BEST achievement of last year...

... was definitely taking the garden in hand. I went out there today, and although it's pretty desolate at the moment (and covered in the thin layer of snow which stopped me getting into work this morning*), at least parts of it will come back in the spring, and it won't make me feel guilty and ashamed, as it would have at this time last year.

Over the last couple of days, mainly clad in many, many knitted layers while waiting for the house to warm up, I've put together a Flickr slide show of all the versions of this shot in date order - some of them turned up on the blog but not all...

So if you don't have any paint you could be watching dry (or just want to have some reassurance that warmer days will come), or you're trapped under something heavy while reading this, do have a look.

While looking for all the versions, I found the photo below, which I made last year but never posted. It also makes a change from the current state of my small resentful house-mate, who is spending 22 hours a day sleeping next to a radiator in the bedroom at the moment, emerging only to eat or dive briefly into the garden to answer the call of nature...

Keep warm, all.

*Bet you were wondering why I was more positive. I'm not the most disciplined worker-from-home, but after yesterday, only wasting 90 minutes of my day dealing with trains, with the knowledge I was only 10 minutes from home at any time, was just fine and I got a fair amount done.

3:15 project - six month update

Kathleen C. in her comment on Sunday's post suggested I show a "before and after" photo. This is definitely in the nature of a "before and during" photo; there's still a lot to do; but a recent conversation with a friend about different ways of working reminded me that generally, I'm really quite bad at living in the moment (yesterday afternoon's lovely couple of hours knitting and cat-wrangling-for-my-pattern was an exception), and also quite bad at looking back on a job and thinking about it as a whole; so I thought it might be a nice idea.

I also realised that Sunday's general photo (the one I started out calling the Abomination of Desolation shot) had been taken from a different angle to previous ones - I'd been standing on the patio, rather then next to it, so you didn't get the whole of the patio table - which is a much better idea from a photographic point of view, but wasn't what I started off doing, because the patio was way too slimy to enjoy standing on.

So I went out when I got home tonight and took a picture from as near the same angle I could, given that the first few weeks were taken with the little camera which has a slightly different picture ratio...

Here's where it was on March 1...

and this is the view on September 1. Some of the difference is obviously that it's summer; but a lot of it is hard graft.

And it's anyone's guess how dreadful it might have looked next March if I'd just let it go again this year... I hope the one-year shot will be even more dramatic.

And speaking of dramatic, this is what it looked like at the other side of the house 20 minutes after taking the photo above...

It's showering a little bit... All a bit film noir... Completely unadulterated by Photoshop etc., but I have a gold voile curtain instead of traditional lace/nets, which helps...

On a completely different tack, I heard an item on the news this evening about the service at St Paul's commemorating WW2 evacuees - all those people just a little bit older than my parents (who grew up in relatively rural areas) wearing their labels and gas-masks... Seeing someone like Michael Aspel with his luggage-label pinned to the lapel of his smart suit was almost unbearably moving. I wonder if anyone's ever done any mass research on those 3.5 million children to see how much the experience of evacuation changed their lives.

3:15 project, update 20

or, the end is in sight - quite literally...

On Tuesday, it'll be 6 months since I decided to take the garden in hand. It's a bit of a testament to the kind of spring/summer we've been having here that there hasn't been a single weekend where I've not been able to get out into the garden at all...


Most of the work this week was done by an enthusiastic friend who got more accomplished in just over an hour than I probably would have in several weekends; so the least I could do was getting the photos up on time for a change!


Photos 1 and 2, no real change...


Photo 3, quite a dramatic change if you look down the right hand side of the garden - yes, that's a fence at the bottom - bet you didn't know that was there! (I'd almost forgotten that myself). More pictures of that further down this post...

Picture 4, everything blooming nicely. Including the Bug who was determined to get into all the photos today.

Picture 5 with one of the current projects - I'm gradually edging the vegetable bed with empty wine bottles. A raw material which is never in short supply in the neighbourhood (neighbours on both sides have had parties in the last couple of weeks) and I hope reasonably decorative when it's done...

And here's that cleared area. That pot was behind the ivy - I'd sort of remembered it was here... It's a fairly remarkable transformation!

It also allowed me to get at the greenhouse door, which I'd noticed some time ago was broken - one of the bolts at the bottom had slipped which meant it wouldn't close, and the subsequent gap had let a lot of ivy in.

The only way to repair it was to dissasemble the lot. Once I'd done that, I had to strip ivy out of all the frame pieces, along with some very disgruntled spiders who were breeding in there...

.

and remember how it all went together. Having done most of the assembly of the greenhouse in the first place, this went OK - making up flatpack furniture is my idea of a good time, so it was quite enjoyable once I'd evicted the various arachnids...

Done.

