At the beginning of this week, it seemed that all of a sudden, Christmas was upon us, and there was still a stack of things on my to do list, one of the main ones being a big garden tidy up and putting up the garden lights. As a consequence, on Sunday morning after walking the dog, I headed straight out into the garden.
I deliberately hadn't tackled the garden before now, as I was waiting for all the leaves, or nearly all of the leaves to drop, so that I would only have to do the leaf collecting once. As the trees were virtually bare, and it was a dry, cold day, the conditions were perfect. In addition, OH would be around later to help me with a couple of things.
The first task was to sweep down the side of the house. Lots of things are kept down here, most of them waiting to be taken to the tip, or in the case of the leaf mulch from last year, to be used. I swept up what I could and bagged up this year's new leaves, emptied things that had filled with water over the weeks, in particular a black plastic dustbin, which I wanted to use to transplant our outdoor Christmas tree into. OH drilled some holes into the bottom of this and with a bit of a trim of the roots, we were able to replant the tree into it. I'm hoping it survives the shock.
The pot that originally contained the tree was then re-used immediately to transplant the biggest of our blueberry plants into, as the clay pot it was currently in was starting to crack and crumble around the rim. OH then pruned the blueberry plants and I partially pruned our apple tree.
Once the side return was cleaned up, I took down the camping table that we'd been using on the decking and put it away for the rest of the winter and then turned my attention to the decked area. This mainly involved sweeping leaves from around and underneath pots and raking them from the beds. I left a few areas with some leaves insitu, for insects and other creatures. I did find a toad, but I left him be, he seemed happy enough. I also pruned some shrubs that were a bit out of hand and cut down some perennials that were dying off. It looked quite bare, but a lot better for a tidy up.
I then moved on to tackle the raised beds. I weeded one, transplanting some foxgloves that had self-seeded into it over into the borders. I then applied some of the year old rotted down leaf mulch to the bed. The second bed contained the remains of my dahlias, so I cut the foliage back and then dug the tubers up to overwinter them, before adding more leaf mulch to that bed.
The surrounding paths were cleared of weeds and leaves and the small patio at the end of the garden was swept and weeded too. OH hung the strings of Xmas lights on along the garden fence, on the outdoor tree and also some on the front hedge. All that was then left to do was to cut back the ivy that grows over the wall in the front garden, add some decorations to the outdoor tree and sweep the front path, but I had to do that on Monday, as by now the light had gone. A very satisfying afternoon in the garden and another job completed. A long time coming, but worth the effort.
On Monday, I was booked into my class at the gym. I was a bit apprehensive about going due to the new variant, as I can't afford to catch it, being the only manager working over Christmas and New Year. In the end I decided to go and sign in, but not do the class. It's too risky and I have to consider the people I work and live with. Instead, I headed off to do my last weekly shop before Christmas. It wasn't too busy out, but I was glad to get all the shopping done.
In the afternoon, I had a good scout around the kitchen and my food stashes and gathered together a bag of food items for the food bank, as I'd received a message in the morning calling out for donations. Then I decided to finish decorating the outdoor tree with some small white plastic fircone ornaments I bought from the charity shop. Here's a picture of the tree and the tidy garden, I'm not sure if the dog approves or not!
I then finally got around to cutting back the ivy hedge at the front of the house and sweeping the footpath, which completed all of the outdoor jobs I needed to do, for this year at least.
Later, I went out to walk the dog, picked up a prescription from the pharmacy and then made us some supper. After supper, I took a couple of hours to catch up with blogging friends. I've got so behind with reading everyone's news. It was good to catch up. If I comment on your blog regularly, you may find a whole host of new comments from today.
After the blogging catch up, I still had time to do a final bit of gift wrapping. Just a few small gifts for one of the volunteers at work, who is super generous to everyone in our shop, both with his time as a volunteer and by the fact that he buys us a huge Fortnum and Mason hamper every Christmas.
On Tuesday, I was back at work. There were lots of donations that needed processing when I got there, so that kept us busy all day. There seems to have been a sudden influx, which is good, as we have had fewer donations lately.
Anyway, one donation that came in was a small/medium sized artificial Christmas tree. I've decided to buy it, as our current one is a faff to put up and I struggle with it every year. This one is in just two parts with branches that just drop down instead of ones you hook into the stem, which is what we've currently got. It's not as big, but I'm going for ease of use over size from now on. We've had our current tree for about 10 or more years now, so I'm going to pass it on to the Give and Take and let someone else who needs one, get some use out of it.
We had a good day of sales at work today, but post-Christmas opening is still a bit up in the air. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with Covid cases over the next week I guess.
On Wednesday, I was back at work again in the afternoon. The Shop Manager left today, to go home to Europe for Christmas. So I'm now officially the last Manager standing at the shop for the duration.
On Thursday, I was working a full day, so had to be in the shop for 10am. OH did the double dog walk today to help me out, which was good of him.
Work was quiet. Some not so good news dropped in my lap, which means that I've got a pretty onerous for me task to complete next week, that I shouldn't really have to do, which I wasn't too pleased about. It was a bit of an unexpected and unpleasant surprise shall we say, but I'm not going to worry about it over Christmas and let it spoil our Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, OH went out on a cycle ride early in the morning and I had a bit of a lie in reading a new book I'd started the night before. I haven't had a chance to read much in the last few weeks, so it felt like a bit of a treat. Later I got up and took the dog out for a walk.
When OH got back, we all got ready and headed into Central London for a walk around the West End, see the Christmas lights and beautiful Christmas windows and do a bit of last minute shopping. It was a nice festive thing to do, that we hadn't done for a good few years. Some of the lights in the West End were lovely. Here are a few pictures of them:
Merry Christmas! Hope the day went well.
ReplyDeleteLovely to see pictures of your garden, including the dog. I haven't been out in my garden since the summer, there will be plenty to do come spring!