Easter Sunday Job

I dashed out while the skies were blue and the sun was shining to get a couple of photographs of this mornings little job ... filling up the bed LH and Simon made last week with the old sleepers.

It looked like this at 10am .....

...and then like this by 12.

We started off with the two trees from the large pots by the front door and then added the contents of all the pots that have stood patiently waiting by the polytunnel for over a year.  There's not a lot to see yet but once the Hostas get bigger the bed will be pretty much filled to capacity.  Any little gaps that seem too big will be filled with some of my small pots of Lavender, the Ariculas or the Primroses from my other pots.

Meanwhile over by the front door without the two trees in their pots on either side it's looking very bare ...

... first thing this morning it looked like this!!

 It made me wonder when we got the two trees that have moved house so many times with us in their various pots, and it turned out that they first made an appearance at our back door at Jointers Farm way back in April 2009.   We will buy a couple of bags of compost and get some replacement little trees for our big green pots next time we pass the local garden centre and then start all over again.

Sue xx

Salvaging the Strawberries

To the right of the polytunnel doors sit the old truck tyres that last year held the majority of our strawberry plants, along with a few more plants in the tall zinc planter next to the tyres. 

They cropped well in this position, the warmth of the rubber tyres and the shelter of the polytunnel giving them a head start and much needed protection from the wind, they gave us enough to add to the other fruits we had growing, but in such a small space not enough for bowls of fruit or to make jam with.  So I knew we needed many more plants and much more room for them to grow hence the two new beds we set in place over the weekend and that I posted about here.

At the end of the fruit producing season the plants were pretty much abandoned and left to their own devices, however one thing I did do was to put in place lots of little compost filled pots that I could peg the newly emerging runners into.  So this year we will have lots more strawberries and all at no extra cost to us.

Today saw me tidying up this mess, clearing, trimming and snipping the new plants from the few parent plants that were in the tyres ...

... and rather amazingly I now have over 70 strawberry plants to move into the new beds at the other end of the tunnels.

And the front of the polytunnel looks a lot neater  :-)

This year these tyres will be holding some carrots, and the zinc planter already has some Jerusalem Artichokes in it.

Sue xx

An Extra Pair of Hands Comes in Handy

We had Simon, my eldest son, here for two days at the weekend ... and boy did it make a difference. 

Spurred on by knowing we had a pair of extra hands, combined with a real talent for lifting, shifting and solving problems we threw ourselves into a weekend of work.  The main purpose of his visit was to help Lovely Hubby lift and shift in the workshop.  All his new equipment, lathe, saws and other hugely heavy machinery had been delivered a few weeks ago and now assembled they all needed moving into an approximation of their final positions ready for a plan to be drawn up for the wiring of the workshop.

The boys cracked on with that while I did all the bog standard weekend chores, cleaning out the hen house, washing etc etc.  When all that was done and after a good lunch we set to outdoors.  The sleepers that used to hold up our hillside before the huge retaining wall was built behind the garage, have been waiting patiently to be put good use.  And this was always the plan in my head.

A raised bed by the road side to complete the area to the right of the polytunnel ....

.. and two beds for strawberries at the back of the poly and net tunnels.

The panels that we found here when we moved in will be put to good use to keep the birds off the fruit, after a few repairs to each one.

The three Blueberry bushes in the pots usually live in the net tunnel, but come out at this time of year so the bees and other insects can help with pollination.

You can imagine how hard Lovely Hubby and Simon worked to get these all in place and completely fill them with soil from the formerly huge earth pile we had at the end of our paddock.  A few tractor loads of earth was lifted, sifted and shifted before being levelled in the new rustic beds.

While they were doing all this I was planting potatoes on the hillside and onions in the net tunnel ... and then preparing the henhouse in the orchard ready for moving the chickens back over the next day so that we can rest Chicken World for a couple of months.

