Our lovely neighbours

Our lovely former neighbours Wendy and Frank came to view and dine last night, bringing with them a huge row's worth of raspberry canes.  Thank you Wendy!  Here is their provisional* new home:
Looking forward to the first harvest - these are autumn raspberries but with any luck they'll get their skates on and be a-fruiting by late summer.
* this is where soft fruit is planned to be, but I haven't actually set any beds out yet, so they may end up moving.  Meanwhile, they do at least have a home for this year.

Open sesame!

For the first time a couple of days ago, it was warm enough to open the west-facing bifolds.  And it looks like this:

Yesterday we ate our first lunch on the patio.  Looking forward to a lot more of this!  (Today, mind you, we were back in coats, hats, wetsuits and flippers - no chance of gardening :( )

And did those feet, in ancient time,

...walk upon England's kitchen garden, still mostly brown?
Thanks to JP for the Jerusalem Artichokes which have taken up residence here by the kitchen garden gate.  They will form a screen along the fence until we get some shrubs planted on the other side - or until the soup-need becomes overwhelming, whichever comes first!

Sticks and stones

It's been quite a while since our last post (apologies to our faithful readers), but on the face of it things haven't changed much.  Which is odd, as we've been out in the garden just about all day every day (apart from our week's holiday) since then.  And it's mostly been heavy lifting and digging.   Every day the lawn gets a degree more green as the grass germinates and grows - although every day I take a load more stones and rocks off the surface...  There are a lot of sticks where there weren't sticks before - this is the birch copse....  

<<this is the hazel grove... and here are the beech columns:

Then there has been a huge amount of earth moving to complete the vegetable beds - edging completed, with peas, spinach, garlic, spuds, and salad various to date, more stuff to be sown and planted in the next few days.  The kitchen garden is about to gain some of the horse manure (in sacks) I've just started shifting in from one of my three muck sources! (The stud offer straw or shavings based manure, while Carol across the road offers grass-based product...)  Levelling the paths between the beds is back-breaking work and is progressing slowly, the aim being to get a surface down that we can pave with the reclaimed patio and driveway paviours.

Meanwhile Alan has been laying out the space for the greenhouse, which is on quite a slope and will therefore require quite a bit more heavy lifting.  If anyone reading this fancies shifting some flinty mud, you're very welcome to visit....
There's a huge number of things in pots in the area on the stableyard where the compost heaps are going to be.  They need to be planted out before I can make the compost areas.  But I can't plant them until I have flowerbeds to put them into.  The bed next to the pond needs a retaining wall before it can be planted, and that needed a fair bit of excavation as well as adjustment to the roughly-dug-out pond area.  I completed the retaining wall foundation yesterday and bought the sleepers to make the wall - here it is now in situ, just back-filling to do.

Indoors, Alan has pretty much wrestled the garage into a tidy state, although we don't yet have the shadowboards up, and yesterday Tim the Logburner fitted the additional insulation round the flue which is part of the condensation-prevention measures.  ...Now, back to work.....

Hedge Fun

I had a gliding instructing break yesterday, but apart from that it's been gardening all the way.  You can see the emerging kitchen garden here:

I have made all the edging boards but it's darned hard work fitting them due to the high flint content.  The sharper amongst you will work out that this applies to digging the beds over too, but I'm trying quite hard not to think about that.  The top foot or so is imported topsoil and/or home-made compost so we'll leave the spuds and worms to do the hard work below that!  You can see the apple trees and greengage in the bed along the wall (see the stick, imagine the espalier)

The hazels have been planted up on the front bank - two of them, one to grow on as a tree and the other to coppice; between them they should hide the electricity pole as well as satisfying the Planning Condition.  You can see in the picture on the right that we have a brand-new beech hedge along the fence to the stable yard - Alan cleared and dug the right hand side while I was instructing yesterday so it was mostly just a matter of planting today although we had to do a bit of shuffling of the remaining stuff in the parking bed on the left.  Somehow its impact is disproportionate to its size - I don't think this comes across in the photo but it looks very fine. 
You can just see the pile of twigs on the right that is an ex-elder that was on the corner of the stable yard - Alan enlisted Charlie next door and his chainsaw to deal with it.  I stepped out of the door just in time to see the tree come crashing down, missing the house by - literally - 1".  The boys had the decency to look slightly sheepish for a couple of minutes at least.
And finally, the row of radish I sowed last week has germinated, proving beyond all doubt that spring is here.  Hurrah!

Growing panes

Yesterday was huge excitement - the greenhouse was delivered.  Added excitement was whether the lorry would fit onto the driveway - or more precisely could swing so as to fit onto the driveway - but as you can see, it was easy! (well, easy-ish...)

The next excitement was - which of these bits make up my greenhouse?  That's a week's worth of deliveries in there less the three he'd delivered earlier on Monday.

Time will tell whether we have the right bits as we don't have its location ready yet.  So the frames and the panes are currently tidily stacked up in the garage.

The contractors' part of the outside works are basically complete now, and I'm trying to prioritise what next.  Clearly anything bare-root needs to be dealt with ASAP.  BUT - there are things growing in the 'parking bed' which is alongside the stableyard where there is going to be (bare-root) hedge - so they need to be moved first first.  And some of them are going to a bed that until today didn't exist and needed paviours putting in to make the edge first first first.  So, I've done that, now I can move the rest of the stuff out of the parking bed.  Meanwhile many of the rest of the paviours got dumped where the rest of the hedge needs to be and so.... you get the picture. 
Progress so far:
we have the herbs moved into the herb bed, beech whips ordered to make beech columns (left is a bunch of 10 whips as ordered, right is what we see in our mind's eye when we look at them...), the native birch and hazels required by Planning to replace the ash we cut down also ordered, trellis made and fitted to the front wall by the utility room door and trachelospermum planted against it, osteospermums moved out of the parking bed along the front wall, and gravel board bought and cut to make the vegetable plot edges.  Installation thereof will NOT be tomorrow's job, looking at the weather forecast!  Warning to gardening friends and neighbours - at some point soon we will be importuning you for plants...

Giant leap for Sparrowkind

Would have posted this yesterday but as Replacement Window Man was ill and rescheduled the planned replacement works, we sneaked over to Wisley for the day in the sunshine to get inspiration on plants and look at the butterflies in the glasshouse.  To prove it, here is a plant and a butterfly.  Lots of great ideas for the garden, just the one plant purchased, and a thoroughly lovely day out.

Latest - hallelujah, the outside works have now resumed and although the garden is still mud, it's now flat mud with grass seed, we have patios everywhere we should have and we have almost got a finished driveway.  Indoors there is still discussion around roof/gable insulation works.  Upstairs windows now to be replaced Thursday.  We are awaiting a schedule for completion of it all!  Meanwhile in case there was any doubt: