet.

Sweet chunky carrots!

The chilli plants (another bargain from Morrisons) have given us lots of sweet red chillies. And the courgettes, surprisingly, grew really well. My family in Scotland benefited from them during our travels in August.

A baby pigeon grew up in the conker tree and chomped through the Brussels sprouts (I am not heartbroken about it really). Strawberries also disappeared but they were 50p in a pound shop sale so again not a disaster. Lettuces grew so well and profusely we couldn't eat them all so they are needing composted as soon as I get off my computer.

Landscaping the garden is not in our budget, unfortunately, so I will have to look at inventiveness as my desires continue apace. I will have to be truly patient over my dream space and work shed, and be content with drawing little doodles of my imaginary home office and the demise of the rickety decrepit sheds. Even my book shed, or library, as my girls have nicknamed it, has been less than successful in displaying my exceedingly heavy book shelves. A load fell over with an almighty crash one day when we were doing other work. The girls were less keen to sleep there after that happened.