Couch coug...cutitout..ough

Some nice hops... very 'Our Town'. The gang are off to Hastings today to visit the Pud Lady and family but go armed with food with which to cook lunch, and some serious gardening kit, with a view to some heavy pruning. The Pud Lady's garden is described by the more sympathetic as a "wild woodland" garden, and by the less sympathetic as a jungle glade, top billing going to a massive and old cricket-bat willow which towers a good 50 feet and has a girth of more than a metre.

This gnarly old beast looms over all the gardens in "The Crescent" like an ancient matriarch and the rest of the garden aspires to catch it up. Our mission is nothing like brave enough to take on the willow, but we are there to start off by taking out the top 6 feet of whippy dog-rose, blackthorn, ivy and Forsythia which is allegedly just this year's growth on the northern hedge.

Pud Lady puts my Dad and his brother Tom to work on this hedge, which Haggis and I rootle about in 'the jungle' (Dog Heaven, of course, and in my case I translate ' the jungle' to include any neighbouring gardens I can get to within the crescent (plus one over the road, from which I have to be retrieved by Tom, who spots me while retrieving some loppers from his 4x4). Mum goes to work creating a magnificent fish pie, but keeps an eye on the boys and gets a bit frustrated that they are pussy-footing and not getting really stuck in.

This, the boys argue, is due to them knowing "The History", in that the Pud Lady never lets anyone loose in her garden without hovering anxiously and stopping them if they snip more than about 3 inches off the end of anything, or more than a few leaves. Today though, with her increasingly 'autumnal' years she stays in her comfy chair and although she can see the tops of the afore-mentioned 6 feet of hedge (and watches happily as Dad and Tom lop and stack), she can't see anything lower down due to the window sill height.

Mum, hopping from foot to foot with frustration strides down the side path and chides them to 'get on with it'. Her ideal garden is a lot less jungly, and she would dearly love to get to grips with 'this mess'. At one point Dad is messing around gently with the front of the hedge and Mum appears to be having a coughing fit, but it's one of those 'stage whisper' words-disguised-as-a-cough things. Cough cough- cut it out cough! The boys gird their loins and start to hack back into the hedge reducing its billowing front back off the path, back off the long-buried spare washing line, and then downwards to clear nettles, brambles and eventually grass to expose a lovely former spring-bulb bank at the foot of the hedge.

Far from upsetting Pud Lady when she does come out for a tour of inspection, she is delighted, as she finds she now has room to perambulate her wheelie-zimmer down the wider path and can actually tour the garden as she has not apparently been able to do since May. Dad hadn't known that and is delighted to have re-opened the access.

The fish pie was superb too, according to the humans, washed down with pink wine and followed by 'Cartmel' brand sticky chocolate pudding or sticky ginger pudding with cream.

A good day all round

Deefer

Gardening Blitz

We are on hand to help today in a major gardening blitz, which sees the garden cleared of old, long-since-pecked-clean seed heads and other tall dead stuff, opening up the view and reminding us we actually have a reasonable size garden (25' by 100').

It's long overdue. Mum has pruned the roses and attacked the hollyhocks and old sedum heads etc in the upper "circle" garden, while Dad has cleared Californian poppy and yellow horned poppy foliage, magnolia leaves and died back Erigeron from the gravel out front, plus chopped up the old Christmas tree, and cut away all the sport suckers from the base of the lilac, and the old stems of purple loose strife and asparagus.

Finally they joined up to cut down the tall canes/plumes of the two big ornamental grasses down to 6 inches or so. This act is the real garden opener, because these two tall tufts create a very obvious visible barrier between top garden and what we call the "ha-ha" bank, below which is the pond.

Plenty of time, though, to sit back and chill on the terrace, which was reasonably warm. The pair of robins show their appreciation by swooping down on the disturbed soil and flitting about picking up spring-awakened grubs and creepy crawlies. Mum and Dad are hopeful that the robins will nest.

They tell some awful story of me as a puppy killing a robin which flew into the greenhouse and stunned itself, one of the then breeding pair with a half built nest, which was then abandoned. They have not nested in the garden since. I don't remember this but if it's true then it's probably in this blog somewhere. Think I'd not get away with it again, though, so maybe I'll avoid robins in 2010.

Deefski

Jack Frost

Good frost this morning, ice to scrape off the cars, and white grass on the Rec. We are out there for a nice early run around. We meet Gigot's crowd again, and find out that the brown lab is called Truffles, and the long-haired small dog is actually a Long Haired Chihuahua called "Storm". We already know a Storm - a big dark alsatian living up our street. Bit of a contrast. I get a run-around with mini-Storm - heh heh - I'm MUCH faster!!!

Mum and Dad are action-packed today, just like yesterday. Mum's off swimming, Dad's off to plant 2500 daff bulbs to beautify up one of the entrances to the town, for the "In Bloom" volunteers. Well, not him single handedly, but there are only 5 of them on the job, so I guess he can claim 500!

The 2CV won't play this morning, sulking from lack of use and frost, so Dad has to put it on the charger while he plays In-Bloom games. After that, of course and with the sun on its back it fires up first time, so Dad takes it for a blast to dry it out thoroughly

Then, we're gardening - weeding, pruning all the fruit trees and stuff. This is GREAT for dogs, as it gets us into all sorts of secret places we can't normally get at - behind the green house and all around the chicken run. The big old James Grieves gets a trim, then the 3 ballerina apples and the 2 plums, then the quince and the green gage. There's an enormous pile of prunings now drying for a couple of days before Dad fires up the shredder

Hope you had a good day
Deefer

Bluebells and Snowdrops

A brilliant day - the weekend and both Mum and Dad around for almost the whole day. Sunny and breezy, so they both got all inspired to get cracking in the garden, and I was there to help. Every year they order another 100 snowdrops "in the green" for under the big James Grieves apple tree. The originals were wiped out by the chooks, when they had them a few years back. Chickens annihilate anything green that emerges through the soil (except Rose of Sharon and daffodils for some reason) and quickly reduced the inside of the chicken "paddock" to brown - either desert or mud depending on season.


This year, along with the snowdrops we also got some bluebells (from a reputable source, of course) and these, too, were to go into the mini-orchard (where the chooks were - now the JG above, but also greengage, damson, quince and (this year) a Black Wonder cherry from Brogdale. We also re-sowed the orchard with grass mix


Mum was up the top of the garden weeding, tidying and planting (and ...um.... picking up doggy gifts), Dad was down in the chicken run and then in the greenhouse sowing multifarious kinds of seeds. We dogs were scampering to and from making ourselves useful as follows

• Helping dig slits for snowdrops
• Rescuing snowdrops accidentally left in the slits by dad before he could tread down the soil again
• Dis-interring old beef bones we buried many moons ago, in case they were in the way.
• Biting the end of the hoe when it tried to make threatening noises against the stones in the soil
• Biting then end of the duckweed net.
• Biting the sharp end of the spade. You can't be too careful!
• Chasing blackbirds (You can't be too careful with them either)
• Duffing up Haggis when he tried to stop moving
• Shouting at the doozers in the building site out back
• Shouting at the street cleaning lorry clearing up the mud left by the doozers driving in and out of the building site
• Shouting at the thunder - that scared it. The cloud cruised right on by without raining on our parade
• Re-distributing empty flower pots. Seems unfair that the greenhouse gets them all
• Collecting mud and grime on fur, especially chin. Dad loves it when I nuzzle into his neck with my chin all wet and muddy
• Saying a quick "hello" to little Eve next door. She still doesn't beleive I type this all myself....

Have a great weekend

Deefer