The fuchsia in the pot is a bit of a cheat - it's just in a small pot perched on top of the big one. It used to be in one of the hanging baskets, and this is its third year - when it came back again this year I thought it deserved a pot of its own and it's responded beautifully... I need to find a pot that's a lot taller than it's wide, I think, as it's a trailing one...

I also discovered that the crocosmia I planted - oh, must have been 8 years or so ago now - have flowered for the first time. Only one flower so far, but better than nothing, and after all this time it feels like free flowers!

3:15, project 19

Quite a lot of stuff this week; you might be able to see the garden's a lot clearer from here...

Not necessarily from here; but it's lush and pretty...

And definitely from here.

Ripped out the rest of the ground-elder on the right; it'll come back, it always does; but I've found that like bindweed, if you weaken it progressively... I managed that a few years ago but then lost vigilance for a while... I also chopped down a lot of the box in the middle bed; I hope it'll come back like the rest, but at the moment it's alarmingly dead-looking...

And conversely - another thing which was a weed for my former-SIL (wrong colour), so she dug it out for me maybe 10 years ago, has spread all over the fence and I love it - perennial sweet pea... Soo pretty. As ever, click on the photos to embiggen.

3:15 project, update 18

aka the urticaria edition... Photos from last Sunday.

Some progress this week... Lots more growth in the hanging baskets...

... but still haven't planted out the sesame on the patio...

The lilies have gone, but everything else is growing away nicely...

And here's the progress. No, I haven't buried anyone (although there is a cat buried under each side bed); but I have unearthed what was once, and will be again, the veg bed, which had completely gone over to nettles. Shan't be planting anything in there this season - I know there are still significant chunks of root in there and I'll be waiting for them to show themselves again - but am wondering about putting a green manure in there over the winter. Anyone got any experience of these?

I didn't get too badly stung, although I had a bracelet of stings around each wrist where my top kept parting company from my gloves...

And I seem to have failed to kill the holly-bush as well; which is great. It's rallying nicely - now to keep it with enough light that it doesn't go straggly again...

This week I'm "on holiday". The inverted commas are because this is the only day I'm actually not doing anything very much - I taught three days of summer school at Cottenham Monday-Wednesday to a very nice group of ladies, and tomorrow I'm off to the folk festival... Still toying with the idea of knitting at Ely this evening... I think it's going to depend on the weather at 6:30 when I need to go for the bus. And what the soundtrack to the fair is - we get a small fun-fair on the Green each year, and this is its week.

Warning... blueness ahead.

Last later night until the middle of October for me; the working week becomes a little shorter and we're able to breathe a bit. Well, that's the theory. In fact, the next couple of weeks are even busier than usual...

However - quick quiz - what sort of dangerous item do you think this belongs to? Obviously a bit of a hazard...

Yes, that's right - a pair of jeans.

I can't really identify the precise moment at which we became so stupid (or perhaps afraid of litigation) that we forgot that denim = indigo = fading = dye loss...

But in more blueness: the first skein of what I'm calling Blue Meanie.... This is 100% merino superwash from Wingham, for the Tour de Fleece, dyed by me in a couple of different intensities of ultramarine. Because of my lack of spinning skillz (and speed), this is the first week and a half's production at a whopping 167 grammes (try not to be too impressed, people who spin...); 422 metres though, which is the finest I've managed.

It turns out that when you put a skein of yarn onto a patio table at 5:30am, you get an audience...

... even if that audience is utterly unimpressed and really just wants breakfast.

I think I'll probably be knitting Sherbert/Sherbet from the last Yarn Forward (who knows, the magazine index says one thing, the pattern another, 'twas ever thus with YF), if I can get the tension to come out right.

Meanwhile Decimal is about 40 rows from cast-off, and then pick-up of the edging - but it's still just a big heap of cream stuff - it will not be cream when I start wearing it though... Next week I'm teaching at Cottenham Summer School which will be fun and exhausting at the same time...

Oh, also - no 3:15 update this week. I did do some work in the garden, but either I was out, or entertaining, or it rained, so most of what was done was after the photos. They look so alarmingly similar to last week's that I'm not going to bother... The rain did mean that I could sit in my kitchen on Sunday morning, spinning and listening to the cricket at Lords on the radio (and yay for Freddie who was magnificent throughout and thoroughly deserved Man of the Match), and watching the rain beat down on the roof above me, 60 miles north of the action... never a bad thing...

3:15 project, update 17

A bit of a changeable weekend; spent several hours spinning, and a few hours doing a bit of work, but it was fine enough on Sunday to dry the laundry and do some work in the garden. The main effort went into the right-hand-side again, trying to uncover the door into the greenhouse which has been invaded by ivy...


Pictures 1 and 2, nothing to see. Pic 3 - not a great deal of change although all the lilies are now out... and the sesame plants on the left in the tray are going mad...


