Wednesday 27 June 2012

Syphoned

A big bottling session! The elderflower rosé, the elderflower, and hedgerow port have all been bottled: about half a dozen bottles of each, with some leftovers. The elderflower is good; the rosé and port need to mature a little, I think.


That leaves the dandelion wine fermenting in the airing cupboard, and the Demi-John That Must Not Be Named hidden elsewhere. In the next few weeks I'll get some more elderflower going: the trees aren't quite ready yet, though.

Sunday 24 June 2012

Sculptural

Alex and Hazel visited us for the weekend, and today we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (having spent a very wet Saturday inside, playing Risk and Settlers (a mammoth composite scenario that takes forever)).

The park is very large (500 acres), and contains a wide variety of sculptures, as well as four interior galleries with more sculptures and other art. We went round a fair bit of the park, and all of the galleries.

Multi-stemmed birch and ha-ha bridge at YSP (© Ian 2012)

We rather liked this multi-stemmed birch, which looks like it might be an over-grown coppicing stool. The bridge behind, as you might guess from the cut-out letters, spans a dry-stone walled ha-ha.

Jonathan Borofsky's 'Molecule Man' at YSP (photo © Ian 2012)

Cedar sculpture in the Camellia House, YSP (photo © Ian 2012)

Inside a rhododendron (© Ian 2012)

A bank of rhododendrons was outside the Camellia House; they're obviously rather old, and the stems and roots have become massive and entangled.

Waterfall (© Ian 2012)

Primarily, this photo's to remind me of the sort of waterfall we'd like to build above the pond.

Alec Finlay's 'The Bee Library' at YSP (photo © Ian 2012)

This is one of 24 bee-related books that have been converted into bee habitats and hung around the Lakeside section of the park.

I didn't take a photo, but outside the Bothy Gallery there's a curved south-facing wall, against which have been grown a series of cordon/fan trained apples. Some of them, by the tags, have been there over 200 years—and it shows. The trunks are 9" across, and they're big, vigorous, and covered in fruit. It's a shame we have no sheltered south-facing wall, as I'd love to grow some cordon fruit trees. Never mind: half standards it is.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Planting Up

We've had a very filled few days, finishing our week off from work. We've planted up the newly found bed outside the dining room (previously gorse, cotoneaster, conifer and laurel), having taken out the first three, and cut right back the laurel (which might, with some luck, re-sprout: apparently, they do). It's got a number of legume wigwams in it, chosen to be decorative as well as productive. We've had a hard time getting them to germinate, so it may be a bit disappointing.


The new bed before/after (© Ian 2012)

We finished digging the beds to either side of the septic tank, too. On the pond side, this is matched by a little extension of the bank, which forms a connection between the pond section, and the games lawn section. It'll eventually have a willow arch, which is at the moment just a pair of willow plants on either side, swaying in the wind. The bed on the pond side of the tank is wider (about a metre) than the games lawn (about half that: there's less space to play with, with the constraint of a badminton/short tennis court on the lawn). Both are now planted with more willow (a mix of red, gold, and osier): there aren't enough of these yet, but they'll form a living tunnel/arch over the tank cover. The pond side also has a run of edible hedging plants in front of this: myrobalan plums, cornelian cherries, and hazel.

The quince has finally been planted, between the seating corner, and the copse. That's now all of the fruit trees in the ground, and they're all doing well. The bare-rooted ones were dosed with mycorrhizal fungi when planted, which has hopefully helped them establish. I don't have a control group, though, so who knows.

The vegetable garden is now fully planted (that is, it's full), as the leeks, swedes, courgettes, brassicas, spinach, and celeriac have all gone out. There are more brassicas (PSB, other caulis, savoy cabbage) growing on in pots, ready to go out later (in the space vacated by pototoes), and we'll also be sowing some turnips. Of course, we'll sow more radishes, spinach, salad leaves, and things like that, as space arises.

I thought some before/during/after photos of The Chipping Heap would be fun:



The Chipping Heap (garage end) (© Ian 2011–12)



The Chipping Heap (kitchen end) (© Ian 2011–12)

Lastly, we replanted our hanging baskets for summer (replacing the winter-season scheme's white heathers with petunias and lobelias), and putting the remaining plants with pelargoniums, fuchsias and cineraria into other pots for the front garden. The tomatoes, peppers and chilis have been planted into larger pots, to continue growing on windowsills. We then retired, tired.

Thursday 7 June 2012

All Gone

The cotoneaster is gone! We finished the chipping this morning, and spent the afternoon starting to dig out the gorse outside the dining room window. That extended to this morning, as the gorse roots had formed a seemingly solid mass a foot in diameter. I eventually got it out, and we then spent some more time clearing up around the garden.

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Shredding

We've been clearing the bank of cotoneaster for two years, on and off, culminating in the wonderful day at the end of May when the last (of the top-growth) came down.

In our defence, it was a lot of cotoneaster: a bank 18m long, and up to 4m wide. We put some through the chipper in March 2011, and what we've cut down since marking out the future pond has been piled on the pond - convenient as it's close to the original planting, and killing the grass there will make it easier to lift the turves later on. When we added the poplar branches, and then the cotoneaster from the last few weeks, it got rather large. As in, filling the pond (about 6 by 3m) and taller than me.



The piles of brushwood and branches (© Ian 2012)

Needless to say, we weren't sure our electric chipper would manage this, so we've hired a petrol machine to pitch in. We've spent since Saturday going at the heap (in all weather), and hope to be finished tomorrow, when the shredder goes back.