No, I haven’t been sent home from work in disgrace. I have quite literally been on gardening leave today – I put in an annual-leave request to my boss with the express intent of spending it gardening. Christopher’s college friend Carol and her partner Mark came here yesterday with a car full of garden implements, […]
Malvern has been making a big fuss about the Diamond Jubilee holiday, with street parties and “fun for all the family”. But I really wasn’t feeling in the mood for a party, so I just hunkered down at home and ignored as much of it as I could. On Monday night the celebrations culminated with […]
The garden is full of poppies at the moment – it seems that the recent sun after the heavy rain earlier is just the sort of conditions they like. Most of them are small yellow Welsh poppies which grow like weeds. In fact, let’s be honest, they are weeds. At least, they’re entirely self-sown and […]
I understand all the arguments about the need to replenish ground water reserves after some anomalously dry winters (though it didn’t feel like that when I was snowed in!) but the fact remains that this has been the wettest drought I’ve ever known. Malvern seems to have had weeks of incessant rain. It’s actually a […]
I have a mole in my garden, making a complete mess of my lawn. It’s not even contenting itself with a few discreet molehills. These are apparently feeding tunnels, just underneath the ground surface, and all have appeared since the weekend. It looks like a young child has scribbled all over my lawn – it’s […]
One of the things I want to do this year is start to clothe the terraces of sleepers with some plants. My wish list is quite specific – I want year-round interest, preferably evergreen climbers that can cope with poor soil and a north-facing wall, and – most important of all – ultra-low maintenance. But […]
I had a chap come round yesterday to quote for fixing the broken fencing in the garden. That turned out to be easier and cheaper than I had expected – the fencing is now in fact superfluous to requirements. Since we put it up 12 years ago or so, a large hedge has established itself […]
I was showing Tom and Katie around “the estate” at the weekend, as they haven’t been here since I’ve had the structural engineering done in the garden. It’s quite interesting seeing it through someone else’s eyes – there is such a difference from how it was before that it’s really quite impressive. We went right […]
My sister and her boyfriend came to visit for the weekend a couple of weeks ago – which coincided with the last load of snow. We were all worried that they wouldn’t be able to get away again and would be stuck here! But in the event, the snow was much lighter than forecast and […]
I realised that, although I’ve mentioned before that my garden has multiple terraces, I’ve only actually posted pictures of the bottom two. So to remedy that, here is a picture of the top two terraces. On the right is the new fence running along the top of the second terrace. On the left are steps […]
