Jazzing up the Front

The rose I purchased almost two years ago to ramble around the front door (who doesn't want a cottage with roses around the front door?) is living up to its name - Starlight Express - and growing frantically, to the point I am having to be determined with tying it to the trellis to keep it as relatively tamed as possible. However, it is making the front door look a tad unbalanced so the Bank Holiday had me hieing to the garden centre where I purchased a ball of privet on a stick. Or 'topiary', as I believe it is known in finer gardening circles.

It's about 5 and a half feet tall, this lollipop tree, and I thought maybe I could persuade the ball to take on the shape of a cat, or a hen, as it grows. What's not to like about a topiary cat/hen on a stick by your front door, eh? Anyway, I wanted a nice pot for it to sit in. A red one, I thought, to match the front door itself and the Aga and the kitchen walls, and to enrage my mother who hates red. Couldn't find the right pot and I wasn't prepared to compromise for the sake of convenience so the tree came home potless.

It has a pot now though! A square wooden planter. They look very well together except the wooden planter is wood and not red. But I could paint it, couldn't I? Yes, I could! Just another job to add to my endless list of jobs to do. Stupidly, I made a list recently entitled 'Jobs for the House and Garden.' Then I panicked and divided it into two lists - Jobs for the House and Jobs for the Garden - just so I could breath again. My fault for writing it all down, but I do like a list. But progress is being made, albeit slowly. I am currently in conversation with a carpenter/joiner chap about 1) wood flooring and skirting in the living room and dining room 2) sorting out the bannister and landing rails and maybe making them Bambino-proof which I suspect will involve making Bambino wear kitten socks, and 3) building an office/computer space in the gap under the stairs in the dining room so we don't keep chucking tat in the void behind the desk currently in situ. 

It was Andy's birthday a couple of weeks ago and I gave him a trail camera to fix up in the garden to catch exciting images of the boundless and myraid range of wildlife that wander around when we aren't there to see them. Andy has been moving it around to various locations, training it on interesting looking holes in the ground, gaps in the hedges, stuff like that. So far it has captured lots of running chicken pictures and lots of either me or himself pushing the lawnmower around. And birds. Lots of birds. 

Until last night, that is. When, there by the woodshed, there was.....

....a fox! A chuffing fox. Sigh.....

I am an optimistic though. I am holding out for an aardvark, maybe. Or a gnu. Andy asked if I was worried about a fox being around, because of the hens. Well, my theory is that we are meticulous about shutting them away safely at night and we have been keeping hens for 10 years now and never lost one to a fox so we should be okay as long as he keeps spreading his male pheremone pee around the hens' enclosure.

And if that isn't an open invitation to Fate to blow my theory out of the water then I don't know what is. 

'Tis easier to update a garden...

So, Weebly has decided it no longer likes my i-pad, it being too ancient and all, but I am not going to be forced into buying a new i-pad just because Weebly says so. So it is 'au revoir' to Weebly and 'Hello Blogger, my old friend,' once more.

On with the garden, then, which is less technologically stubborn and pushy, it's only updates being those we want to make of it and not the other way around.

With the onset of Spring proper, everything has burst into life. Much gardening occuring here at Damson Cottage, then. The wisteria is looking magnificent and smells delicious, too.

It is about a week later blooming than last year, but the flowers are heavier and longer.

I've been tiddling around with the courtyard, having decided to fill it up with more plants in big pots. Acers, then, and pansies, violas, azalea and in the borders aquilegia, some purple thistly thing and lemon balm in the shady border under the massive climbing rose.

The baby lavender and bay we were giving as housewarming gifts almost two years ago are positively rampant - and don't ask me how the strawberries took up residence because I certainly didn't put them there but there they are, romping away towards Wimbledon readiness...

Up in the middle garden we are expecting a tsunami of foxgloves and the lilac is beautifully lush.

The vegetable garden hasn't made much progress; however, you can see how well the hormbeam hedge we planted almost 18 months ago has developed. I am looking forward to the day when I can tuck myself up against it with a book, a cosy and secluded corner inside the veg garden. 

The fruit cage is doing well - raspberries, rhubarb, blackcurrant, gooseberries. The cuttings I took from the cultivated blackberry a.k.a no bastard thorns, have taken, much to my surprise! 

The grapevine is also looking pretty darn good. It is growing against the shed at the top of the garden. The shed is one third brick wall in height, and two thirds wood for the rest of the height. It isn't very tall. Our plan is to remove the wood bit of the walls and replace with....glass! Turning it into...a greenhouse! A BIG greenhouse! And the grapevine can be trained inside it to grow glasshouse grapes. Watch this space, becuase this is next Damson Cottage Big Project.

Today I planted two beds up with baby lavenders. You know what I am like with my lavender. They'll take a couple of years to properly establish but they'll make a lovely spread when they do.

The tree house is still the tree house...

And the hens are still the hens. Too much lounging around and half-hearted moulting going on at the moment and scant egg laying, but they are good girls and they entertain me enormously.

And then walking back down towards the cottage, all is green and lush and lovely...

Even the honeysuckle, which often pretends it is dead, has beenrejuvenated by the weather and is making a sterling effort of covering the oil tank. 

So now I am going to set about rejuvenating the blog, fluffing it up a bit, welcoming it to Damson Cottage. Good old Blogger! I'm glad to be back!