This Weekend (Part 1 - Saturday)

This weekend got off to a very good start, partly due to the Prosecco I drank on Friday night and partly due to the fact that I got a whole suitcase full of presents wrapped. I just have to write the tags now, if I can remember who each parcel is for.  Makes for a good guessing game to keep my mind active!

I followed this on Saturday morning by finally getting myself out into the garden.  It  was a bit cold and misty, so I had to wrap up warm, but there wasn't any rain forecast for the weekend, so this was probably the best chance I had to just get on and get it  done.

I wanted to take a photograph of what the garden looked like just before I embarked on the task, but unfortunately OH took our shared camera with him on a client visit, so there will only be the after pictures in this post.

I started work down the side return, in an attempt to clear all of the leaves that had settled there. Part of the reason I've left the garden this late, is so that I would only need to clear the leaves just the once, and as virtually all of the leaves have now left the surrounding trees, this will hopefully be the case, although a few more may subsequently drop.

Anyway, I gave the decking a good old sweep and bagged up all of the leaves. I'm keeping them to make leaf mulch this year. I had bagged some earlier in the year, but OH threw them in the garden waste bin, needless to say he's not getting his hands on these. The bags are going to be tied with cable ties and left to rot down and supply lots of lovely leaf mulch for my raised beds.

It took about four hours in total to clear the decked area outside the back door.  I did a bit of pruning too, although there's still a lot more to do and some hoeing too, but it looks a whole lot better.

The greenhouse was cleared of the old rotting tomato plants and grow bags and it's cover was put back in place, so it is now a nice dry place for storing things over the winter.

I put the canvas garden chairs away in the shed, found a few more old toys of LB's to donate and emptied any pots that had filled with water over the autumn winter months.  I still need to do lots of pot washing in spring, but I always enjoy waiting for a nice sunny day to do these.

Here's a few pictures of how this area looked when I'd finished on Saturday afternoon.

The side return.  This is where our kitchen is going to be extended out into next year.

I still need to hoe this border and re-pot the blueberry  plant which is mossed over, but it's looking a lot better along here now.

The mini greenhouse is now all clean and tidy and giving shelter to my succulents.

I'm a bit annoyed with myself for neglecting my greenhouse over the past couple of years, as some of the joints are now rusting and it might only last another year or so.  I should have taken a bit more care of it really, but it will be moved later this year, to where the trampoline is currently standing, in time for when we have the building work done on the kitchen, so we'll see how it fares there.

The potting table will be relocated there too, as will my new hot composting bin.  (More in another post)  We just need to dismantle the trampoline, make a gate from the fence that's currently there and put some flagstones down to accommodate everything we want to relocate there.