Hurrah! Lockdown has eased a little, and we’ve been making the most of the ‘households allowed to meet’ rule. We’ve also ventured afield a little this month, as well as making the most of the good weather when it was around.
Visitors! Including the now traditional ‘Tide Bell Selfies’, and somebody’s birthday!
Out and about at Gunby Hall our local National Trust Property, and at The Walled Garden, Baumber, a beautiful garden, tearoom and Garden Centre.
Of course in good weather and bad we went to the beach. There’s no point in living next to the coast if you don’t!
Between all of the gadding about and entertaining we did get a few jobs done, some more successfully than others…
The lane was given its annual haircut, producing mounds of shreddings for compost and paths:
We tried to create an elegant gazebo of willow, as seen at the walled garden, unfortunately it didn’t go according to plan and looked like some incompetent teenagers had half-made a den… so it got dismantled and added to the willow sticks for re-using pile. Still lessons were learned and we will probably try again. Watch this space…
A more successful rainy day project was creating some permanent labels for the apple trees. I decided to go for an upmarket copper design, and the first dozen were created and installed. The rest will have to wait for more rainy days. Worthy of the best dressed orchard in Lincolnshire award.
Although Andy has done a valiant job keeping the grass cut in the centre of the orchard, the edges were left wild, but now is the time to clear access around them, about a dozen tree were cleared with assistance from Helen Hannah and Christine.
The utility area is also proving useful. It’s the little no-man’s land between the main garden and the orchard, and is now full of stacked materials, and at the last count 6 pallet compost bins – I’ve been doing a lot of weeding to fill them all…
In the veg garden harvesting continues. Soft fruit has been particularly good, and Helen had to be caged until she’d picked enough redcurrants to be allowed out. We did have a bit of a cucumber glut, but everyone likes cucumber pickle, so that’s OK?
Flowers are flowering…The seed sown flower area continues to be extremely colourful, and much loved by the bees and butterflies.
I failed to get a decent picture of Pesky Peter the rabbit who moved in for a few weeks thatI kept threatening with a pie if he ate my veg. However there were more welcome visitors, incuding the smallest toad ever that moved into the polytunnel, and Mildred brought her eight ducklings along to visit. I’ve expanded the pic of the ducklings, because they are extremely well camouflaged.
And finally – the not-so-wild-life. Chester continues to have an exhausting time
That’s all for now, see you in the August edition!
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