3 hours work for 2 pots - hmmm

That's a ratio of 90 minutes per pot. Admittedly, I did sand an old peeling paint terracotta pot to look older still (but better). Added to those 2 hours spent with the joys of the electric sander, I walked an hour's round trip to the hedge veg stall. You've never seen a brighter more sparkling sea, and more flowering paths on the way to buy maroon-coloured bedding plants to match the maroon Aeonium succulent.

Question - does only Guernsey have Hedge Veg stalls with honesty boxes?
ALSO - when did they become Hedge Veg stalls? We never had such snappy marketing speak for 'tomatoes sold on the hedge by Mrs Tostevin' when I was a kid.

AND - if I didn't actually buy Veg, but I bought plants and it wasn't on the Hedge but actually was on next to a beach slipway, do we need a new phrase? Bedding Plants on the Beach? Pots on the Slip?

What say ye merry guernsey gardeners?

Lizzie gets busy!

The geraniums in the stone well cum planter were all killed off by 'Feb 2nd 'Snow Day'. Some may have returned from the roots and short stems but frankly I enjoyed ripping them out. Pruning and cutting back is very therapeutic, even if you're not an overtly angry person it helps. Trust me.

So I have planted a mixture that hopefully will be a riot of pinks and reds, a coup of colour: upright Fuschia in the well centre, trailing fuschia for longterm and scarlet busy lizzies for this season's colour.

I hope lizzie gets busy soon as I'm excited to see how well she goes.

Sowing a seed or digging your own grave...

A favourite song lyrics is by Ian Brown - "picking up a pen, is like picking up a spade. Either sowing a seed or digging your own grave".

Today was about sowing seeds and filling in a job application. Mr Brown's lyric couldn't have been more apt. The seeds are trailing blue lobelia - a bargain from B&Q for 79p a packet. I won't jinx the application by telling you what it was for,
suffice to say it's a version of my dream job. It's not digging my own grave.

These are the smallest seeds I have ever seen. Barely-there rust coloured specks. I have sprinkled in seed trays in the graves of tomato seedlings that didn't take. It was by accident rather than by design that these were planted so late. So it may mean the garden has a lovely Indian Summer bloom of blue trailing from the edges of its pots. To be admired at the end of a dreamjob day, perhaps with a Tanqueray and tonic in hand. (I hate gin but it seems the thing to drink when admiring plants, no?)

Birds vs Bully Cats

Do you happen to have a pair of birds that are... just friendly? (The Birds 1963)

I might try feeding the birds this winter as I have never seen any in our garden. It's not entirely altruistic as I read that they will help considerably with pest control over the winter.

The lack of birds (LOB) situation on our locale, is not that surprising, because of the Lack of Trees (LOT) but more importantly, the high feline-count in our neighbourhood. The main culprits I suspect are the pair of Bully Cats that use our fence as part of an assault course. Said bullies were once a sweet-looking pair of fluffy tabby kittens that slept in our tall weeds. They have matured into nasty, starring, hissing beasts, that we renamed, 'Ronnie and Reggie'. Their crimes include chewing the Osteospermums, digging up the Passiflora twice and making the otherwise slow old ginger cat Ollie run-scared. Pitch Puppy agrees that they are pure evil. I know this because Ronnie and Reggie are the only creatures that make Puppy buck on his hindlegs, race from the house skidding and barking "Ro-ro Ro!" to defend his territory.

I digress. Back to feeding birds: I'll put a feeder out with sunflower seeds out, in a place where they hopefully cannot be bullied by the Kray Twin Cats, and join the ranks of 60% of British garden owners who feed birds 60,000 tons annually. Cor, that's a thousand tons per percentage point.






Apparently greenfinch, house and tree sparrows will flock in.

Jack Frost

Don't you just love frost in the mornings? A cold morning used to make me miserable as I didn't wear enough layers years ago, but now the sight of white crispy plants makes me smile.

From inside my warm house.

Bulbs

It's the surprise element I like so much about bulbs while we are still in winter. I'm actually very excited about them arriving in 3-5 months time.

Little purple crocus, early yellow trumpet Daffs, late bloomin' orange centered Narcissi, one huge giant Allium and 10 smaller white ones. When and where will they turn up? I literally don't know where they were planted as this was done by 'the men' who came to spread the tonne of mulch as the garden's final touch, back in October.

2 or 3 have come up already in the sunniest corner. These green spikes, 3 inches out of the ground, will be watched and guarded closely from Puppy teeth. Of course they could be weeds but I'm hoping.

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Shrub # 6 Pittosporum Arundel Green

A pretty green shrub with lots of tiny leaves, in the densely detailed way I love.

However, I am starting to think this one may be filler, unless it miraculously flowers a riot next year. It's a waiting game isn't it.

This Pittosporum is at 9am on the clockface of the garden and we have a second plant at 5pm in a much sunnier spot. They started much the same size so we'll have to chart their progress. The 5pm plant did get squashed by a blown fence panel the day after being planted so does lean a lot. It's currently tied to a stake by a piece of green Christmas ribbon, so we'll see how he does when I take his stablisers off.