Repurposed

Repurposed!

There doesn't seem to be a good time of year for hacking back overgrown ivy.  In spring and summer there's always the risk that something is nesting in there; then it starts flowering, providing valuable nectar for insects late in the year, and then the berries feed the blackbirds in the late winter and early spring.  Then the nesting starts again .... But the ivy in the area between the drive and the front garden is totally out of control, and there's no sign of any nesting activity in there, so today I decided to do some serious work on it, tackling inch-thick stems all tangled together and pulling as much of it as possible out of the little drystone wall that forms the end of the front garden.  Ivy and drystone walls don't make good bedfellows: the ivy stems push the stones apart as they grow and eventually the whole thing falls down.  I'm having to dismantle some of the top part of the wall to get the ivy stems out, which is good exercise as the coping stones are quite big and heavy.  I lifted one out, and realised that it was carved.  It looks like the corner of a stone door- or window-frame, or perhaps a fireplace, and it almost certainly comes from the castle that was outside the village in the Middle Ages.  This was demolished centuries ago, becoming a sort of builders' merchants for the villagers, who pillaged it for stones for their houses and field walls; we've already pulled a carved coping stone out of our garden wall in the past, but this one is even more impressive.  Having been repurposed as a garden wall topping, it has now been repurposed again as a garden ornament; fortunately I found another big stone to replace it on top of the wall.  Still plenty more ivy, and big wall stones, to tackle another day!

Tulip 'Praestans'

Yellow tulips

The weather has been a mix of sunshine and mizzly or downright wet, but the wind has turned from the east to the south and it's nicely mild.  The plants are responding to the spring weather: the late daffs are opening, as are the first of the tulips (a couple of little red ones, probably 'Praestans', half-hidden near the bottom of the garden, and the early yellows under the dining room window).  The honesty is in flower too, and so are the gooseberries; not that you would notice except that the bees are all over them.  The garden is starting to look half-decent again, especially as the lawn was cut last weekend for the first time this year.

Bergenia 'Bressingham White'

The rain the other day was a good reason to get on with the seeds.  The propagator is now on, full and double-banked, with those that don't need heat on the staging.  I've started hardening off the contents of the cold frame, since much of what is in there was only there to be protected from slugs and snails rather than cold.  I've discovered that the reason that the dahlia shoots are not doing well is that there are slugs in the greenhouse, cunningly hiding in the growbags (which still have salad leaves in them).  A few slug pellets have been put down.

Narcissus 'Jenny', with Brunnera

Outside, weeding goes on.  The potatoes were planted today, International Kidney (early) and Pink Fir Apple (maincrop) - on the old principle of planting your earlies late and your lates early.  A few lettuce seedlings, with plastic bottle cloches, have gone in between them, and in the next bed the leeks have been sown.  Some hazel branches have been laid on top to discourage the birds from dust-bathing on the seedbed; they usually leave the leek seedlings alone, but raked bare earth is a temptation to them.  The partridges are the worst, as, being larger, their dust-baths cause more damage, but we've only had very occasional visits from a pair this year, and not (so far) in the veg plot.