After an evening at the cinema we decided that Sunday was going to be a day off, yes all this was accomplished on just one day of the weekend  :-)

So Sunday saw us dropping my car off at the garage, walking the dogs  along the remarkably busy promenade and sitting in the sunshine at the end of Llandudno pier drinking coffee.  A day off well earned in my opinion.

Now I just have to get the Strawberry plants ready for moving into their lovely new beds once the soil has settled.

Sue xx

Crop Top and Woolly Shorts

The sheep in the field across the road from our house are a funny bunch.  I think Thomas, the farmer that owns the land uses this particular bit of scrubby, rush filled land for his waifs, strays and odds and sods.  We thought they were all barren sheep until he dropped off a mother and her chunky little lamb the other day,  now it looks even more of an odd assortment.

They have obviously all had different treatments, hence the splodges of blue, red and orange and thanks to them pushing their way into the trees and bushes to get to the stream for water or just under the bushes for shade or shelter, they are all slowly but surely losing their woolly coats.  There will be little need for clippers in a few months if they keep losing wool at the rate they have been over this last week or so.

They are starting to take on the look of the freshly clipped collie dog in the Specsavers advert!!

But one in particular is looking very fetching this morning.  I stood at our office window and watched as she had a tussle for about twenty minutes with what must have been a particularly prickly bush.  I was on the verge of thinking about phoning Thomas to let him know he had a well and truly stuck sheep ... when lo and behold she tugged herself free and sashayed out of the trees wearing a crop top and a pair of woolly shorts.

Sue xx

So .... what's different ?

I snuck back in last week to do a 'comparison' post and although I thought I wouldn't be noticed, it seems lots of you have been looking out for me ... thank you for caring  :-)

So I thought you all deserved an update on what's been happening here on our little bit of Welsh hillside since I vanished from this blog last December.  Although I have been in action in a slightly sporadic fashion over on my other blog 'Polytunnel Vegan' 

Well as you can see from the top photo not much has changed in the kitchen.

Spring has finally come to this cold, wet and windy part of Wales, with blossom on the Almond trees in Nut Wood, and also just this morning appearing on the cherry trees in the fruit orchard.

Ginger has claimed one of the dog beds as his own, usually the small one ...

... as he has found out if he gets in the bigger one the others simply pile on top of him.

I'm still saving the pennies .... in this instance by washing and reusing plant labels from last year.

Suky's diet is working well. 

She's now down from her original 12.2kg to a much healthier and happier 8.2 kg.  She would most likely love this photo, it makes her look even slimmer than she is!!

I still cook homegrown veggies from the poly and net tunnels .... only now I'm no longer a vegetarian.

I'm a vegan :-)

(As you might have guessed from the name of my other blog.)

The polytunnel is just starting to fill up with freshly sown seeds and newly turned beds. But I'm taking it slower this year as the nights have been toe curlingly cold here.

I wore out my old salad spinner and had to invest in a new one.

And Mavis has turned into the most laid back and loving little doggie you can possibly imagine.  Even being allowed off the lead on our property as long as we are close by.

So although there are some changes here, there are lots of things that are ticking over in just the same soul satisfying way.  I still don't really know if I want to come back into daily or even regular blogging, but after all your lovely comments last week, I am considering it, or at the very least popping up from time to time when there is something I feel is worth writing about.

Thank you for reading and for taking the time to send your comments.

Sue xx

For Comparison

The Net and Polytunnels.

Inside the polytunnel as it is this year ...

... and as it was on this day last year.

Where are all the veggies .... the chickens have been eating them during their enforced stay undercover during the Avian Flu crisis over the last few months.  Also sacrificed as chicken treats and something to peck at that they could find suddenly hanging from their tree when they got fed up with layers pellets and corn, were all my Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants from the net tunnel.

Oh well, it's a fresh canvas in the tunnels to start from now ... and the chickens have had their freedom since the first of the month so they are busy scratching for bugs, eating the last of the over-wintered windfall apples and rummaging through the woodland on wet days   :-)

Sue xx

Ginger ... and us .... off into the future.

Sue xx