Picture 4: everything just growing away and becoming quite lush...

And new this week, picture 5: taken from the bottom of the garden by the greenhouse door, which I nearly unearthed last week! I got it clear enough to get into, anyway, and rescue a butterfly which had become trapped in there... As you can see, still quite a lot to do when viewed from this angle!

The herb bed has been attracting quite a lot of insect life because the marjoram and oregano are flowering;

They literally are heavy with bees...

and here's that rescue butterfly again - a Comma, or Polygonia c-album; one of the species which is making a comeback across England as the weather warms up; Dad spotted one in their garden in north Durham last year...

Some of the local fauna found alternative habitats.

Just as well I hadn't planted that up with anything this year, really...

Lots of spinning has been going on for the Tour de Fleece (Ravelry link), and a fair amount of knitting on Decimal - I've just been really lazy about formatting and uploading my pictures recently...!

3:15 project, update 16

Photos 1 and 2 have nothing to distinguish them this week; all "move away, nothing to see..." Here's pic 3. There are clearer areas down both sides...


And pic 4. Apart from the fennel and lilies on the left, there's the dyed tops for the Tour de Fleece [Ravelry link] on the right...

Lilies have happened! without being completely eaten by the utterly disgusting lily grubs...

And there are pretty things in pots...


A chunk of this week's progress - some ground elder pulled out...

Meanwhile, at the other side of the garden, the flowering currant I thought I'd killed is making a comeback. I'm not unhappy about this - as long as I can control it... I really like the smell, the look and the early flowering. And BoyNextDoor has removed all the dead stuff from the top of the fence, so there's a lot more light...

Self-satisfied cat is also making her appearance...



The other thing I've been doing today is boggling at the Boss's appearances at Glastonbury last night. Go to iPlayer for the main thing...; but I also loved his appearance with Gaslight Anthem

After all the Michael Jackson business over the last few days (I loved Thriller, and it's a very sad day for pop, but I was glad Springsteen's tribute was to Joe Strummer) it's so good to see someone a decade older looking cool, sharp, fit, healthy and totally enthusiastic about what he's doing... And love the leather wellies, Bruce...

3:15 project, updates 14 and in fact 15

I've got fed up at being a week behind; and the differences over the last couple of weeks have been largely invisible at my usual photographic angles; so here we go...

Additionally, I've discovered that my newly-installed IE8 (which everyone I've whined to about it also hates) doesn't play nicely with Blogger on the matter of photos at all; so I've switched to Firefox for editing. MSFail...

Pic 1, no change really; the limes are getting sticky and unpleasant, but they always do; and I don't have a car to get coated in their rather unpleasant juices and attract wasps, so why should I care?

Pic 2, the hanging baskets are growing in and getting pretty (and they're the miner's canary for the rest of the outdoor stuff... if they start wilting I know watering the other pots outside is urgent...)

Pic 3: the main difference - the loss of the huge holly bush - is at the far end of the garden and so unnoticed... you can see a chunk of it on the right-hand side of the patio though most of it is in the green bin...

And no 4: up the garden...

The lilies are preparing to bloom. So far no sign of lily beetles but I'm not holding my breath...

I put in a new edging on the bed under the rose-bush - it's not the straightest edging ever, but it will do the job, and I have another stretch of the same stuff (bamboo sticks fastened together with wire, from Wilkinson's) to carry on the work... I planted some bronze-leaved dahlias (which I have no great hopes of, the snails having feasted on them before they even made it to the flower-bed) and a perennial geranium (which might survive)...

And possibly the earliest ripening tomato I've ever had. This is from a very spindly plant I bought way too early and which sat on the kitchen windowsill for months growing upwards but never bushing outwards...

3:15 project, update 13

Last week's photos, having failed to catch up... I'll try and put today's photos up today, too...

No real change to photo 1, and Bannolds' van was parked up outside last weekend...

Not much to picture 2, either, but the hanging baskets are growing in nicely;

The main job for the weekend was clearing away the large quantity of greenery I'd chopped down the previous week; after a wonderful day on Saturday, Sunday was pretty miserable - it rained solidly until about 2pm; but by about 4pm I'd managed to clear it...

The rain did mean I didn't need to water things this weekend...

The Alpine strawberries are in fruit...

The geraniums (OK, pelargoniums) are starting to flower. I'm mildly obsessive about getting red ones - which seem to be in short supply in recent years. There's something not-quite-right about any other colour...

And some of the plants from the Feast which need planting out - in the pink pot, a Fuchsia, behind that a phlox; then there's a pink perennial geranium (they're allowed to be other colours), a dahlia, some blue morning glories, a couple of crystanthemums, a perennial sweet pea, and a couple of bedding plants which looked pretty on the label; but I can't remember what they are...