Stone

The new path

It has been a hard landscaping week.  The builders have now finished the area behind the house: a good wide path, actually intended to provide hardstanding for tower scaffolding to facilitate maintenance of the gable woodwork, but doubling convincingly as a sitting-out area, especially now that the bench and tables have been put there (and, temporarily, the rather unsightly stone sink waiting to be planted up); also re-flagging of the area for the rotary drier, and a hard-sand area over by the long hedge.  There are still some piles of soil, weeds and old builders' sand from the original path piled up on the edge of the lawn, which are in need of removing and/or digging in but at the moment provide endless interest for the garden's birdlife who check it over for seeds and bugs, and, in the case of the sparrows, use it as a luxury dustbath.

The wall, repaired

I've also completed some amateur hard landscaping of my own.  The stretch of drystone wall behind the fruit patch for some reason didn't have any upright capping stones, only big stones laid flat; some of these, and some of the stones lower down the wall, were crumbling and dropping off on to the soil below.  This didn't matter too much as long as there was nothing planted below, but I want to make use of that area and big stones raining down on any planting wouldn't be a good idea.  It's the place where the neighbours' cat, which regards the wall as a thoroughfare, likes to jump down into her garden, and I think she was kicking up some of the looser stones as she did so.  I've been rebuilding the top part of the wall on our side, putting in upright capping as far as I can (further along, on the left of the photo, some concrete has been spread on the top of the wall so the stones won't come out).  There are still some rotten stones in there - I couldn't completely rebuild it - but the badly crumbling ones have been taken out and re-used as infill, and the result doesn't look too bad.  The capping should withstand the cat's jumping and, I hope, will help protect the stones lower down from weathering.

Part 2 of this process didn't go so well, however.  My plan was to plant our little fig tree - a cutting donated by a kind gardening neighbour - below the wall; it's a little shaded, but south-facing and sheltered.  The soil is shockingly bad, full of stones and some other debris (bits of old pipe, crockery, rusty hinges etc), but figs like it stony and dry so that shouldn't be a problem.  The fig has been doing quite well in its pot and managed to overwinter three tiny fruits, though I ought to have noticed that it was being slow in putting out leaves.  When I turned it out of its pot I found that most of the roots had gone; classic vine weevil damage.  Fortunately there are still a few roots, so I've planted it, given it some Rootgrow and a good watering and have some hopes that it will survive.  The vine weevil grubs were picked out and donated to the blackbirds, who fed them to one of their hungry youngsters.

Lily of the valley

The weather has been very up and down, but still predominantly dry and I've been up and down the garden with the watering can.  We had several days of cold weather (sleet, snow, hail), a couple of warm spring days, and now a chill east wind; I wish it would make up its mind, and for once I keep hoping for a good downpour to soak the ground.  Some plants seem happy; the lily of the valley, which spreads further every year, has been in flower for a week (quite a bit earlier than usual) and providing scented posies for the house.  The veg patch is a bit slow, however.  I've sown a few peas and some replacement broad beans, but there's still a lot needing planting out. 

There's still much bird activity, with the young blackbirds and thrushes being fed and various finches getting ready to nest; a pair of linnets have been around, which is nice as we haven't seen any for a few years.  They always used to come to drink at the pond, and may have continued to do so but the planting round there has got bigger and obscured our view of what's happening at the water's edge.  (The water's edge is also a lot lower than normal because of the dry weather.)  The pheasant and his three ladies have also been regulars, although I wish he wouldn't dust-bath in the potato patch!  There have been a few butterflies, too, although the only one I saw closely enough for identification was a fine male orange-tip; there was a small blue butterfly (probably a common blue, although we have others in this area), a white and something with lovely intricate markings that I only caught a glimpse of - I'd love to know what it was.